How To Travel With Toddler In A Plane
Introduction
How To Travel With Toddler In A Plane
Today we will discuss on everything you need to know about How To Travel With Toddler In A Plane in simple and easy to follow guide.
Did you know that toddler ears hurt less if you breast feed during take off and landing?
Today I’m going to talk to you about how to travel with a toddler on a plane in an international and local connection. Me and my wife recently had to travel between Greece and the US with a connecting flight to Germany with our two children aged 5 months old and 3 years old.
There’s was a bunch of lessons learned here that we will cover in this article:
- How to pack your carry on for toddlers
- How to schedule your flights
- How to keep your kids entertained in-flight
- How to go through security
Since one of our flights was super long (9hrs+) going over the atlantic we had to come prepared and keep ourselves at the same time sane. As a note I’m personally not a good traveller myself so it was even harder for me. To make things worst we all got a cold on the way to Florida so we had to deal with that too. Keep reading and I’ll tell you all about our adventures on what we did right and where we failed so you can avoid this in your future travels.
How To Pack
How To Pack
In this part I’m going to tell you how to packer your carry-ons and your checked-in luggage. I’m not going to go over your belongings rather the things you should have with you for the kids when traveling abroad.
How To Pack Your Carry On
When you are packing your carry on bag for your toddler you need to keep in mind two main things:
- Be light
- Include the essentials
Now lets go a little more in depth on trying to understand what including the essentials means and why you may not always be able to be super light as if you were traveling alone. Have all your items easily accessible in your bag so you can pass them through security without too much trouble.
The main things you need to have with you are the following:
- Dipers
- Diper cream
- 2 Bottles of pre-made baby food or milk if you are not breast feeding, if you are then you need more based on the hours. Add 2 extra’s in case something happens.
- Teething toys if the teething period has started (this is a savior)
- Some entertainment for you either a book or a tablet (you need this to stay to remain pre-occupied)
- A form of pain killer if the toddler is over 4 months old (he may be teething bad)
- Some toddler safe gummies for landing
- An extra change of clothes for you and him, it’s important you get one for yourself in case he throws up or an accident happens when you change him. We learned this the hard way so be prepared!
- A stroller (the airline takes you this all the way to your plane and lets you pick it up when you land)
- Get one of those straps that allow you to wear the child in flight and whenever he fusses and doesn’t want to be in the stroller. In this instance instead of holding your carry on bags just put those in the stroller and hold him instead.
Now lets be honest out of the list above we failed to get some of the items and were still able to get by, this however does not mean you may want to struggle so if your can carry it be prepared.
How To Pack Your Checked In Bags
For your checked in bags go ahead and pack all the things you usually would but also for your toddler you would need to take some things that may not be available abroad such as:
- Dipers (especially if your child is allergic and you do not want to experiment with new brands)
- Diper cream
- Bottle milk extras (for the first few days until you find formula). Ignore this if you are breast feeding
- Medication, anything the doctor has given you for your child and also add to it an extra bottle of pain killers
- Multiple change of clothes as you may not get easy access to a laundry when you arrive at your destination
How To Book Your Flights
How To Book Your Flights
Booking your flights is a very important aspect to this process, especially if you need to do a connection. The biggest mistake we did was book our connection very close (1hr) and we barely made it to our gate both of the times. If there’s options available please allow to yourself at least 2hrs I’d say 3hrs is ideal so you can have ample of time to do the following in your connection:
- Change him to a fresh set of clothes if needed
- Change Diper
- Refresh yourself
- Get something to eat
- Have enough time to check in immigrations and customs if needed
- If they don’t give you priority have time to go through long queues of people
- Have sufficient time for the airline to take out your stroller when you land
If you do not have a connection there’s still a few things you need to do that will greatly help you out in your journey:
- Book your flight late in the evening when your child usually sleeps, this will help you a lot
- Ask the airline to provide you with a basinet so the baby can sleep there without you holding him
- Try to get an isle seat so you can enter and leave easily without disturbing everyone else. Most airlines will honor this for you especially if you are traveling alone
How To Cope During The Flight
How To Cope During The Flight
As you know your mental health is as important as caring for your child. If you are not well then the child will suffer too so I think it’s important to go over some things that you need to do while flying to stay healthy and well.
- Make sure you hydrate a lot so buy a big bottle of water with you before you go on board. Some airlines charge for water and others don’t bring it out as frequently. This is important especially if you are breast feeding your child as water helps with milk production
- Take some vitamin supplements before and during your flight, this will help your immunity as airports especially now that Covid is around are full of viruses and your chances of contracting one are increased since you come into contact with a lot of people.
- Take a pain killer that’s safe if you are breast feeding. This can be savior if you get a headache or feeling unwell this will greatly help you cope with your child on board.
- Try to relax and take a lot of deep breaths during the flight. It’s important you stay relaxed and keep your breathing well filling your lungs with oxygen.
- Stretch and don’t be afraid to get up and walk around. Besides your mental health your physical health is important too. Stretching and walking takes away the pressure from sitting on your joints and muscles and also helps circulate your blood better and gives your body a change of scenery too.
- Watch movies or read a book whenever you can.
- Sleep whenever your baby sleeps, this is very important if you want to get some rest your only window to sleep is when the baby sleeps.
- Don’t be afraid to engage into conversations to spend some time with other passengers.
- Don’t be afraid to ask air hostess whatever you need. They will prioritize you and give you as much help as they can since you are a parent with a toddler.
How To Pass Through Security
How To Pass Through Security
This was one of the hardest parts of our travel. Security checkpoints have gotten much more strict over the years and sure enough they make it harder for those with kids to travel. Here’s some things we learned in our current trip and what you should be aware off:
- You can take liquid baby formula with you but expect them to check you for a prolonged period of time (this happened to us)
- They will make you put your stroller aside and hold your kid to go through the magnetic security check point
- Expect a pat down if they flag any of your bags, this happened to my wife and it wasn’t pleasant. We actually filed a complain with TSA. They took a prolonged time to give us our stroller back and we almost missed our flight.
- Passport control will want to see the face of your child and this may be a bit difficult at times, in one of the instances our 3 year old denied to show her face and the security agent seemed very annoyed at us.
- Put stuff in clear bags and have them easily accessible as unpacking/repacking can be a pain while holding a child. If your stroller comes out fast then you can put your child in the stroller and then pack your bags easier. One thing I’m going to do going forward is request them to scan our stroller first so I can have time to pack my belongings without much struggle.
Conclusion
If you found How To Travel With Toddler In A Plane useful and you think it may have helped you please drop me a cheer below I would appreciate it.
If you have any questions, comments please post them below I check periodically and try to answer them in the priority they come in. Also if you have any corrections please do let me know and I’ll update the article with new updates or mistakes I did.
Which airline do you like to travel with if you have a toddler and an infant?
Unfortunately I’m out of options these days. My goto used to be Lufthansa but they weren’t good at all and have degraded over the years. Having said that I’m going to try Swiss airlines next as they have been pretty consistent over the years for me.
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