First Time Flying With a 4 Month Old Baby, How to Fly With a Baby

Are you planning your first flight with a baby and not sure what to expect? I recently took my infant on a four-hour flight and I can tell you this. No one even questioned anything about my breast milk. I was overly prepared. Yes, I over prepared. But that's why I'm making this video. Hi, I'm New Yorker Zuhi. I share unfiltered and unscripted travel experiences. So you can get tips and inspiration just by watching my videos. In today's video, I'm sharing my first flight experience with my baby. And spoiler alert, some of the common advice on the internet will be debunked in this video. Let's get started. I like to start with a take-off because it's the most nerve-wracking part of it all. You probably heard that you need to feed a baby during take-off to soothe your baby from the ear pressure. This sounds like good advice, except babies are unpredictable. So are airlines and airplanes. Flights and take-offs get delayed all the time. And babies can get thirsty or hungry at any given moment. While we were standing on the jetway, my baby started to cry out loud and wanted to be fed. She rarely does this, so I freaked out and immediately gave her a bottle. By the time we sat down on the airplane, my baby was full and I had nothing left in the bottle. Here, I was just smiling for the video, but honestly, I was getting nervous. Nothing was going as planned. Even a pacifier didn't work. Just out of the blue, my baby refused to take it. Breastfeeding wouldn't work either because I just pumped. In the end, what saved me was that I scheduled a flight to coincide with my baby's nap time. As the plane started to move and accelerated to take off, my baby fell asleep right before we took off. If you're wondering what are the odds of that happening, it's actually not that slim. You know, infants love moving vehicles. They put baby right to sleep most of the time. So just scheduling a flight timely is gonna set you up for a successful flight experience. By the way, this is why I think a good time to take babies on a flight is once they build a more stable sleep schedule. Now, let's rewind a little bit and talk about boarding and security. A lot of people suggest not to board early, even though you will get priority boarding when you have a little one. My take on this is, well, it depends. It depends on your baby's age and how much luggage you have, etc. Our baby was a little less than 4 months old and her wake time wasn't too long yet. She wasn't very active either, so she rarely got antsy. In other words, it didn't matter a ton whether she was inside the plane or out. What mattered more for us was that me and my husband stayed together just in case we needed help from each other. Plus, we had a lot of luggage packed with baby items. This meant that we needed to secure enough space in our overhead compartment to fit everything. Also, I needed access to the diaper bag throughout the flight, so it was especially important to have it conveniently stored right near me. For us, it made total sense to take advantage of the early boarding. I had enough time to feed our baby before taking off and board her. One thing I know for sure is when my baby gets gassy, she gets real fussy. Contrary to departure, our return flight was in the evening around 7pm. Again, we aimed the take-off time aligned with our baby's sleeping schedule. Before taking off, she got a little bit fussy, but this is also a sign that she is tired and ready to sleep. And guess what? As the plane started to move to take off, it instantly put my baby to sleep once again. Now, let's talk about the elephant in the room, diaper change. I strongly recommend getting some practice done in public before the flight because airplane has a tiny bathroom and it's moving. Let's go over what I had in my diaper pot first. I had a portable changing pad, extra diapers, two footies, a roll of plastic bag, diaper rash cream, and baby wipes. And here's how I changed the diaper in the air step by step. First, I prepared the changing pad in my set. I covered it with a large plastic bag so the pad didn't touch any surface in the public bathroom. Then, I grabbed everything and went to the bathroom. My husband was holding my baby right outside the door while I was setting up the changing station. And of course, my baby had a huge blowout. She needed to be changed completely. Good thing was I already had extra clothing and plastic bags to dump the dirty clothing with me. So bring everything with you to the bathroom. Diaper change is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're gonna get. Lastly, let's talk about fitting. I feel like I totally overdid everything because I was exclusively breastfeeding my baby and pumping. I didn't want to risk not having enough milk until we arrived at the resort. The whole process started from the night before. I did not pump since midnight because I realized the best place to store milk is inside of my body. I planned to pump right after I passed the security. So what I did instead is to defrost 5 oz of frozen breast milk, put it in a bottle and then insulated container that I just got from Amazon. By the way, all the products that I mentioned in this video will be linked in the description down below if you need them. Then, I woke up my sleeping baby around 4 a.m. I did not nurse her and I tried to keep her asleep as much as I can while we were heading straight to the airport. You're at the airport. What happened? You're sleeping and now you're at the airport. At the airport, things went so smoothly at the security. I just told the TSA agent that I was carrying just 5 oz of breast milk and that was it. No one even questioned anything about my breast milk or nothing. I was overly prepared but it's better to be overly prepared than sorry. And my baby is petting me, crying, being fussy. I think the fact that I was carrying my baby and I had a special breast milk container might have saved me from extra scrutiny. But terrorists don't get any ideas. After the security, I had to find the maternity pods. Maternity pods are basically a small private space where you can nurse your baby and pump. It's free of charge. You just need to go on a website and sign up for it. All of my breastfeeding thing is here. And I think it's best to bring the stroller. And I am doing the pumping. So yeah, bring everything. All the luggage and everything. It has enough space for a whole family. So I'm pumping right now with my wearable pumps. And once I'm done with it... Oh, this is frozen milk. Still frozen. I'm gonna put my milk into the empty bottle and keep it cool. Have plenty of backup. I feel good. I'm not gonna run out of milk. My plan was to give my baby a bottle before the take-off and either breastfeed her or bottle feed her once we are in the air. In hindsight, I'm glad I had an oversupply of milk because my baby wanted to be fed more often than usual on an airplane. Before we landed, I breastfed my baby to keep her hydrated and happy for the next hour or so until we checked in into our resort. Also, if you're a breastfeeding mom, you know that you cannot skip breastfeeding for more than a few hours. If you do, you might get breast engorgement and it could impact breast milk supply negatively. So yeah, if you're thinking, Wow, that's a lot of details and too much planning. I'd like to say, Welcome to motherhood. All right, that's all I can think of right now. But if you have any other questions or if you have any other tips, feel free to share in the comment section below. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you in my next video.