When is the earliest a newborn/baby can/should fly

[Wills]

I'm 7 months pregnant. We as a family are going through an awful lot at the moment. I'd really like to book a cheap getaway holiday for dh and my two daughters and son (due May 22). We have no money and my dd1 will be starting a new school in September. I suggested looking for something betweeen July and the first few days of September but dh is anti this as he feels little one (ds to be) will be too small for flying. That only leaves the October half term which means we'd have to fly further to find the kind of relaxing beach holiday that we soooo want. We'd rather not take dd1 out of school as she's starting a new school in a new area and we want her to be as settled as possible.

So.... is less than 3 months old too young to fly?

DD will be flying shortly at 2 months old. I probably wouldnt' be overly keen about a long haul flight at this age but a short flight should be fine.

Your main problem may be geting a passport in time!

there is another current thread on this and the opinion seemed to go in favour all things being equal with health of mother and baby

\link{http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=3&threadid=155071&stamp=060315095133\ link to other thread}

No, it's really easy when they're so young, especially if you're breastfeeding - no sterilising and you won't have weaned yet so no food to prepare; baby will sleep most of the time and can't crawl or run off.

It will be so much easier than this time next year.

We took dd abroad when she was 13 weeks to visit relatives, and we hardly noticed she was there. The following year was a different matter!

wills, I was just going to say re; passports but soupy beat me to it

If you dont want to fly have you thought about france we had some lovely holdays with Brittany ferries, you get crossing and a gite and it doesnt have to cost the earth. Theres some lovely beaches and its quite easy to find deserted ones even in the summer.

Re passports - we had a couple of first passports done for the children recently and they only took a week. Getting around to having the photos taken and countersigned however took me about 2 months

Because of where we live DS and I had to fly home from hospital when he was 3 days old! He was fine but the flight is only 30 minutes long.

im ex cabin crew i would check with airline most of them will not let an infant less than 2 weeks old fly, if you are flying with a baby try and pre book the bulkhead seats, some airlines have baby bassinets you can use during flight and the extra leg room makes life easier with all the bags

I'm planning to fly to see my family when DD will be 2 months - all my friends have told me how easy is to travel with very young baby, so I can't miss this oppurtunity!:)

Don't get me started on passports. The post office rejected three sets of photos of dd (one made by a professional photographer). We had to write to our MP who got in touch with the CEO of the passport agency before we got photo dilema sorted out (they fast tracked us, suddenly the photos were good enough, lol). However, the whole procedure took us 5 months ! Taking a photo of a newborn with all the current regulations is near on impossible (eyes open, mouth shut, head straight etc). ...and then they have the ruddy photo for five whole years. Which 5 yo still looks like a newborn. I don't get it.

Have heard that the are thinking about relaxing the regulations.

they have relaxed the regulations. There are 3 sets of regs, the full adult set, under 5s and under 6 months.

For a moment I thought this thread was about some bizarre new developmental milestone

Agreed over the photos. dd2's not got her eyes open - not really surprising as its the photo taken by someone on the ward 4hrs after she was born. Its a laugh though when we go through customs to think that they're looking at her then and comparing it to the happy 2.5 year she now - will be even funnier by the time she's 5.

no they can fly from anything as early as 7 days!!