Long Haul Travel with babies and toddlers

This is a long post, sorry, but I think many details are worth sharing…

I went to Brazil twice since my baby girl was born. First when she was around 6 months and after when she was 18 months. It takes around 25 hours from Australia to Brazil, being 2 flights (one of around 14 hours) and around 5 hours connection and here are the experiences:

6 Months Old - BABY – This was my first airplane experience with my baby. Luckily this time around I had my Mom on the same flight which made it much easier as without her support I think I would have panicked. I bought a Quinny Zapp Pram which was supposed to be great for flights (not really good in my opinion). I ended up leaving it in Brazil as it was a just an extra bulk thing to carry as my daughter didn’t like to seat on it. She preferred to stay on the ergo baby most of the time where she could sleep well.

We brought many things to the plane and didn’t use half, because the noise of the plane made her quite sleepy. (Also I was giving her the Bauer Sleep, just in case). She had her first meal and started to fall sleep. I was lucky enough to have a basinet, which was very handy, so I put her down and she had a good 4 hours sleep, when she woke up I gave her a feed and down she went again for another 3-4hours… I could not believe almost half of the flight was gone. She woke up again and was almost Breakfast time we played a bit until we landed and it was time for the connection in Santiago.

During the quite long connection I had to carry the travel pram as she didn’t want to seat on it . Still it was good to just walk around, play with her and time went fast. On the second flight to Sao Paulo things were a bit different space wise but still she was able to sleep on my lap for a bit. I felt like a winner when I got to the destination and the return flight ended up to be quite similar, but firstly I didn’t carry half of the food, toys and stuff I had on my hand and also I got rid of the pram as she was not going to use it anyway.

Thanks to Qantas I had some awesome space, great care from the cabin crew and good food for me and for her. I am quite sure they made the difference for us to be able to enjoy this flight.

18 Months Old – TODDLER – As our first experience was not as bad we felt confident to go to Brazil again.

Luckily this time I was also able to upgrade the way in to Economy Plus with Qantas, as I had points, which made it even more enjoyable. We had better space and also a basinet, even though she was already 18 months, but as she was still under 10 kilos she was able to use and did sleep half of the flight again there.

This time she was quite mobile, so she did want to walk around corridors and check out the toilet many times, but it was good to see that everyone on the plane understood she was just a toddler and would play and smile at her. I brought her portable DVD which made her watch Moana and Frozen many times and gave me also some quite time. I liked the idea better than the IPAD as without Wi-fi I didn’t want her to be frustrated.

Also, this time I bought a Yoyo Pram (generic) from Ebay as I didn’t want to waste much money in case I had to leave it again back in Brazil. But now this really worked as she enjoyed being pushed around instead of walking (I would not carry her at the ergo anymore). This generic pram saved my life in many occasions and even now she still uses it and became my regular pram.

The only bad experience we had this time was when we landed in Brazil that we had to wait around 40 minutes to leave the plane as we didn’t have a gate ready. It started getting quite hot inside the plane and she started screaming crazily. All passengers felt sorry for her and I felt sorry for them to hear all the screaming. But everyone understood was not her fault as we were stuck there. I know these things can happen, but I was not prepared for the situation and I didn’t know what to do. As soon as we could leave the plane all was good and back to normal.  

In general both experiences were not bad at all and I was quite amazed to see how well she behaved but here are my main tips:

-          Don’t pack more than what you can easily carry as after some hours you can’t handle all that weight

-          If you going to bring a travel pram buy it before and let the baby get used to it, plus bring the pram carry bag otherwise the pram will be dispatched, and you will not be able to use in the connection

-          Bring some entertainment for the baby that doesn’t rely on Wi-Fi (silly, I know but I saw mom’s panicking as they didn’t realize it was not going to work). There are some planes now with wi-fi but it will never work as well as at home.

-          Bring toddler headphones as you can’t have sound on the plane coming from Ipads/dvds. On one of the flights I didn’t know and had to make my daughter watch a MUTE video 😉

-          Bring some baby pegs to peg things around, it was handy when lights from the bathroom would go to directly to her face when she was sleeping

-          Try to be calm as if you are calm the baby seems to sense that this is a safe environment, and all will be ok.

-          Ask for help when needed, cabin crew were great and would always ask me if I needed anything else which made me feel very supported.

 I hope some ideas can help the next MOM about to flight with their babies and toddlers, which is not easy but worth it as there is always a reason for it. Mine was to see my family that is far away and I wanted them to be part of my daughter’s life.

If you have any other hacks and ideas that helped you comment below so we can share and help each other on this beautiful journey.

A traveler MOM after 30

                                                   *** 4 generations - Lots of LOVE ***