Traveling Internationally with a Baby

I asked what you guys would like me to write about and there was a ton of interest around traveling internationally with a baby. I started writing a blog post about this right after our Italy/France trip in June that I had forgotten about - so here we go!

Traveling with a baby sounds intimidating at first, but it's actually a great exercise to get you comfortable moving around with a young baby in all scenarios. When you travel with a baby (even young ones who are only 2-3 months old), it forces you to experiment and try new things outside your normal routine that you wouldn't necessarily do at home. This was great for me as an insecure first time mom! We didn't go out very often the first few months, in part because New Hampshire is soooo cold in winter, but mostly it was because we were choosing the path of least resistance and it was easier to stay home and cook in. When traveling, the new environment forces you into situations where you have to think on your toes a little bit more and try new things, which ultimately makes you feel more comfortable with everything--even when you return home after the trip. I felt a big difference in my confidence doing things with our baby after we went on our first trip to Harbour Island when our baby was only 2.5 months old.

Many of our friends told us that it's easiest to travel while your baby is young, and we've found this advice to be generally true up until about 5 months, then it was more difficult until our son turned 10 months old and started sleeping through the night consistently.

Below I'm sharing some of your specific questions alongside what has worked for us as a family. I'm sure there are other great tips and tricks that you all know so please hop in and share your wisdom in the comments at the bottom!

• Your must have item for traveling with Cam?
• What do you bring vs buy there?

This may be a bit unexpected, but we found we don't have any travel-specific essentials outside of what are already essential for helping our boy get through the day back home. At home, we always have a "go bag" ready for when we run errands, visit grandparents, or hop out for lunch, and we put together the same thing while traveling. Our must have travel items include:

1. Pacifiers - Bring 6-10 clean pacifiers in a zippered bag. When your baby inevitably drops one and it becomes dirty, a speedy swap is essentially to keeping the resulting fuss to a minimum. We found that having a supply of several pacifiers ready-at-hand is preferred to clipping a single pacifier to his outfit, since the clipped on version was getting tangled as he moved around.
2. Coverup - When I was breastfeeding (until 11 months), I always keep a shawl in my baby bag to discreetly nurse in public. I used a beautiful Hermes shawl (found on eBay for a steal), and it's been an elevated way to nurse anywhere from the airport to a sea-side cafe on our trips. The large size (140mm) keeps everything under wraps and picking a patterned shawl helps camouflage things. On trips to the beach, I leave the scarf in our room and opt to use a pareo instead.
3. Blanket - Babies get colder faster than we do, so we've found it helpful to always have something to add warmth to a warm day that got cooler with a setting sun. Even in tropical destinations I'd dress our baby in a onesie and bring a blanket or two for easy layering. (Especially nice to add layers without waking him up when he's napping. When we're popping between our car and a building, we'll often keep him in the car seat with a big wool throw over him.
4. White noise - We use background white noise to create a predictable sleep experience for our boy, and while traveling it has been an essential way to make him feel comfortable away from home. We use this YouTube video (10 hours of white noise!) on one of our laptops with the screen turned off and it works well. David and I have the same video downloaded onto our phones so we can turn on the audio while in the car if needed.
5. Packing Cubes - Since baby products are so small, it's easy for them to get lost and mixed up in your travel bags. We bring two packing cubes on our trip: a small one we keep stocked with a day's worth of diapers, wipes, and a change of clothes and a larger one to store his clothes for the trip (basically his own luggage within our larger luggage!).
6. Entertainment - We rotate between 3-4 books and a couple toys during play time while traveling. But honestly have found that travel is a time of abundant new experience and our boy prefers to experience the new objects around him -- whether that's with us talking through the fruits he's seeing in the market stand or feeling (and tasting!) the spoons while out at dinner. I was surprised that he much prefers tasting a spoon or the coffee cup plate at our hotels than playing with toys we brought from home. I have a small zippered pouch that I hide random items in and get him to unzip and discover what's inside - this can provide up to an hour of entertainment on a flight or car ride! Everything is new for him and traveling is an opportunity to explain and explore the world - and he also sleeps better the more new experiences he's had in a day! Win win.
7. Diapers & Wipes - I prefer to bring our own diapers and wipes on trips, as we've had a great experience using Coterie diapers (only one blowout in his life, and they are brilliant overnight!) and many diapers/wipes have questionable ingredients so we strongly prefer using the low-tox/non-toxic options we know and trust. While these take up a lot of space, the silver lining is as you use them, you free up space to bring souvenirs home!

• Was a car seat required on the plane?
• Did you bring a car seat with you? If not what did you use instead?
• Have you used taxis at all on this trip? If so, how was installing the car seat?

We bring our Uppababy Mesa v2 car seat with us on every trip (need to upgrade to a bigger model this month), but haven't used it on the plane since our boy was flying as a "lap infant" for free with me. Oddly, European airlines require infants to wear a baby seatbelt anytime the seat belt sign is illuminated on the plane, but we've found most domestic US flights don't require this! (Huh?) He honestly doesn't love the infant seatbelt, and depending on his mood he fights it a bit at first, but eventually settles in, especially if he's sleepy.

Back to the car seat, the Uppababy Mesa v2 comes with a base that is more-or-less permanently installed in our car, and we leave that at home for our trips. When we travel by taxi or car, it's easy to use the back seat seat belt to secure the car seat as safely as a fixed base. David is a master at securing the seat, and it only takes us an additional 15 seconds getting into a taxi to install the car seat. You can also rent a car seat when you rent a car at your destination.

• Favorite travel stroller and car carrier for airport/plane/taxi
• What stroller do you use?

