DESTINATIONS
We had travelled quite widely pre-children; Europe, USA, SE Asia. When we had Elliot, we didn’t know how things would go and decided to start small and work our way up.
Would I do this again next time, probably not, but it did work quite well when we didn’t know what we didn’t know.
I will plod away at a blog post on each destination, but he is a timeline and overview of what we have done so far.
We live in Perth, so we first went to Broome, when he was 5 months old. This was the dream, he was quiet and immobile and content with milk and cuddles. This was probably the time to go 20 hours to Europe to be honest. But it got our confidence up, and it was easy and fun.
Next up, we went to Singapore when he was 7 months. This was chosen because it also lacked time difference. We did quite a short trip and it will definitely be somewhere we got back. Non-stop flight, clean, friendly. Definitely recommend.
Tasmania next. Elliot was 9 months, we went for 3 weeks, just after Christmas. It was originally booked as a non-stop flight which got changed for the outbound journey, to include a stop over in Melbourne. The 3 hour time difference definitely gave us a little bit of grief for the first few days but our possum baby sorted himself out relatively quickly.
We then headed to Melbourne for a week with a 13 month old. This was such a great age just to plonk ourselves in an airbnb in the CBD and do all the toddler friendly activities.
Malaysia included both 1 week in KL and 1 week in Langkawi. It was a fabulous trip when Elliot was 15 months. The weather was hot and humid, especially in KL but we had a ball in the pool during the day. The biggest thing to consider with kids in a place like this is that most dinner places open late, typical eating time is more like 8pm, and so early/toddler dinner time is not really a thing! Places also open late in the morning (eg. 10am), so if you have an early riser it can be hard to entertain them.
Over the Christmas period we spent a week in Bali, Elliot was 21 months. This was a great age for lots of swimming and to first book a hotel with a kids club. We didn’t leave him there but was a great place for one of us to take him for entertainment, to break up the swimming and eating, or when it was hot!
Then there was Japan at 23 months – which you can read all about in my very first blog post.
What have we learned:
– it doesn’t just get progressively easier as we had imagined, different things are hard/easier at different stages (sleep, what they do/don’t eat, mobility, tolerability off time zone changes, whether or not screen time is of any interest)
– you wont necessarily know what period you’ll be in when you travel, at the time you book unless you book last minute
– we find it important to know know the things we would struggle with; eg. We know that we will not have a good time if we are ALL sleep deprived, this is why we book places with seperate spaces so that not everyone’s sleep is affected, or someone can have a rest in the day if needed
– its hard work and it’s SO worth it – you are travelling without your normal surrounds; daycare breaks, babysitting, 7 choices of meals, variety of books or toys. It can be really exhausting, but you will definitely come back and be grateful, even for the hard or frustrating days
DURATION
Our general rule for the bigger holidays is whatever we would have done before and add a week (but don’t add any more stops).
So this means for Tasmania – like actually we had this trip planned for the year before but it got affected by COVID and we couldn’t go. We had planned 2 weeks, so now we went for 3. We would usually do Malaysia in a week, so we went for 2. Japan, 2 weeks sounded sufficient, so we went for 3.
This hasn’t failed us yet. You can go slow, the pressure is off to go somewhere and see all the sites in a night or 2. You can have rest days. It works for us.
FLIGHTS
You just have to get there. I really do believe in the saying, if it’s all falling apart, you just have to know, it WILL end. It’s very variable and unpredictable. I think of all 21 flights we have had, one of the shorted – Perth to Bali was probably the worst. And it probably partly at least had to do with a mild hangover (DEFINITELY NOT RECOMMENDED), but it was just one of those things. There were multiple children in every row, taking off at 2pm seemed like a good idea until by 4/5pm the children were all beginning to get very ratty. Elliot was 21 months and interestingly not very interested in screen time yet, but wanted to be a lot more active than a plane allows. But it ended, and we had a great time. You can not predict these things.
