Baby on board: Tips for flying with an infant or toddler

Travelling over Chinese New Year with little ones? Abandon your self-inflicted expectations about being the perfect parent, don’t worry about going overboard with snacks or fret about limiting screen time, and definitely abandon any intentions of looking chic and fashionable. When heading into international airspace with babies in tow, all normal standards and expectations should be left on the tarmac.

Lists and preparation

Never have lists and planning been more important. As an expat, you are likely to do a fair amount of flying with your children. With that in mind, keep a packing master list saved on your computer which you can then refer to for each trip. It will change as your child grows up so you will add and remove things but this will save you having to remember what to pack each time.

What is on your list will be specific to your child but there are two things you must not forget (I did once. Never again) – multiple changes of clothes for the baby, and at least one change of clothes for you. Never has your child been more likely to vomit on you than at 30,000 feet. It’s a law of physics. 

It is also not a bad idea to always take basic baby medicine (Calpol, Tylenol, etc) in cabin luggage. We learnt this lesson the hard way when our son started to teeth the moment the doors closed for a 10-hour flight to Vancouver. Take the handy, pre-measured sachets if you can get hold of them.

Realistically, you should also factor in the chance of delays and therefore take extras of anything crucial in case you are stuck in an airport for longer than anticipated. Don’t be shy about things like nappies, formula, sterilised bottles and snacks. 

Carry on luggage

Tip number one for carry on luggage – be a Marie Kondo psychopath and pack everything inside your carry on into individual, categorised bags (one for toys, another for medicine, extra nappies and so on). That way you won’t have to unpack 87 separate items to find the dummy at the very bottom of the bag.

Next, organise your carry on luggage right before getting on the plane. Make sure you have one bag with everything you are most likely to need specifically for the flight and have it easily accessible. Once on the plane, I don’t need quick access to the baby’s winter coat or the duty-free gin I just purchased (or maybe I do…) but I do need the nappy bag within easy reach. Having it stuffed at the bottom of a case that is in an overhead locker three rows away is annoying and will inevitably lead to a shouting match with the husband. 

Day or night flight?

For long haul, most people with babies and small children find that night flights work best. This is obviously for the simple reason that children are more likely to be tired so you stand the greatest chance of getting them to sleep. Once they are a bit older, they can entertain themselves with movies, games and colouring in, so day flights are not such a test of patience. But in the early years, long haul night flights are likely to be the most baby-friendly. For newborns, often the weird droning of an aeroplane acts as white noise and some of them sleep very well – but I give you no promises. Above all, do not worry if sleep schedules get thrown out of the window for a day or two. To repeat, this is an exercise in survival, not domestic perfection. 

Pre-flight tactics 

Everyone has a different technique for late night flights with babies and toddlers. In the main, ours has been to push back any nap so that he wakes as late as possible in the afternoon. After a runaround, it is supper, bathtime and pyjamas before heading to the airport. Once there, if there’s time to waste, we head to the children’s play area near gate 25 – which, until you have spawned children, you will never have noticed. (On that note, most decent airports have a children’s play area somewhere in Departures. Remember to ask.) In most cases, this means that by the time we board and take off, he is ready to sleep.

Most friendly airlines allow families to board at the same time as the first-class passengers. It is good to take advantage of this so that you can get settled in before the masses arrive, stress you out and steal all the locker space above your seat. 

At take-off and landing, lots of babies’ ears will pop. Breastfeeding, a dummy or a lollipop should help to alleviate discomfort.

Bottles and breastfeeding 

Breastfeeding is undoubtedly the easier way to feed a small baby when travelling simply because you do not need to worry about sterilising. However, if your child is on bottles, remember to take spares. You are unlikely to be able to sterilise anything once onboard. 

Liquid restrictions do not apply for small children so consider taking a thermos of boiled water from home if you are concerned about the water provided by the airline. 

Screen time

If you have a toddler, this is the point at which we give thanks for the birth of Steve Jobs because if he had not invented the iPad, a 12-hour flight would be truly unbearable. In my son’s case, he didn’t take an interest in screens until he was about 20 months but that was just in time for a flight to Switzerland. We downloaded the non-dulcet tones of Peppa Pig and prepared to enjoy a miniature gin and tonic in relative peace. 

A few tips for iPad use – Netflix seems to be the only provider that will move from one episode to the next, when offline, without someone needing to manually hit ‘Play’. So if you want to avoid being interrupted every seven minutes for the next Paw Patrol installment, I recommend getting a Netflix account. And remember to download in advance.

Kit for comfort

For most airlines, the cut off age for requiring a seat is two years old. Up to that point, depending on a baby’s size, and depending on which seat you have booked, you will be given the option of a bassinet or baby seat. 

The bassinets often have very low weight thresholds (and are not spacious) so babies tend to grow out of them quicker than you think. Be aware that once a child can sit up on their own, they can also probably hurl themselves out of the thing so you won’t get a restful sleep if you use the bassinet past a certain age. They do, however, become a handy storage space.

By most reports, the baby seat device is also not wildly useful once babies are toddlers. There are a number of reasons for this but if you do book one, be prepared for the fact that your child will refuse to use it and begin negotiations about sharing your seat. In our family, this resulted in a Mexican standoff and so we ended up booking our son his own seat from about 18 months old. 

Bon voyage

That’s it – that’s all the wisdom I have. So good luck. May your flight be on time, your child sleepy and your cabin crew friendly. If none of that happens, there is always that duty-free gin in the overhead locker.