3 key challenges for traveling with a baby (hopefully) explained!

It’s that time of the year when everyone is on holiday. I love watching the tourists in Singapore, and am sometimes a bit jealous, with their cameras and strollers while I hurry to grab lunch in the middle of the work day. We thought we would write this piece to hopefully help a few parents out there who are all set to spend the holidays on the road with their baby.

A few things stand out as particularly challenging when you are traveling with a baby –

1) the mode of travel itself. Planes, trains etc that make for cramped uncomfortable environments for a baby

2) feeding & changing the baby while on the go and

3) putting the baby to sleep for their innumerable naps while outside.

We feel like if you have the above 3 things worked out then travel with a baby can be very straightforward. In this piece, we will talk through our strategy for each of these things and how it evolved over time in the hope that it is useful for the other travellers out there!

Mode of Transport

Our initial plan was to choose destinations that make it easy to rent and drive around a car. This is what we first did in Sri Lanka and Oman and we had a car at our disposal the entire time we were there. The idea was that having a car would allow us to set our own pace. It would also mean that we had some private space to change and feed Nadiya whenever we needed to. That cars provided a somewhat sound proof environment in the event that she threw a fit was an added benefit!

While not taking away from the above listed benefits, we soon came to realise that cars came with their own unique set of challenges. Unless you have a baby who will fall asleep unassisted in the car seat (which is a legal requirement in many countries), naps on-the-go became very difficult to achieve. Nadiya did not do very well in car seats when she was awake either, so she spent much of her time of Nisha’s lap in the back seat -the safety aspect of which is questionable. While we ended up breastfeeding her in a moving car on several occasions we would not recommend doing that, which means accounting for several stops. And finally, there is the stress that comes with driving – sometimes on the side of road that you are not accustomed to – if you have a bawling baby in the back seat.

All in all, while we really enjoyed our time in Sri Lanka and especially Oman, and the car did get us to some unforgettable sights, we were pretty sure after this leg that we would want to minimise time spent in a car for the rest of the trip.

Much has been written about flying on planes with a baby, so we will keep this section short. Not surprisingly we found flights to be the hardest modes of transport. We recommend keeping flights as short as possible (most flights on our trip were under 4 hours long) and avoiding stop overs. If you are a breastfeeding mum, it is recommended that you feed your baby during take-off and landing to help your baby equalise ear pressure.  However, doing so while keeping both your and the infant seat belt on does require some acrobatics. So, if you are still new to breastfeeding and/or have some trouble getting your baby to latch, it would probably be best to bring a couple of bottles of expressed milk onto the plane. Another issue on planes was getting Nadiya to nap – while breastfeeding to sleep did the trick most of the time there were several occasions when it didn’t. Rocking or walking your baby to sleep is no easy task in that cramped environment and we have no easy solution for this ☹ Towards the end of the trip, Nadiya had pretty much worked out how to fall asleep on her own. This meant that we could just put her in the bassinet when it was nap time and hope the seat belt sign didn’t come on! All in all, we did not really enjoy being on planes with Nadiya and planned our trip in a way that flight time would be kept at the bare minimum.

Trains were our best friend on this trip. They were spacious and provided for enough standing/walking room. When we needed to get Nadiya to nap, one of us put her into our baby carrier and walked the carriage a couple of times and that seemed to do the trick. There were usually a few empty rows which we used to change Nadiya’s diaper when we needed to. Nadiya also seemed very content with sitting on one of our laps and staring out the window. We truly enjoyed our train journeys and as a mode of transport we would recommend with young babies.

Feeding/changing Nadiya on the go

We were lucky that Nadiya was exclusively breastfed at the time we went on this trip. Nisha did carry all her breast pumping equipment but didn’t use it a single time in 2 months. We found that it was much more effort to pump, feed and sterilise when on the move when compared to direct latching. This also meant that Nisha alternated between her 8 nursing tops for the entire duration of the trip – so this may not be the best solution for the fashion conscious! Nisha was quite apprehensive about being able to feed Nadiya on the go at the start of the trip – in terms of being able to find nursing rooms/a quiet corner etc. But at the end of the 2 months, she had only ever used a nursing room once (at the Dubai mall) and all other feeds were done in the open at restaurants, cars, street benches, parks and once on the pavement outside a bar in San Sebastian! You will find that there is always a spot within a few minutes reach when your baby demands food – and your standards start to drop pretty fast! Overall feeding Nadiya turned out to be a non-event and you will be surprised at how considerate people around you can be.

Changing her was even less of a hassle. We once changed her on her stroller in the middle of Krakow square with thousands of tourists milling past us, none of who seemed to care. The stroller was our go-to spot for changing. We just placed a disposable diaper pad on the stroller and we had ourselves a changing station that we could use anywhere.

Putting Nadiya to sleep

Sleep – and the lack of it for Nadiya and us – was the most challenging aspect of our trip. At this stage Nadiya was napping for a maximum of 30-40 mins and needed to nap 4-6 times a day. The earlier days on our trip were particularly challenging as one of us needed to rock her for 15-20 minutes each time. We found that the least painful way to do this (especially when on the move) is to put her into the baby carrier. When we were out, Nadiya would typically sit in her stroller till she was sleepy and then one of us would put her into our carrier and we would continue. She would typically fall asleep soon after in the carrier which meant that we could either continue exploring the city by foot or stop to grab a bite (we both got very adept at eating while we had her in the carrier).

Towards the end of the trip Nadiya surprised us by being able to fall asleep more independently. If you have a baby who can do this, then travel becomes infinitely easier. We found that she could fall asleep unassisted in the stroller and stay asleep while we walked around. Alternatively, if we were at a restaurant and it was time for her to take a nap, we could just put her in the stroller next to our table and she would fall asleep. This also made flights easier when we had access to a bassinet seat as she was happy to take her naps in the bassinet.

If you have a baby who needs your help to sleep then we would highly recommend bringing a baby carrier on your travels. If your baby can fall asleep independently then try to see if you can do a few naps using the stroller as the bed before you leave home. If all else fails and you have an older baby who needs to sleep less often, you can always make your way back to the hotel for the naps.

When we started this trip, we were very new to parenting and neither of us had much experience with babies and how to care for them. The 3 aspects that we wrote about in this blog is what worried us the most about traveling. But babies can really surprise you in how well they adapt! And as parents we adapted too. As was Ajay’s mantra during this trip, “no guts, no glory!”