Baby's first holiday

[HettyMeg]

We are taking our 6 month old to Portugal in a few weeks. Do we need to boil the local tap water for her to drink with meals or is straight from the tap fine (they are BF)? Also, I've seen mention of pram fans and mosquito nets for crib... Is this necessary?? Do people who live there use pram fans?!

Would you normally drink the tap water?
When we go abroad we usually use bottled water as thats what's generally recommended.

I honestly don't know as I haven't been to Portugal before

It isn’t recommended for babies to drink bottled water.

OP just boil it, but at six months, realistically surely she would hardly be drinking any water- all her fluids are coming from milk?

It is ok to drink bottled water abroad if the tap water isn't suitable for drinking. You just have to make sure it has low levels of sodium. I will find the nhs link

Bottled water is recommended, not because the tap water in necessarily bad, but it's filtered different to here so can have things in it that upset your stomach. So to avoid an ill baby, always bottled water. And I would personally boil it and let it cook as I would at home with that age.

I'd definitely recommend a mosquito net for the crib, you might get lucky and baby isn't a target from them, but if they are, it'll be awful for them to get bitten all night long.

And yes definitely a pram fan! I always use one even in England, babies in prams have literally nowhere to go to get shade and even with shade from a pram canopy, there's very little circulation of air so a fan is a big help!

These are the levels to look out for: