Tips and Tricks: Long Haul Travel with a Baby
Its July which means it was one year ago this month that we did our first long haul flight as a family of 3. Long haul travel with a baby can be intimidating but it is much easier than you think!
As expats, long flights are just a fact of life. Of course, none of us are doing this at the moment but I figured I would share these tips while I’m spending most of my day thinking about when we can take flight again. We did our first long haul flight, 18 hours and 30 minutes non-stop Singapore to New York, when Charlie was 4 months old. Charlie’s second long haul trip was 28 hours of travel, Singapore to Salt Lake City with a stopover in San Francisco. I did that one solo and I have learned some things. So how did we survive?
Here are my tips and tricks:
Babies are way more resilient than we realize. They adapt so well as long as they feel love, comfort and calm
Book nighttime flights so baby falls asleep after take off. Everyone is more likely to get a nice chunk of sleep this way. I made the mistake of doing a daytime flight when I did the solo trip. Charlie slept 8 of the 28 hours and I slept 1… yes, 1 hour in 28 hours of solo travel with a 6 month old and a stopover. Do the nighttime flight.
Feeding for take off and landing helps their ears adjust to the pressure in the cabin. It doesn’t matter if it’s boob or bottle, the sucking helps pop the ears.
Make sure your baby is ticketed. We have found that babies are not, in fact, free but their ticket cost is a small percentage of your full fare. We thought we had “ticketed” Charlie for our first trip to New York but we had only added his name to my reservation. You can imagine our surprise when we showed up to check in and they said Charlie didn’t have a ticket! It was all resolved but it did mean we were running from security to catch the flight.
Call ahead and reserve the bassinet. Even if your baby doesn’t sleep in it, the extra legroom for all your baby supplies and the extra storage helps make the trip easy. The bassinet also serves as a great place for diaper changes!
Pack individual gallon ziplock bags with a diaper, incontinence pad (acts as a changing table/barrier), outfit change and extra ziplock bag. I packed 6 for our first trip! This way you can just grab a bag instead of digging for each thing. You also have a ziplock for the dirty diaper to contain the smell and a ziplock for a dirty outfit if needed. I packed a separate ziplock with our wipes and doTERRA diaper cream so I just had to grab that as well.
Bring toys - distraction is the name of the game! Just minimize the squeaks. Your neighbors will thank you, which leads me to the next tip.
Make friends with the people around you. People are usually more than happy to help as long as you ask. This was particularly helpful when I was traveling solo to Salt Lake City!
Get your baby into the sun once you reach your destination. This helps their body’s circadian rhythm match up with the new time zone. It may take a few days but exposure to sunshine during the day and very dim lights at night will help you on the way.
Bring a travel cot your baby is used to. Charlie slept in his Baby Bjorn Travel Cot since birth because we knew he would be doing a lot of travel. This has meant he feels right at home and safe wherever he may be and sleep while traveling has never been an issue!
A travel cot, stroller bag and car seat bag are free checked bags for baby for most airlines. And it doesn’t matter how much they weigh! You can stuff them full of clothes and necessities and skip extra baggage charges. This is extra helpful as an expat because we always bring a ton of goodies back to Singapore when we fly back from the States!
And now it’s my turn to ask for tips - what do you do with a toddler for 24+ hours of travel… It will happen eventually, right?
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