We opted for the UPPAbaby for travel, as it was a compact stroller that worked with the Uppababy Mesa v2 car seat we use back home when our son was an infant, and is easy to open and close one handed. While there are many strollers to choose from, and friends have had good success with the Doona, we liked that the Minu v2 stroller had a similar compact form but higher safety ratings with our existing car seat. At home, we keep the stroller in our car at all times, and it's been useful for us traveling through the airport. But outside the airport, we haven't used a stroller much (the Amalfi Coast and French Riviera can be hilly and have lots of stairs!). Instead, we've opted to use our Boppy Wrap Baby Carrier everywhere we go.

• How do you handle popping ears on the plane when taking off and landing?
• How do you deal with bottles?

I was so worried about popping ears on our first flight, but as long as your baby is sucking on something (a pacifier, a bottle or breastfeeding) it shouldn't be a big issue. (He's never cried due to ear pressure on a flight, though if he was sick I expect this would be more problematic.) As for bottles we just ask for hot water from the stewardess, and dilute with room temp bottled water to reach the right temperature. Now that he's eating solids we bring a few snacks as well to ensure we can feed him when we want to as well.

• Are there a lot of places that are baby friendly at the destinations you've been to so far?
• Is he allowed everywhere? Restaurants? Tried a sitter?

In my experience European destinations (hotels, restaurants etc) are much more welcoming to children than their American counterparts. Certainly there are some hotels that are adults only (Le Sirenuse, for example) but more often than not children have been welcome everywhere we wanted to go. I also believe there's a way to enjoy almost any destination as a family, if you're willing to adapt your expectations a bit.

• How has he adjusted to the time difference?
• How to deal with time change?

We usually start moving our son's bedtime by 30 minutes a day before leaving on a trip (usually 3-4 days before departure), with the hope of getting him halfway adjusted to his new time zone before we even leave. Perhaps even more importantly, pick a flight that will allow your baby to fall sleep during the new time zone's "night" while flying. On our trip to Austria and Switzerland, we had a 4pm departure that meant he could fall sleep around 6ish (after the meal service was done) which was midnight in Austria, he then was able to sleep the remaining 5.5 hours before landing at 6AM in our destination time zone. There was another flight option at 8pm, but the clatter of dinner service and the bright airplane lights would have likely kept him up until 10 pm, which would have been moving his bedtime in the wrong direction. (Since 10pm ET is 4AM in Austria this time of year.)

• Did you bring a pack and play or other portable crib? If not what is baby's sleeping situation?
• I'm guessing he's a pretty good sleeper? What has been helpful for naps and bedtime?

We always contact the hotel before booking to ensure they have a travel crib, then we bring familiar comforts like his sleep sack, favorite stuffed bear and white noise to create a cozy environment. We generally try to book hotel rooms with a separate space for him to sleep/nap, whether that's a big closet, the bathroom or a separate sitting area/bedroom. I've only been to one hotel that welcomed children but didn't provide a pack 'n play/crib, and that happened to be in the US and we were driving so we just brought our own! When our son was 4 months old we had a brief spell where he was sleeping in bed between us, and he did that while we were in Italy/France even though the hotels all provided cribs. (We always had hotels set up a crib even if he wasn't going to sleep in it, as a safe confined spot for him to play.) The one thing that is very important is having a very dark place for him to sleep, and that can be difficult to ensure with 100% certainty.

When in a destination that requires a bit of driving between sights, we try to time the drives with his naps since he naps well in the car. This worked especially well in the Cotswolds where everything seems to be a 30 minute drive from the hotel, and we'd just sit in the car when we arrived if he needed to nap for longer.

• How do you swing nice dinners out? Our babe is fussy which is an added challenge.
• How do you keep an infant calm while dining at a restaurant?

Rule #1 for enjoyable dinners out is make sure your baby is well fed! When our son was tiny, this meant feeding him before we arrived and potentially timing a meal with one of his naps so he'd just sleep in our arms while we ate. Once he started eating solids, it meant booking early dinners and getting something for him to snack on right when we sat down to keep him occupied. He wants to eat exactly what we're eating and never really enjoyed things like purees, so he enjoys spending time at the table and trying new things. I believe part of this was just because we started exposing him to restaurants quite early on, and many of you shared that exposing your babies to restaurants early on paid off as they grew up as well. There have been a few restaurant experiences that have been rough, but on the whole he's been a great dining companion!

This trip to the Alps was our first time using a nanny. On most of our travels, we didn't bring help and just involved our son in any and everything we did (museums, walks, restaurants, etc.) but with skiing on the agenda that wasn't possible for this trip. Our hotel (Post Lech) connected us with a trusted local nanny agency called Googie's, and we hired help for the days that we skied. We arranged to meet our nanny, Lisa, at breakfast on the first morning to get to know her and instantly loved her. She had 14 years of experience with children, instantly made a lovely connection with our little boy and had great executive skills. She proactively reported on how he ate/slept (with photos) and shared updates on their daily activities such as a walk through town and visiting local alpacas. :)

We didn't bring our stroller on this trip since we needed something more rugged for the snowy sidewalks, but we were able to rent one with a cozy zip-in sack through Googie's. (The agency also has a play room in town that nannies can bring kids to play in!) Additionally, our nanny had worked in Lech for several seasons and texted us a bunch of recommendations for restaurants on the slopes. I casually mentioned I forgot to pack a swimsuit, and she texted me photos of swim options at a local store after she left the first day! We were super impressed with her and the whole experience and would definitely hire Lisa and work with this agency again!

• Also will you link any of his outfits? They are so cute!!
• Please share his outfit details with us?

Will do a full blog post on my favorite baby boy clothing brands! Stay tuned...