This year for Christmas we were brave VERY brave to travel overseas with our 13 month old. I thought I would share our experience and how we tried to conquer jet lag. Notice I said tried.
Side note: One very important thing to remember when booking your ticket over seas is that you need to call the airline after you book online and add your lap child. You have to PAY 10% of your ticket cost when traveling with a lap child over seas. And NO this doesn't mean they get a meal too.
Jet Lag
One very smart thing that we did on the way over was to book our flight right at the time Little Grumpenkemper goes to bed every night. This worked out pretty well in our favor. He slept most of the flight over. One thing that we wished we had known about and didn't was that the fairly large planes have bassinets that you can use if you are in a bulk head seat. We took advantage of this on the way home. The bassinet just hooks into the wall and you don't have to deal with a baby on your lap. Our little one slept for 3 hrs of the 8 hr flight in the bassinet. So nice!!! It cost you a little more to get the bulkhead seat but its not bad and well worth it. Once the little one is up they have room to sit and play at your feet.
We arrived in Paris and my husband and I stayed awake it was 7 am Paris time. The baby actually stayed awake too with lots of new things to look at. We thought oh yeah we got this! There is no way he will stay awake tonight if he has been up all day. WRONG! He woke up at midnight after 2 hrs of sleep and was awake until 5 am. Not fun!!!
After two nights in a row like this I got on Google. I was sure I would find the cure. I just found a million other parents just like us with no answers. The only helpful thing we found to do was to make him wake up and eat when we ate and to eat as nutritiously as possible. Eventually he slept 13 hrs one night. We were so excited and thankful for the sleep. Unfortunately it didn't last. After a good nights sleep he was back at it wanting to wake up for the day at 2 am. Crawling off the bed and wanting to play.
The good news is he finally got consistent but it wasn't until about day 6 and we left on day 10. So if you are planning on taking your child just make sure you plan to lose out on sleep. We were fortunately so excited about our trip we were able to push through everyday on adrenaline.
The Stroller
One other thing we found challenging and yet a saving grace at the same time was the stroller. The challenge was fitting into small cafes' with a big stroller. Almost 95% of places to dine are very small. At night we found it easier to park the stroller at the hotel and just carry him in the Ergo and not go terribly far. We wished that we would have brought our bike lock then we could have locked it up outside.
Elevators can also be hard to navigate in Europe. They tend to be very tiny. There were a few times that the three of us and the stroller could not fit in the elevator in one trip. They are also hard to locate a lot of the time in places like the subway.
We traveled with our Bob. Such a great stroller, its so easy to push around. You don't feel like you have done a marathon after a day of travel. But I strongly advise traveling with a weather protector over any stroller. Its shields the baby from the rain while at the same time keeping them shielded from the wind and cold weather in the winter. The little one was so cozy behind his. It made us a little jealous at times.
The best thing about having a stroller was that a lot of times we were moved to the head of the line. One example is the Louvre. We were taken out of the extremely long entrance line and told to go right in through the exit. We were more than happy to go right in and not hang out in the cold. There were several times that this happened to us.
Food for Baby
A word of wisdom is to make sure you have snacks and drink for baby on the plane and for the hotel. Its not easy to get food for the little on a plane so make sure you bring a few different varieties. In the hotel make sure you snacks for a baby that wants to wake up at 2 in the morning and thinks its time for breakfast. It won't be easy to find a market open at that time of night.
Thank you for sharing the experience of your trip. It sounds like you were able to work around the challenges of family travel. Glad you had a good travel.
ReplyDelete