Travel 101

I thought I would put down some of the things that I learned while we took this trip to California.  I don't plan to fly so far with one so little again but just in case I want to have my notes down so that I don't forget!  And maybe they can help you also!  This list will be a summary of things I read elsewhere (Magnolias, Marriage, and Manhattan and We Just Got Back amongst others). 

1. Take more diapers than you think you will need.
One person said take 1 for every hour that you plan to be gone starting from when you leave your house until when you get to your hotel plus a few hours in case of delay's.  I definitely didn't use this many diapers but you would always rather have too many rather than too few!  The same goes for wipes!

2. Find a grocery store/drugstore where you're going and buy as much as you can there.
Packing with a child increases your load tenfold.  That's why you want to buy things like diapers, wipes, baby food, etc where you're going instead of packing it.  I guess this wouldn't really apply if you're going out of the country but if you're staying in the country there should be some type of store nearby where you're staying where you can purchase these things.  We even bought an umbrella stroller at Target and then donated it to the childcare center at the hotel before we left.  We did this with shampoo, toothpaste, etc also to save room on packing.

3. Feed baby food that's light colored (i.e. apples, pears) since they're the least messy.

4. Fold up paper towels and extra plastic baggies and stick them in your carry on to clean your baby's faace or contain a dirty diaper if you aren't right next to a trash can.

5. Get a GoGo Kidz TravelMate!
This is a great product that is so easy to use and so convienent.  It attaches to your child's car seat so that you can take it through the airport like a stroller.  We were thankful to be able to borrow a friend's (Thanks Brandi and John!) but it would definitely be a purchase that we would make if we needed to.  This also allowed us to have Charlotte's own car seat in the rental car which gave me an additional feeling of safety because we knew for sure that the car seat was installed correctly.

6. Use a baby carrier.
We found that Charlotte napped a lot better when she was in the Baby Bjorn as opposed to when I was just holding her.  I think it helps the babies feel more secure.  We don't use a carrier at home but have used a sling before for football games earlier in the season.  I was really impressed with the Baby Bjorn and how easy it was to get Charlotte in and out of it.  It was also pretty comfortable for me.  It did start to hurt my back after wearing it for about 6 hours at the football game but I think that long of a length of wearing it without a break would make my back hurt no matter what type of carrier we were using!

7. Take a sheet for the hotel crib with you along with anything else to make your baby feel more like they're at home.
This way your baby is sleeping on a sheet that smells like home (and you know that it's clean).  Make sure that it's a bright color or something other than white so that the hotel staff doesn't accidentally take it.  It also came in handy that Charlotte sleeps with a sound machine on this trip.  Since we were able to bring a sound machine with us her environment was as close to her own room as we could get without having her own bed!

8. Forget a schedule on travel days and do whatever you need to do to have a peaceful trip.
I had read a lot about making sure to have your baby drink something during ascent and descent since they don't know how to clear their ear pressure yet.  So I worked really hard to do that on Monday including waking up Charlotte once.  On Saturday when Charlotte fell asleep 20 minutes before takeoff we figured since she never showed any impacts of the pressure change on Monday that we wouldn't wake her up.  She ended up sleeping right through the takeoff and through half of the flight!  I feel like it's also ok to increase the number of feedings or have a supplemental bottle of juice or water to give them also in case they need to be calmed down during the flight.  And we found that feeding puffs was always a sure-fire way to calm Charlotte down!

Basically the most important thing is to do what works for your family.  I had read to board the plane last instead of first like they offer for families, but for us it worked to get on first because watching all of the other people get on the plane kept Charlotte occupied better than sitting in the terminal.  I'm sure when she's older that won't be the case but we did what worked best for us.  I found that Charlotte adapted pretty well to whatever we threw at her.  Have faith that your baby will survive and so will you!