Tips for first holiday abroad with 4.5 month old!

[Andersonx3]

Just as the title really! Booked a 7 day holiday for April to Majorca for my birthday with my parents, siblings & partners. My DD will be 4.5 months at the time. Pleeeease give me tips for travelling abroad with a baby this age! From flights, pushchair arrangements & sleeping at hotel to packing and timings! She's EBF, but will take expressed milk from a bottle and we plan to try her on ready made formula soon to take some strain off of myself so we could potentially take formula etc.

Thanks!

Just embrace it, it will be the easiest holiday for a while. I ebf and co slept, holidays are easy

@okiedokieme I'm very excited and also very excited for a peaceful holiday whilst she's still little and non mobile 😬 I just have no idea where to start with taking a baby abroad, it's always just been me and DH (although having to pack for him and make sure he wears sun cream & drinks water is like taking a child anyway 🤨)!

Take a lightweight stroller, you can keep it until you get to the aircraft steps but when I took our four month old baby to Lanzarote in November I wore him in a sling at the airport and checked the pushchair in. Baby slept in the sling all round the airport and onto the plane. It was also handy after landing because your pushchair will come out on the carousel with the suitcases so we had a one hour wait for it.

My baby slept in my arms most of the flight or was happy to be held by myself or Daddy. Feed on take off and landing to stop baby's ear popping.

I wasn't happy about my baby sleeping in a cot lots of other babies had slept in so we took a Koodi (a pop up travel bassinet which baby slept fine in). We had air con so I took his normal 2.5 tog sleeping bag as my DH likes to have the air con on full.

Our hotel had a walk in shower so we took a tiny inflatable padding pool which I got on Amazon for £3.00 to use as a baby bath.

You aren't supposed to put sun cream on a baby under six months so you need to keep baby out of the sun at all times. For the pool I got baby a full length sun suit and matching hat and disposable swimming nappies from ASDA. I did put sunblock on his face and hands. Unfortunately the pool wasn't heated, it was freezing and baby hated it. We got an inflatable swim seat for him.

For naps a Snoozeshade over your stroller is a lifesaver and also for walking around the resort.

Agree with PP about lightweight stroller and sunshade - really helped us on holiday. Sling is handy for around the airport. Use the family lanes at the airport too to get through security.

DS was FF and it was a right faff with bottles, sterilising stuff and formula - it took up so much space in the suitcase so you might find it's easier with EBF. If you do want to take formula do a click & collect from Boots after security as you can only take so much through the scanners. I always take things like persil with me in a little bottle in case I need to do an emergency wash while we're away.

My DS could do multiple rolls by that age so it might not be as restful as you think!

We took our 12 week old to Spain.

Best tips were:
Lightweight pushchair (we got the babyzen yo-yo and took it onto the plane)
Big sunshade to go over the top when walking around
Green people organic baby suncream (it's not 100% possible to keep them out of the sun 12hours a day so I used this to put my mind at rest)
Very little clothing needed for the day, mainly just put him in sleeveless vests as sweaty naked babies are slippery. Although aircon at night meant he slept in a babygro and vest as normal with a swaddle.
Long sunsuit and hat, and swim nappies
Took our own travel cot as like a pp I wasn't keen on him sleeping in an old crib/cot.
Calpol/nurofen and thermometer just incase, and maybe check where the nearest drs is.
Check travel insurance is all valid for baby too.