TRAVEL TIPS FOR FLYING WITH A BABY

We’ve officially flown 3 times with Lily. She’s already 8 months old so to some of you, we may seem like amateurs. After all, you’ve already flown with your 3 month old 12 times. But for those who haven’t yet flown with their babe, I feel like we’ve learnt enough to share some nuggets of wisdom and tricks that we picked up over these 3 flights.

For things to pack in your carry on, getting to and from the airport, and a deeper dive into our awful experince of our first 2 flights where Lily screamed the entire time…watch this video:

Since filming this video, we have flown one more time and actually had an amazing experience. I will say that 80% of that has to do with things out of our control, which worked in our favour: there were no delays, the plane was basically empty so tons of space to walk around and get comfy, we didn’t check bags so there was no waiting time and the weather was great in both Toronto and Miami so it just made the entire travel day a breeze. Again…things out of our control.

But the other 20% I would say came from our previous experience and being prepared. Although I still believe there is no perfect time to book a flight as it can always be delayed, we did take an earlier flight than last time and I think it helped. It gives them less time to be awake and get cranky and more time to make up for the lack of sleep once you arrive at your destination.

In terms of sleep, I paid attention to her wake windows and once we hit 3 hours, I purposely tried to get her to sleep. I knew she would never just fall asleep on me peacefully sitting in a seat so I put her in the carrier facing forward, put her hood from her sweatshirt over her eyes to make it dark and played white noise from my phone. After walking around for a few minutes, she fell asleep. So I continued walking until she woke up. I did this at the airport and on the plane and both times she slept for 35 minutes. Obviously she naps longer at home but this still counted as a good enough nap to me and I started her wake windows from when she woke up from each nap.

During her awake time, I didn’t try and snuggle with her and hope she just falls asleep on me like last time. We spent the whole time playing with her and giving her small snacks like Baby Mum Mum crackers to keep her busy. These crackers also worked like a dream in the car ride to the condo and kept her so happy. Seriously a life saver!!

We all know the old trick in the book to help their ears during take off and landing…feed them. But last time, we screwed up and she saw us make her bottle. She freaked out so we had to give it to her right away and by the time the plane was moving, she had finished it so we weren’t able to help her ears. This time, we discretely made the bottle and only gave it to her while we were actually taking off.

In terms of the formula, we packed 2 bottles in the carry on and a container of powder formula. We then purchased a big bottle of room temperature water once we were past security and prepared the bottle with that water.

The last things we did differently is I didn’t try and change her PEE diaper on the plane. Of course if she pooped I would have (another thing out of our control). But last time I changed her pee diaper on the plane, just because I thought maybe she would calm down if she was dry and it made things worse. (She hates getting changed right now and screams every time so if this your baby too, this tip is for you). We only changed her right before we got on the plane and this just helped keep her mood up and she stayed happy.

So those are just a few little changes we made thanks to our previous flying experience. Like I said, so much is out of our control and I still stand by everything I said in the video, which is JUST RELAX. I was definitely mentally prepared for another nightmare experience. We were lucky with the flying circumstances this time around but either way, I will use the little hacks for sleeps and snacks next time too and hope for the best!