first time flying with my baby | our experience + tips & tricks

We have just come back from the Philippines and we traveled with our baby for the first time and I am super proud of us because I had a lot of fear at the thought of flying with a baby and traveling overseas with a baby especially because I am a first-time mum and I just didn't know what I was signing up for but we did it we're on the other side and that's why I want to make this little video to help encourage other mums and dads that you can definitely travel with a baby. A little bit of a backstory, when Aaliyah was literally in her newborn stage, my baby is nearly eight months now. My family thought of this great idea of traveling to the Philippines which is where my family is actually from. All of my anxiety and fear as a first-time mum definitely came about in my mind. I didn't know what it was going to be like. I was almost going to say no I'm not coming and miss out on this massive family trip and I'm from a big family so the only people that were missing was literally myself, my husband and Aaliyah. Fast forward another couple of months, I felt a little bit more confident making a decision to 100% go on this trip and that's because Aaliyah was a little bit older, feeding in public became a little bit more easier and of course I knew that I was going to regret not going on this holiday of a lifetime. I worked up the courage of researching what to do but I think one of the things that gave us peace was the fact that my family was all there to help us if we needed. So we did it, we traveled with a seven month old. So here are a few things of what we did and what I'll do in this vlog is I'll also pop in some real clips of our travel. I'm all for traveling with a baby now and I loved it. It came with a few challenges but 99% of the time it was actually a beautiful experience. If you are watching this and you are umming and erring about traveling with your baby for the first time I encourage you, you can do it because we did. I wanted to put together a little video of what we prepped and what we packed and some tips I guess of what worked for us. Obviously apply what works best for you and your family because some of these things might not work for you. These are the little things that we did to make our traveling experience easy and hopefully that will help someone watching this video. I'll start off by sharing what we bought to make our travel experience a lot easier. We are all packed and ready for our holiday. Before I pack the baby bag I just wanted to show you what we popped in there. We have packed a bunch of nappies enough for a whole day's worth. The rest of them are in our check-in bag. We've got wipes, change mat, diaper cream, tee the gel. We brought a silicone bib, a little nasal aspirator, thermometer to check her temperature if we need it, dummy with a clip, feeding cover, a little burp towel, panadol to help with any flying pain. We have this little sterilizer as well but we might check it in because I'm not sure if you can bring sterilizers on the plane but this is definitely something that we'll be packing back in the baby bag after we land. Sound machine, other drops to help with constipation because she's eating solids now, some snacks, spoon in case we need to give her some puree, drink bottle, portable pump and an extra bottle as well to bring if feeding doesn't go to but also a wash bag that has a spare nappy, onesie and disposable bag if there's any dirty nappies or dirty clothes. And I forgot to mention baby earmuffs as well. We're going to the Philippines! It's our first time on the plane with baby girl as well. Are you excited? I did try my best to pack lightly for our whole family so it's very important to try your best to pack lightly. I definitely could have cut down on half the clothes that I bought for myself and for Aaliyah because you're already trying to take care of a baby, you've got the stroller, you've got your baby bag, you've got your feeding pillow and so packing as light as you can makes your life a lot easier when you're traveling. So we had two luggage bags, we had her baby bag, we had a backpack for me which had her toys, the ergocarry in there and we also had two bum bags with our passports, our wallet, our phone, important stuff and also you can purchase things when you're overseas if you're missing something. We only packed a bag of 44 nappies and then we bought the rest of the nappies that we needed on our holiday when we arrived in the Philippines. We are just relaxing in the parents room. We got to go through the high priority line which is super cool so we're going to line up where everyone else was lining up and then the guy was like oh you've got a baby you can go through here and we didn't really have to line up so that was really cool. I nearly got checked for a bum despite me. Yeah choose the people with the baby how silly. Anyway we go to the international gates now and wait for our plane. Now we've got to try and find my family as well because we kind of left them at the drop off of the bags. My first piece of advice when traveling with a baby is picking the right seat. Obviously this is dependent on whether it's a domestic flight or an international flight but