Our overarching principle is to fly with a happy baby wherever possible. We dont plan the flight times around naps or awake periods etc. For multiple reasons; often you don’t have the luxury of that much choice, your baby will almost certainly be on a different schedule that you can’t predict by the time you actually go on your planned holiday, and because on the day, even if they napped at that time for the last 2 weeks, they will not today!! So instead, if they fall asleep in the car on the way to the airport or in the carrier in the queue to the plane, we just roll with it and figure when he is awake, he will hopefully be the happiest version of himself. Of course it’s delightful to have a sleeping baby on the plane, but a close second is a happy awake baby.
Obviously every different stage calls for different activities for the plane. I will do a seperate blog post on what we have found useful.
PACKING
We have always found it most helpful to have larger suitcases/bags and less of them. So for a longer trip, we travel with 2 large suitcases, a hand luggage bag each (small backpack/handbag), and then the pram if we are taking it. We try to avoid taking the pram if we can, we don’t have a pram loving child, but for Japan we did find it very handy for the transfer days – getting on and off the trains to move to another city with all our suitcases. We have only travelled with the car seat once – our road trip around Tasmania, and I would only ever take it again for this kind of trip. We actually drive to the airport from home and leave our car in long term parking, which makes the airport transfer super each in Australia.
We try to pack as lightly as we can, obviously, but we aren’t ‘carry on only’ kind of people. I would rather be open to washing clothes but not reliant on it.
We always pack a tonne of food. It helps if you want to stay in, or take a packed lunch or if you think they haven’t eaten well that day. Remember to save some of their favourite snacks for the plane trip home. I will do a seperate blog post on the foods we find easiest to travel with.
We started a list (the app anylist runs my life) with out first trip, that has multiple sections ‘mum and day’ ‘Elliot’ ‘hand luggage’ and we duplicate this list for each new holiday. Things change with time (eg, bottles or spew clothes turns into cheerios and match box cars), but it makes it so much easier for both mum and dad to help with the packing and also not having to start from scratch each time.
A few random things we take with us: a power board so that you can charge everything at once with only one travel adapter, lots of zip lock bags and a few small Tupperware containers (great for taking leftovers from dinner for the next day, or a few snacks from a breakfast buffet), portable white noise machine.
HAND LUGGAGE
– spare clothes for everyone
– PJs for the baby if you’re landing at/after bed time and hoping for a swift bedtime transfer of a sleeping baby
– books, activities
– toddler snacks
– muslin wraps (even for toddlers), a heavier baby rug
– wipes, nappies (wayyyy more than you think you need), nappy bags; a stash in the backpack and a small handheld bag with just 2 nappies, wipes, a few nappy bags, hand sanitiser
– water bottle (no limits to carrying these with a baby)
– baby Panadol at minimum (we have the main medicine bag in the suitcase)
– pram clips, we created a little cubby for the sleeping toddler with these and a muslin on the overnight flight to japan, worked so great for when they turn the lights on and off
ACCOMODATION
As previously mentioned, one of the keys to a happy holiday for us is sufficient sleep, and you just predict with these monkeys what kinda life/sleep phase you will be in. So we almost always book somewhere like a suite. This allows us and the baby to sleep in seperate areas, or for someone to play with the child in the living area in the day and the other to go for a nap. Or the baby to go to sleep early and we can enjoy adult time in the evening with the lights on, or even eat dinner in the room later. It’s always worked really well for us. It obviously usually costs a bit more, or needs to be a bit further out of town, but we just factor this in and deal with it in the planning phase.
We also find it helpful to have the following;
– washing facilities
– kids club if its a ‘fly and flop’ style holiday
– on site or close by meals for those days/nights when going out feels too much
– if on a longer holiday, I think a mix of hotel and airbnb is nice for their individual perks
– we would never book a pool villa at this age due to safety concerns but pool onsite we find great as its wonderful entertainment
OTHER
In our medicine bag we have: paracetamol and anti-inflammatories for everyone, cold and flu tablets, antihistamines for everyone, cough suppressant for adults, coloxyl for children, hydralyte, nasonex, Fess little noses, betadine, bandaids, chlorsig, soov cream, loperamide, ondansetron, metoclorpamide, pantoprazole (can you tell we’ve had holiday gastro?!, we will not mention that Melbourne trip again).