Flying & Traveling with a 10 Month Old

Sharing what worked for us on our trip to Arizona for Christmas! Hopefully someone else might find these tips helpful but more than anything we’ll probably need to refer to them ourselves again someday lol 😉

Basically I read a lot of various blogs, websites, & Instagram pages for all the info regarding traveling, particularly flying, with babies. Then we just set the bar low. Ha! Ron & I talked about a game plan but agreed that it all might go horribly and that IT WOULD BE OKAY! We knew we’d survive even if it was a painful few hours (spoiler: thank goodness it didn’t go horribly). Because we had the bar set low with minimal expectations, both Ron & I were pretty relaxed and not worried since we knew it was going to be whatever it would be. I think that Ro fed off our vibe a little bit here & he acted the same.

From the point of getting out of the car to walk in to the airport to the point of walking out & getting picked up, I used our baby carrier to lug Ro around. This allowed my hands to be free & since he was outward facing in front of me he was happy to see all the action. Going through security was a breeze with him like this and TSA did not even ask me to remove him from the carrier. I also carried his backpack/diaper bag while Ron had his own personal backpack & our single carry on, well plus we checked one bag. This was where having moved every 3 months as college students came in handy lol!!! We can pack pretty light & efficiently 😉

Once through security we planned out our time: nursing, eating (both for us & Ro), one last bathroom break & diaper change, etc. For each airport I just googled the airport + nursing room and very quickly found directions to designated rooms that were near the gates we were flying out of. They were nice little set ups and Ro even caught a nap before our flight out to Phoenix. We waited until near the end of boarding to get on in an effort to minimize the amount of time just sitting on a plane with a baby…So even though they invite families with small children to board as some of the first & we were assigned one of the earlier groups to board we chose to wait back. This obviously did risk that there might not be room for our carry on since overhead bins fill quickly which is why we made sure everything we might need for our flight was in our personal bags that could fit underneath the seats.

Very first thing when we sat down in our seats was pull out sanitizing wipes and wiped down as much as we could in sight lol! I sat in the window seat with Ro on my lap most of the time while Ron was in the middle seat. The window & blind provided some off & on entertainment as did the in seat screen – we hardly watch TV at home and very rarely use it to occupy Ronald so the screen really only held his attention because he could touch it and make the screen change, watching a movie holds his attention for less than 5 minutes. Otherwise for entertainment we had packed some of his favorites toys & books as well as bought a couple new toys & books for him to explore. We packed his straw cup with water and various snacks too.

At take off I nursed Ro which ensured he was sucking/swallowing & relieving any ear pressure and he didn’t seem to have any problem. Since the descent can take quite a bit longer we just continuously shoveled snacks at him to keep him chewing & relieving that pressure lol. We like That’s It fruit bars which are only 2 ingredients, usually apple and one other fruit, since they are chewy and require some good chomping. We also had crackers & yogurt melts along with his straw cup filled with water.

The name of the game while flying was just moving from one distraction to the next! I also was able to get Ro to nap for a good portion of each flight so that helped pass the time and give us a break from having to entertain him lol! My general advice for flying or traveling with a baby would be to set your expectations low so that you don’t have too much pressure on anyone, bring a variety of new & favorites of both snacks & toys (and when you think you have enough snacks, bring a few more lol just in case), and lastly don’t worry about what other people might think of you flying with a baby. Keep calm, you got this!