for an international flight on most airlines you can definitely book the seats where there's access to the bassinet, so the bassinet seat. When you book your flight you can vouch for the seats that you prefer. We flew with Singapore Airlines which I heard is one of the top airlines that really accommodate to young families which is amazing. Now the very reasons why I suggest that you book these seats is number one you pretty much get close to VIP treatment from the flight attendant. They usually come up to you and they ask how you're going, they show you how to use an infant seat belt, they give you some sort of entertainment or a toy for your baby and you can also request for infant foods as well depending on how old your baby is. They were very accommodating. Two of why I suggest these seats is because you actually get a lot of leg room. My husband was very thankful because you were usually squished in economy seats where your knees are touching the seats in front of you but these particular bassinet seats you have room to stretch out your legs, sit on the floor and play with the baby. The stairs up, we weren't even using that space to rock our baby which was super cool. I'm not sure if it's just Singapore Airlines that does this but when you're waiting to depart from whatever destination you're in they call out the business seat then they call out all of the special needs seats and then soon after that I'm pretty sure they call out all of the parents with young kids. That means that you're first on the plane before everyone else which gives you time and space to set yourself up, put your bags in the overhead lockers before everyone else comes which I absolutely love. In addition to that you also were one of the first people that got to leave the plane as well. You really do get incredible treatment when you travel with a baby but you definitely have to do some research in what airlines do prioritise parents with a baby. Now the biggest fear of travelling for first time parents is the plane ride, specifically the lift off and then the landing of the plane because of all sorts of reasons. The air pressure on the baby's ears, whether they'll be in a little bit of pain. There was a few things that helped me when we were lifting off and when we were landing. One was being ready to feed Aaliyah. Obviously every parent feeds their baby differently. I'm at the moment exclusively breastfeeding so I was just ready to pop her on and nurse her when we were lifting off and when we were landing which was probably the biggest thing that really helped. The constant you know feeding and chewing relieved her air pressure or at least distracted her from it. The other thing that I would definitely encourage to have ready is baby earmuffs which we got on Amazon and so it's this elastic with velcro. Just pop it on the baby like this and you strap it on the back. The other thing that helped the baby if she wasn't nursing was having some sort of teether where Aaliyah literally was just chewing on this and again the chewing sensation really helps with the air pressure. If you are worried about the lift off and the landing, being ready to feed the baby so if that means having a bottle of milk ready, if you're doing formula or if you have pre-pumped breast milk that's totally fine. If you're nursing on yourself like I did that was really handy having a teether and having earmuffs as well. I've got Aaliyah's earmuffs ready, her dummy and they also gave us this plush rattle. Now before I get into my next piece of advice on the plane to help make the travel experience with your baby a lot easier. It was actually feeding pillows. Some planes are a little bit funny about what feeding pillows you use but specifically with the seats that we got we didn't have the armrests that lift up, it was just armrests that you actually couldn't move. It was very uncomfortable for a baby to lay across so having a specific feeding pillow to elevate the baby while nursing or sleeping on me did come in handy. Originally I bought this feeding friendly pillow that we didn't end up using but I wanted to show you. I did buy this to travel with first. It's just one of these very light portable feeding pillows that literally comes in this shape and I bought this when Aaliyah was a newborn but she grew a lot since then and so I just found that this felt very awkward. Her legs were hanging off, it kept slipping and so I didn't end up bringing this but if you do have a newborn or a baby more on the smaller side the feeding friend pillow could actually work but I just brought my normal pillow. This is my breast friend pillow. The reason why I brought this is actually pretty practical. You can click it like this, baby can lay on here and it helps elevate her across those armrests. She wasn't awkwardly all over these hard surfaces, she was able to just lay straight and feed. I also love this because obviously you're on the plane on the first day and then on the last day of your travel but it helped make my feeding experience throughout the whole holiday which was 10 days a lot more easier and a lot more calmer for me. When Aaliyah would finish nursing, sometimes she would sleep and you kind of want them to sleep so you're not having to entertain