6 week old baby & holiday

[mrkb]

I know that this is probably madness but it's been booked since pre-covid so just looking to see what advice is out there! A bit of a long one so TIA if you read it through! And we are going ahead with this foolish adventure so please no posts telling us it's a stupid idea - I'm already aware it will be a challenge!

My parents booked a holiday villa in France 2 years ago and, due to covid, it's now happening this summer. I'm now due to have my first baby about 6 weeks before the holiday (assuming they're on time!).

We (i.e. DH) will be driving down, as will my parents, so have a lot of scope for bringing things. We have bought a 'lie-flat' car seat and are doing the journey over 2 days each way so that we can be making plenty of stops. Our pram bassinet is safe for overnight sleep - will this be okay for the (2 week) holiday or should we also be trying to pack up our snüzpod too? We do have the space but obviously it's a bit bulky.

The other main worry I have is passports! I believe we can get the fast track service from what I've read but how fast track is this at the moment? I've seen there are nightmare delays with passports generally!

Finally, what might we not be thinking about bringing/preparing that will be relevant to the fact that the baby is only going to be around 6 weeks old?

Any advice gratefully received :)

@sm40

My friend gets dh to drive to France with the stuff and then she flies with the toddler!! This might be useful even if one way! Small babies are very flight portable!

Came here to suggest this. If we are visiting my DM, DH will often drive with stuff and DS and I will fly or get the train. But my DS always has been a bit of a car screamer from hours old 😬

Used the fast-track passport service for my baby last week with no problems. The passport is guaranteed to arrive within a week of the appointment and it came a day early

I took ds to France at 5 weeks (we flew) - the only issue I had was that I got mastitis on arrival from not feeding him often enough ( we were travelling and he was asleep). He was 2 days old on his passport photo, I remember being post partum under a blanket in the booth at the post office trying to hold him up!!

@MamaOh It went really well! We got an appointment to register the birth for just before 2 weeks after she was born and once we had that appointment booked we immediately booked a fast track appointment for 3 days later so had her passport through before she was 3 weeks old - her photo looks like a mugshot 😅

We told our GP that we would be away between 6-8 weeks and they said that was fine and we just got her check & vaccinations when when we got back. Also I had an ELCS but recovered really well so that wasn't an issue at all for me (I appreciate that this wouldn't be the case for everybody) - obviously by 6 weeks you're allowed to exercise again so could go for a swim :)

The actual travel was fine! We drove over 2 days and even though there was such bad traffic on day 2 meaning it was a 10 hour journey (including stops for feeding/stretching legs) she just slept in her car seat whenever we were driving - I think the vibrations of the car were really soothing for her. We're lucky that she's turned out to be a relatively easy baby - I can imagine it would have been much more challenging if she was a more difficult baby or didn't like her car seat.

We chose our pram (uppababy Cruz) because the bassinet was safe for overnight sleep so we didn't need a travel cot (she actually slept in it from birth - 9 weeks anyway because she refused to sleep in her snüzpod before then) and our car seat is the Nuna arra because it goes close to lie flat meaning she can be in it for around 2 hours safely. I don't really know if there is anything else that you 'need' other than what you are already using at home (eg I express so that DH can do a bottle before bed and so brought pump/bottles/steriliser but obv not needed if you're not doing that).

We we're staying in a villa which helped because it was just us & family so could do everything at our own pace and not worry about annoying other people or being stuck in a hotel room - there were 2 days where she was cluster feeding and I didn't get out much 😅 but other than that it was actually such a great holiday and I know we'll look back on it as a really special time - my parents got to see her grow over those two weeks - it really felt like she changed from a newborn to a baby around week 7 and she became so much more alert and interested in things - might be worth taking some baby toys or tummy time books if you have any as she started to focus on & enjoy those around that mark. My parents were also obviously on hand to help out which was great for DH and I to get a bit of time to ourselves too. I'm so glad we did it!

Happy to answer any more specific questions if I can :) and would definitely recommend going- even if it had been more difficult I think I would still have been glad to have gone because now we have such lovely memories and at the very least it's a change of scenery within the drudgery of newborn life!

Had a baby 10 weeks ago and the wait to register him was 6 weeks. Its not the same in every area but a lot have huge waits at the moment. When registering my little one the registrar said they are 2000 babies behind and some people had to wait 2 weeks to register a death. Its pretty bad.

As above maybe give your local one a call or go on line and see rhe wait. Hopefully yours isn't as bad as our area

Ignore my post- I just read the last post here!