If this is your first flying with a newborn baby, it can feel scary! You’re trapped on a plane, surrounded by strangers, and you have your little baby who may or may not be equally as excited as you to be flying. There is this pressure to keep our babies and children silent so that we don’t disturb others during their travel (which is a whole conversation on its own).
Remember, your baby and children are allowed to be heard and exist in public spaces!!
Let’s explore a few ways for flying with a baby bit easier!
Flying With a Baby: 6 Ways to Fly Easier
We may not be able to avoid flying, nor should we avoid it if it’s the best way of traveling for you and your family!
The good news is that babies are easy to travel with (in comparison to a toddler)! They just need food, comfort, and sleep to be happy on a flight.
6 Tips:
- Have your baby’s food readily available
- Feed baby on take-off and initial descent (swallowing helps with their ear pressure)
- Baby wear on and off the flight, plus during naps
- Gate check your stroller so you can use it between flights
- Use a bassinet stroller attachment for baby to wiggle between flights
- Bring extra everything for your baby (and yourself)
- If interested in toys, bring a few favorites! We found a neck pillow is a great impromptu baby lounge pillow too!
- Accept that they are a baby!
1. Feed Your Baby On Demand!
Newborns are easy: just feed them and they’re happy! So, we need to make sure however you feed your baby is easily accessible!
If you are breastfeeding, wear clothes that are easy to nurse in. If you feel more comfortable covering up, have your nursing cover handy!
If you are bottle feeding, ensure your supplies are easily accessible or have a bottle prepped for if baby gets hungry or fussier!
If baby isn’t hungry but wants to nurse or comfort, a pacifier may be a helpful tool to use! We don’t normally use pacifiers for our babies, but we find that while traveling having one or two handy can help soothe our baby when they are uncomfortable from the travel.
Feed your baby during take-off and initial descent to help with their ears! Drinking can help equalize the pressure to resolve the pain in our ears! Swallowing helps to equalize the pressure!
If you are in the airport and want more privacy while feeding your baby, you can look for a private mother’s room! All airports in the United States are federally required to have a private lactation room for mothers. A common one that I see is Mamava. You can download their app to locate one in your airport!
2. Baby Wearing!
Baby-wearing is one of my favorite ways to travel with a newborn! Benefits of babywearing while traveling:
- Easier to hold baby getting on and off the plane when you cant have a stroller
- Allows you to secure them to your body during the flight so your hands are free to tend to other kids or eat/drink/entertain yourself!
- Provides comfort for them during a potentially stressful time for them!
You normally need to take baby out of the carrier during take off and landing, but during the actual flight you can wear them so they can nap while your hands are free!
After I gate check the stroller, I will baby wear onto and off of the place + during naps!
3. Consider bringing a stroller!
You can gate check your stroller for free! This means you can bring your stroller to your gate, and allow your baby to hang out in it until you need to board. Prior to your flight, head to the customer service desk at your gate to ask for a gate check bagging tag.
When using a stroller consider:
- Using a bassinet attachment (a collapsable one) so baby can wiggle around in between your flights
- Use a stroller bag to store the stroller in when you gate-check it. We have had our stroller broken after gate-checking it, so we realize how important having a protective bag for our stroller is!
Our favorite stroller is the Uppa Baby Vista 2! We love it because you can add extra seats and a kickboard for siblings too! We also invested in the stroller bag and were impressed with how heavy-duty and protective the bag is!
4. Bring Extra EVERYTHING
During our last flight, Sophie randomly threw up all her milk all over the both of us. And I was so glad that I had packed extra clothes for the BOTH of us!
Bring extra of EVERYTHING so that you aren’t waiting for your checked bag to reset!
I have A LOT when we travel in my carry-on bag and you may find it’s too much for you!
On our last flight, we ended up missing our connecting flight and were delayed until the nexy day!
Luckily, we got our checked bags back but had our bags not been returned to us, I was lucky to have had extras in our carry-on that would have lasted us til the next day!
Things I bring for our carry-on bags:
- Enough diapers for 2 days in case we lose our bag
- Diaper wipes and balms
- 2-3 muslin blankets
- These are great as nursing covers if you prefer to be covered while nursing!
- I use these to keep Sophie warm and also to clean up spit up!
- If you are formula or bottle feeding, bring your supplies and lots of extra in case of plane delays or if you lose your bags!
- Extra clothes for both of you!
- I pack 3-4 outfits for my baby
- I pack 1 extra outfit for myself in case I am the end point of my baby’s spit-up or poop explosion.
- Some small toys as baby gets closer to 3-4 months and are more interested in toys!
- This past trip, we packed a few wooden rattles and crinkly paper for Sophie! She doesn’t grab them herself yet, but enjoyed us playing with it in her view!
- And I also pack extra clothes for my older kids (2 and 5 years old) and they each have a backpack of toys for the flights to entertain them! Read this blog for tips on traveling with older kids.
5. Bring Toys!
As your baby gets closer to 3-4 months, they may be more interested in toys! We will bring a few smaller toys that our baby has been interested in onto the flight with us.
Her current favorites are a stuffed animal, this black and white rattle toy (pictured) from Lovevery, and a wooden rattle toy from Lovevery.
We also found that a neck travel pillow works really well as an impromptu baby lounge pillow! We happened to have an extra seat in our row, so we put our baby in between us and she lounged on the pillow and played with her toys.
6. Patience: They are allowed to be a baby
And probably most important is that your baby is allowed to be a baby! It is unrealistic and unreasonable to expect our children to sit silently and not take up space in this world.
It is okay if your baby cries (even if it’s the entire flight), or if your toddler has a meltdown because they want to put their tray table down during takeoff.
Accepting that it is okay if our children take up space in this world, and if they make noise, can help us relax.
Sure, some people may be annoyed that they hear a baby crying, but crying is how our children communicate their needs! I would not tell someone who was verbally communicating their needs to be quiet because it was disturbing me!