them the whole time. Aaliyah was able to just like rest on this and I could be arm free so I could be watching something on the screen or eating or whatever and having Aaliyah just rest on here really helped my flight experience be enjoyable. Another tip on the plane is having a toy bag ready for your baby. Again it's dependent on their age. Aaliyah is seven months and a half. She is starting to develop all of the first-time skills of moving and rolling around and wanting to play with something different every hour and so we brought a small plastic bag full of toys. We bought two teasers because she's teething. We also brought her favorite book. Now you can choose whatever toy works best for your baby. One piece of advice that I got from another mum who was traveling with the baby was actually having a toy that your baby has never seen before so that she actually has something new and exciting to open up or to play with when she's on the plane. We had bought this little octopus thing. It was something exciting for her to open up and actually really worked. You could tell in her reaction, oh this is a new toy to play with. Obviously when you're traveling with your baby there is a lot of walking through the airport, waiting around for your flight. Our first stop on the way to the Philippines was Singapore and if you have traveled to Singapore that airport is amazing but it is huge which means a lot of walking, waiting around. Two things that really helped was having some sort of carrier for my baby. What I used was the ergo baby carrier which we just popped Leah in there and wore her and that was really easy. When you go through security or customs sometimes you do have to take the baby out of the carrier because they need to check you, they need to check the baby, you need to go through a detector but most of the time it was actually easy to get her in and out if we needed and plus you can use it when you're on your holiday. Another thing that we didn't end up bringing because we tried to pack lightly was actually a hip carrier. This is my little hip carrier. It's the A-BOW brand where literally you can wear it on your hips and you carry baby on your side or in front of you. It carries all the weight of your baby and you can walk around. It's easier than an ergo carrier when you need to get her on and off but because I didn't want to carry so many things I decided not to bring it but if you are traveling and you think that this might be easier for your baby I definitely recommend a hip carrier if you want to. The last thing that I would suggest is invest into a travel stroller. This was honestly the biggest lifesaver on our trip having a travel stroller that you can carry on instead of a check-in stroller purely because it helps when you're at the airport you're not having to wait till your final destination to pick up your stroller and then use. We invested into the Carrion stroller. I think it's an Australian brand so wherever you're from get a travel stroller that you can bring on as a carry-on but this stroller specifically was amazing. It's only seven kilograms. You're able to bring it on the plane and pop in the overhead lockers and literally use as soon as you get off of the plane. Not only that it really just helped our whole holiday with traveling. It had the option where you could lay down Aaliyah and so she could sleep and you could push her. It had a really good shade as well but also it was perfect for when we wanted to walk around or have a day of traveling. Let me tell you it saves your arms. It saves you from carrying a baby for hours on end. Invest into a travel stroller. I think for us because it was our first time it was such an incredible thing to have my whole family there on the first plane on the way to Singapore and the Philippines. We had my parents, one of my older brothers, I had my sister and her partner and they were all on the plane and it just made our life easier. We were able to pass around Aaliyah. Everyone was playing with her. It definitely felt like a fast flight for us. Now I know that's not the case for everyone because on the flight back home it was just Dan and I and Aaliyah and that was a little bit more difficult. I probably only had two hours in that seven hour flight max of sleep. Aaliyah was a little bit more grumpier. It was the red eye flight. It was the end of our holiday so she was a little bit more tired and fussy. I'm not sure but I do know that sometimes when you don't travel with anyone else that can help you it is a little bit harder. So I'm acknowledging that it can be hard but I did just want to encourage you that it's possible and you can travel with a baby. So I hope this video encourages you. I hope that it helps. I know that the first step is doing it and the second step is preparing well and just going through the experience. In my next few videos I'll just be showing our days in our traveling with my family but I specifically wanted to put this video out first to encourage someone with some of our tips and tricks that helped us travel with our baby for the first time. I hope you enjoyed this video. I pray for your travels with your baby or your family. I wish it fits your fam time but I definitely know you can do it. Bye for now.