flying baby tips

Tips on flying with babies (based on two flights only, baby aged 4 ½ months, just one adult with her - me)

Buy her a seat (you may get a discount on full fare) – because holding a baby in your arms is as equally unsafe as you flying without a seat belt. (If I can't persuade you to buy a seat, still take the car seat on board in case the flight is not full and they’ll let you have a seat. You can gate check the car seat if the flight is full.)

Our car seat was rear-facing and I put Emma by the window because it sticks out too far to climb past it. Babies in car seats are not allowed to sit in an emergency exit row, nor (I think) in a row next to it. I took Emma out to hold and feed her during the flight, but only when the “fasten seat belts” light was off. Luckily she didn't need a mid-flight diaper change, because I didn't know how I would manage that. A friend said she once asked the flight attendants and was able to change the baby on the floor up near the drinks station, in an area out of the way of the aisle. Also luckily, I didn't have to use the restroom myself mid-flight, but if I did my plan was to call a flight attendant to stay with Emma while I went.

Because Emma had to be buckled in the car seat during take-off and landing, and the advice for keeping babies’ ears from hurting is to feed them during take-off and landing, that meant I had to have a bottle prepared. It’s too awkward to try to breast-feed a baby in a car seat! Well, I forgot to warm the bottle ahead of time and she wouldn’t take it. But she sucked on a pacifier the whole time and that seemed to work fine for her ears. I was prepared to offer my finger if she didn’t take the pacifier. I had brought the bottle warmer and was planning to plug it in while we waited at the gate, but in hindsight that was too much trouble to even expect myself to do that! Instead I could have put the bottle inside my clothing for 30 minutes or so, to take the chill off it.

Carry baby saline nose drops, especially if it's cool weather, because the plane dries them out. This also makes it more important to make sure they nurse or drink sufficiently.

A stroller is essential, as you probably know, just for carrying stuff and getting from gate to gate, etc. You can gate check it.

Attach a toy and a pacifier (if used) to the car seat or stroller, so that you can't lose it and won't have to wash it as much. Carry a burp cloth in your pocket.

Carry on luggage is an opportunity for testing your planning skills. How do you know what to carry or not, and how much of it? Be sure you practice carrying everything if you are traveling alone with the baby, including your checked luggage, or else plan to hire a skycap. I just managed to push the stroller, wear a backpack, balance a rolling carry-on on the stroller handle, and pull my big suitcase behind me. Then later I realized it was easier to put the handle of the rolling carry-on over my shoulder – then I didn’t have to worry about the balanced bag tipping over onto the baby!

Security is one of the hardest things. You have to take the baby out of the stroller or whatever you’re carrying her in, and send all the apparatus through the X-ray. You carry the baby through the metal detector with you. This means it helps to have some things done ahead of arriving at the machine: shoes untied so you can slip them off (or better yet, wear shoes that you can step into and out of easily), jacket off and draped over the stroller handle, a laptop already out of its case, i.d. and ticket between the teeth is a good place, and don’t have any loose small items in the stroller cup-holder that you suddenly have to figure out how to carry! If you’re not organized you can not get a security guard to hold your baby for you, they’re not allowed.

Apparently, airlines no longer offer for people traveling with small children to board first (at least Delta didn’t). But on each leg I asked the gate attendant if I could board with the first “zone” even though my zone was to be called later, and they said fine.