10 month old on a plane. Help!

[RoLoh]

Got a 5 hour flight in a few weeks with our 10 month old. Absolutely dreading it! Does anyone have any ideas or advice for taking the edge off?

Easy jet don't allow you to book extra leg room seats with young children so she's going to be on our laps the whole way

Only did 2 hour flight with 7.5 MO a few years back so not sure if this helps but actually it was really easy. Used carrier (front sling) but small back carrier woudl be fine as hand luggage for bigger/older kid, so no faffing with pushchair. DD breasfed then slept all flight going there and on the way back also breastfed and ate snack at the two critical moments, so no ear pressure problems. Think we read stories and looked at a few toys with her but that's about it. I suppose non-noisy toys best, books ideal. And emdless supply of snacks. We just took sandwiches and fruit and LO was quite happy munching those for breakfast en-route. Obviously for longer journey and for older child who eats more you can take hard boiled eggs, chicken drumsticks etc. Snacks help a lot with travel-tiredness too.You can get up and walk up and down a little bit even on tiny planes. I did on way back with DD a couple of times, just to give her a different view when she got a bit restless. I suppose it depends how mobile you LO is. Ours wasnt at all mobile in any way till well past 10MO so crawling/her needing to move about was never an issue.. We havent tried flying with older child who is mobile and car journeys over 2 hours are best avoided now LO is 3, so I can see this could be a problem but you can do a bit of walking on a plane.

Thanks that helps. Unfortunately dd is very active and sitting still for long periods isn't her forte.

Maybe a dose of Calpol and some milk will help her sleep. It's a mid afternoon flight though so not sure if she will.

I travel with work all the time, since little one was newborn. Little one is 13 months now and very busy, I would walk her up and down the aisle, take lots of books, take a laptop with her favourite shows, and lots of food to keep her occupied :)

See if you can get an aisle seat near the toilet. My ds thought everyone was queuing to see him and happily waved an chortled all the way to Florida courtesy of the toilet queue!

Aisle seat, books and loads of water/milk and snacks. and lots of standing up on the tray table/your lap (though try to stop her grabbing hair of passenger in front...). trip to the loo for nappy change a couple of times is good entertainment as is looking out of the little window near the loos. choose toys without lots of bits.

see if you can get a nap or two in there somewhere. don't forget you have to get through check in and security as well, ie you will actually have to leave home quite a long time before the flight, so she may not have napped as long at lunch, so may be more tired than usual in the afternoon.

good luck!

we flew to the US when dd1 was 5 months and again at 16 months. one of the security people at Heathrow told us having the pram was the ticket to getting to go through the security line that was especially for disabled people /families - not sure if that is actually the case in all airports but the queue was much shorter and more relaxed. for the actual flight I had a bunch of small toys dd hadn't seen before as a surprise. I think she was so overtired and wound up she couldn't really focus. next time I would let her play with them all a few times before the trip and then put them away for a few days so they would be familiar but not seen recently.