First time holiday with a 3month old baby - Please share your wisdom!

[slickalick]

Hi there,

We are first time parents travelling with our baby girl for the first time on Holiday. We decided to go for a quick 5 day visit to Singapore "in preparation" for a much longer and farther holiday later on in the year.

As it's our first trip abroad with our baby, there are a couple of things that we still haven't figured out yet and would appreciate your collective wisdom...

1) Sterilizing bottles - Our bb is on a mix of both expressed milk and formula - how does one go about sterilizing bottles at the hotel. We're staying at the Four Seasons so i imagine they'd be pretty accommodating about these things. Use the kettle in the room?! or is it out of order to ask Room Service to take them down to the kitchen and sterilize in boiling water?

2) On the plane - Our baby only sleeps when swaddled or while breastfeeding. We've been recommended to have the baby feed whilst taking off and whilst landing so as to equalize pressure in the ears. Other's have said the best thing to do is to put the baby to sleep before getting on the flight (she can usually sleep for 4 hours - the length of the flight) - what works best in your experience?

Any other advice you can share on travelling with young baby would be much appreciated! Thank You!!

[Eclipsepearl]

Hi and welcome,

I actually put together some non-commercial flying tips;
http://flyingwithchildren1.blogspot.com
There is a section on bottle feeding on an airplane.

I recommend the bottles with disposable liners. I'm not sure if you can find them in HK but it's hard to believe anything isn't available there! (I used to live in North Point). That way, you don't have to clean whole bottles either on an airplane or in the hotel.

Please ask your doctor if it's really that necessary to sterlize bottles for a 3 month old. Most peds consider this to be an unnecessary task. If he says yes, for whatever reason, sterlization (sp?) tablets are definitely the way to go. All you need to do is ask the kitchen for a bowl and you're set to go.

Be sure that she's used a room-temperature bottle before leaving since warming them is also unnecessary health-wise.

It's actually a myth that babies have to suck on take-off and landing. She should be securely strapped into her car seat during those times. Your doctor probably told you not to feed unless she's in your arms. Even if you are saving money by putting her in your lap, please don't unnecessarily wake her to do this.

Before flying, schedule a well baby apt. and have the doctor check her ears and make sure she doesn't have any infection or blockage. Helathy ears can handle pressurization changes. The AAP recommends that babies simply be awake, not on landing but the initial descent, about an hour before landing. As a Flight Attendant, I can confirm that is when people of any age would have ear issues. Offer a bottle if she'll take it but just moving her head, babbling, etc. will equalize the pressure. Take off is an easier adjustment.

Just let your baby sleep and feed as needed. I've never heard of getting a baby to sleep before a flight. I don't know how you'd keep her asleep during boarding! S'pore is a short flight for you so just play it by ear.

Have a good flight!

[Cellisttoo]

If you put your baby in a car seat you could get them asleep and then take them aboard and strap them in without disturbing them. This would require the purchase of a seat. I really like traveling with the baby b'air when my child was this age, in addition to the car seat (or instead of it if you really can't afford a seat for your baby). That way if my daughter needed to be held, I could pick her up know that she wasn't going to be tossed around in any turbulence.

With a 3 month old, you should also consider calling the airline to see if you can reserve a bassinent for your tyke. This needs to be done well ahead of time as you can only use these in bulkhead seats- which can be hard to get. U.S. airlines only allow use of the bassinet if the fasten seat belt sign is off. For our trip from HNL to MSP (a 9 hour flight) the seat belt sign was ON the entire flight and we were unable to use it. Non U.S. airlines, such as Malaysia are less strict about this. Find out before you take off, as you don't want to have to wake a sleeping baby to take them out!!

EclipsePearl has strong feelings about not feeding during take off and landing. This is probably because as a flight attendant she knows what can happen if a child isn't securely restrained. She has a lot of really good advice, as an experienced professional and I appreciate her contributions to this forum. Our pediatrician gave us the opposite advice- that we should feed on take off and landing. We found that on descent if she stated to cry that sucking really did help. You might be able to use a paci as well. You can play it by "ear" and use this technique if you run into problems-which would mean that you would want to have a bottle ready just in case. Pay attention to the pressure changes in your own ears, to get an idea of when this might be a factor. You won't be able to get up and make a bottle once the descent has begun.

You had asked for general advice. A few other things that I would throw in:

• bring several changes of clothes in case of accidents- I learned this the hard way on the same trip to HNL
• Bring some toys and books- even though your child is young, they still enjoy stimulation and activity and get bored looking at the same things
• Bring more diapers than you think you can use
• Bring baby tylenol, dosing instructions, a thermometer, etc (you don't want to have to run around Singapore trying to find them and they won't have them on the plane if needed)
• On our recent trip to Singapore with an 18 month old we found that a clip on fan was helpful on the stroller
• Don't plan to just go, go, go like you did pre-child. Things take longer.
• At that age, we had a stroller with a bassinent. We brought that along with us and the baby slept there.
• Have fun- our child LOVED (and still really does) going on the airplane. She liked looking at people and spending time with Mom and Dad

[davidjb]

Originally Posted by slickalick

Hi there,

We are first time parents travelling with our baby girl for the first time on Holiday. We decided to go for a quick 5 day visit to Singapore "in preparation" for a much longer and farther holiday later on in the year.

As it's our first trip abroad with our baby, there are a couple of things that we still haven't figured out yet and would appreciate your collective wisdom...

1) Sterilizing bottles - Our bb is on a mix of both expressed milk and formula - how does one go about sterilizing bottles at the hotel. We're staying at the Four Seasons so i imagine they'd be pretty accommodating about these things. Use the kettle in the room?! or is it out of order to ask Room Service to take them down to the kitchen and sterilize in boiling water?

2) On the plane - Our baby only sleeps when swaddled or while breastfeeding. We've been recommended to have the baby feed whilst taking off and whilst landing so as to equalize pressure in the ears. Other's have said the best thing to do is to put the baby to sleep before getting on the flight (she can usually sleep for 4 hours - the length of the flight) - what works best in your experience?

Any other advice you can share on travelling with young baby would be much appreciated! Thank You!!

You don't need to sterlise the bottles, just wash them in hot water.

Use the coffee maker to get boiling water for the formulae (obviously without the coffee).

If you can get her to sleep, that is best. make sure she's sucking on a dummy/bottle/being fed when landing or taking off, to help equalise the pressure on the ears.

If you can afford it, travel in at least premium economy, you'll get far better service, and they'll do things like give you a meal while your partner looks after the baby, and then will get your partner a meal separately later on when you've finished eating.

Relax - get to the airport with plenty of spare time. If you relax, then your daughter will pick up on that and be relaxed as well. If you're stressed, she'll also pick up on that, and make the flight hell for you. If she kicks up a fuss on takeoff, landing, then be prepared to sing songs to her (even if you do feel stupid doing it)

I've travelled with an infant on over 40 flights (she's not yet 2), so it's doable. It gets harder when they start to walk, as they want to explore all over the aircraft.