Travel with a Little One, Under One
- Brittni
- Mar 10, 2024
- 6 min read
We recently embarked on our first big trip with our (now) 9-month-old peanut. We flew from Boston to San Diego to do some sightseeing and visit family. At first, when planning this trip, I was terrified of flying with such a small and dependent tiny human.
Now we are very seasoned travelers my husband and I; having flown all over the country and out of the country a few times, but we were very unsure of how this flight would go. So, we did what every stressed-out parent would do and googled “tips and tricks with flying with a baby”. There were a lot of good tips and just as many tips or things that were very much only in an influencer's budget, that were not in our budget. Here is what we learned from our travel experience with a little one under one.
First, you’ll read a lot of tips about long flights or long distances telling you to fly direct when possible. Now that works for a lot of babies that are great sleepers and will sleep for most of the flight. Our little one is not that type of baby. While she will sleep great in her crib or pack-and-play, she is not a great “on-the-go” sleeper. This is why we decided to have one layover between Boston and San Diego. If you have a very active and even mobile little one, I greatly recommend having a layover to have them, get the wiggles out! A layover with at least 2 hours is going to be the most ideal cause it allows you to deboard, gather any gate-checked items, and do anything else in the airport to not rush to your next gate. We used this time to eat, grab ccaffeineaffine, feed the little one (if you’re nursing there a typically nursing rooms and we LOVED using them), repack the bags if needed, and do diaper changes/bathroom breaks.
Next, we got a YouTube Premium membership just for the trip. Our little one is soothed and quieted by Ms. Racheal, Hey Bear, and Simple Songs; so we knew it was a requirement to have her favorite videos downloaded BEFORE the flight. With YouTube Premium you can download videos to watch while the internet isn’t available. Now we only needed this feature for our trip (a future trips) so we cancelled the subscription when we got home, as it can be quite costly monthly.
For the trip though it was well worth the one-month fee of $13.99.
This same tip can go for long car rides as well! Note: On planes, they will ask you to turn the volume off if you are not using headphones. They do make headphones for little ones that are like a headband if your peanut will keep them on, ours would rip them right off her head. All this to say, test to see if your little one will watch the videos without the sound on before traveling, luckily our peanut would watch the videos without sound.
On the topic of keeping the little ones entertained, bring your little ones' favorite HARD or WASHABLE toys. Let's be honest planes and babies/kids are gross. There are germs everywhere and the littles put EVERYTHING in their mouth. We brought a few spinner toys that suctioned to the window, some teething toys, some indestructible books (highly recommend), and her favorite stuffie. Our little one is not as interested in “busy books” but I saw a few little ones while traveling loving theirs. If bringing smaller items, like teething toys, do not skip the teethers! Even if they don’t find throwing/dropping things funny like ours does, they will eventually drop the toys and the teether just helps them not get lost or hit the ground. Now put the toys in their own bag that either attaches to your diaper bag or fits in it. You’ll want to be able to easily grab the toys. When you get home, throw all the toys in the washer, they will need a good clean.
Now comes the least favorite part or the part everyone dreads, changing diapers. I highly, and I cannot stress this enough, highly recommend getting a travel diaper changing pad that holds all your changing things. You are not going to want to bring the entire diaper bag/backpack with you to the bathroom. We have the Skiphop changing pad and loved it, but there are a whole bunch of different ones that may fit your needs better! In our changing pack, we had wipes, 6-7 diapers (2-3 were overnight diapers), travel-size rash cream and bumco spatula, and the ubbi diaper sacks.
TIP: Always have diaper sacks, the flight attendants will NOT let you just toss the dirty diapers in the bathroom trash and they will not let you toss it in the regular trash without a bag. They will supply you one but it’s easier just to have your small bags, as the one they’d give you is a large garbage bag. These diaper sacks also come in handy in the event of a blowout, it provides a spot to put the soiled clothes.
Changing a diaper on an airplane, in a tiny airplane bathroom is not ideal. Having the changing table pulled down when you first enter the bathroom, otherwise, you’re trying to move around in a tiny closet size room to get everything set up and change the little one’s diaper.
Now on to feeding! Our little one is breastfed so we had a few challenges to figure out. One of them is feeding in public. I am not concerned about feeding my little one in public without a cover it’s easier for me. However, we have a very distracted eater and she will not eat with a cover on or in busy areas when there is a lot to see. We frequently sought out the nursing/lactation room throughout the airport (typically near the restroom locations) as it provided a quiet, cleaner, comfortable space to feed her without distractions, but that only takes care of when in the airport. While on the airplane I brought an inflatable nursing pillow (our is the mybreastfrend) to allow for a more comfortable way to feed the peanut while crammed into an airplane seat.
We still brought my pump and one bottle just in case she did not want to nurse. For those that use formula, there are LOTS of travel containers for portioned formula, bottle heating gadgets, and travel bottle cleaning kits. There are lots of resources out there that can help with tips for formula mamas and babies! We just can’t provide insight as it’s not our feeding method at this time.
Travel cannot happen without the devices needed to transport the baby! We did a lot of searching for a travel stroller that was affordable, lightweight, and compact enough to travel with. We came to purchase the Jeep Powerglide+, now this is an “umbrella stroller” so it doesn’t pack down to a carry-on size like other travel strollers. This stroller just happened to be budget friendly and have the needed specs like being able to lay back and have an extended sun visor since we were going to sunny San Diego.
If you have a larger budget there was a stroller that I saw many times while traveling, it was the Bugaboo Butterfly. This stroller fits in the overhead bin, is lightweight, and folds with one hand in a second. Now if you have the $450+ to spend on a stroller this would be our recommendation.
If you are traveling and bringing a stroller and/or car seat get travel bags for BOTH! We got the Gorilla Grip bag for the car seat and something similar for the stroller. Both bags pack into handheld attached bags and are sturdy for travel. The stroller one just provided extra protection from the elements when gate checking but the car seat bag allowed us to also shove in her travel high chair and extra packs of diapers and wipes!
Next up we wanted to share some other tips that don’t need much of an explanation:
Get TSA Pre-Check: makes security smoother for all involved
Dress light, this includes the little one: having a little one on your lap (if they’re a lap infant) can make you both overheat
Feed/Nurse during take-off and landing: if they won’t have milk/formula bring little snacks from them to suck on to help with the ear pressure
Bring an external battery: watching all the videos will KILL your battery
The last big thing we learned was having the option to both wear the little one and put them in the stroller. Wearing the peanut in the baby carrier was a great way to bring her on and off the plane, rock her to sleep, and get through security. However, once we were in the airport it was nice to have the stroller to put her down to eat, use the bathroom, and give my back a break.
We are excited to continue to fly with our little one as it is something my husband and I have always loved before having kids and even before meeting. I am sure there will be updates to this post as we travel more and as the little one gets older, stay tuned.
I gathered a lot of the items I mentioned and posted here to the Momming Like Millennials Amazon, list titles Flying with Littles.
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