Practicalities of long haul travel with a 4 month old

[BananaToast]

I'm currently pregnant with my first and planning a trip to New Zealand for when he will be 4 months old - DH's entire family live out there so it will be the first time they meet the baby.

I would appreciate any and all advice for making the flight/jet lag as easy to manage as possible! What's the best thing to do with a car seat for example - do we check ours into the hold? Hire one out there? And what tends to happen to pushchairs at stopovers - do you get them back for the few hours in the airport or not until you reach your final destination?

I'm planning to breastfeed so will hopefully not have to worry about bottles etc. We've also bought a Caboo carrier which we can take with us to use in airports.

Any suggestions about what is easiest for baby to sleep in while we're over there? We'll be staying with PIL so thought we could buy a travel cot to be delivered to them rather than taking something over with us. Any better ideas?

I feel completely clueless about the whole thing!

Hopeful bump.

Absolutely best time to travel when they are that age! They will be small
Enough for the bassinet seat so just make sure you book one (and confirm it as some airlines are rubbish at allocating them)
You can check in extra baby gear, depends what buggy you want to take whether you take car seat with you or get them to pick you up a cheap one/borrow one for whole you are there. It might be a pain to take full buggy plus car seat?
You won't get buggy back at stopover but some Airports/airlines have loan ones available.
You can get pop up travel cots but
Might be easiest to get it out there or see if they can borrow a cot from someone..
Jet lag- daylight and lots of it..get out of the house as early as you can in the morning and get as much light as possible, this helps get the body into he right timezone..
Good luck!

Totally agree that it's the best time to travel. I did 30+, mostly long haulflights with my pfb between 3 months and his first birthday and the four month flight was amongst the easiest (to nz, just me and the baby).

• breast feeding helps so so so much. I am in no way a bf facist but when travelling there is no better 'cure-all'. We have never had an issue with ears hurting and it could be luck but I'm attributing it to my hard work with breast feeding. Start earlier than you would think - the descent starts BEFORE the seat belt sign comes on.
• get used to a sling and get your baby used to a sling, mine slept in it everywhere.
• when mine was awake I was 100% focused on him to keep him happy and active, then I would totally relax when he slept again (wakeful periods are not very long at that stage)
• I didn't take a car seat or a pushchair anywhere. Especially not to nz where family had things sorted for when I got there. Can your partner's family sort that? There are some great deals on trademe and plunket hire car seats at really reasonable prices
• Milton do a little ball sanitizer thing for dummys - I only just found out about them but they would have been really useful
• muslin wraps!
• I had a canvas shopper bag with all the stuff I would need in my seat inside my carry on so I didn't have to faff around when I got there
• mine slept better on planes than anywhere else - motion and white noise

Remember, when you get to the other end you will have lots of people to help you and it's only 24 hours.

Flying with a baby is really really not that difficult. When they start walking is the problem!

Ooh, and I used a cotton infinity scarf for breast feeding with a v neck top that I could pull to the side. Got away with feeding all over the place.

And I had emergency formula for each landing as I had had supply issues but I never needed it.

Remember to stay hydrated as breastfeeding and flying dehydrate you. (This was a real conundrum for me as I was on my own and it was a careful balance between staying hydrated and peeing to often with a baby to hold!)

Thank you both, really useful! Will check out Plunket etc. I will have DH with me so thankfully won't have to limit toilet breaks!

Definitely the best time to travel long haul. We did Australia (one leg by myself) at 8 and 12 weeks.

We checked our pram in and used the baby bjorn in the airport, that way you have free hands for bags.

We brought our pram bassinet for DS to sleep in oz. Worked brilliantly, but your Dc might be starting to outgrow the bassinet at 4 months.

We hired a car seat, but there is a long term hire scheme in place where I'm from. Not sure if similar in nz.

Definitely talk to your airline about reserving a bassinet on the flights. It took a number of phone calls to sort ours with Emirates.

The hardest part is the jet lag. Our DS settled well going to Australia but we had a week of horrid sleep on return. Try to stay as long as possible to minimise the impact on your Dc.

Good luck, totally worth it. We are about to do the trip again 9 month year old DS!

Easiest time for us as well.

Check any car seat you have will be legal in New Zealand though. For example British car seats are no legal in Australia.