We recently travelled to Cairns, Australia where my mother lives, its hot and the humidity is a killer! The thought of not only having our little girl in the heat, was a little off putting but also the first hurdle was more of a worry – Travelling with a 6 month old overseas!

We obtained a passport for her last year, now have you ever had to hold a 3 month old baby still for the camera and making sure that she doesn’t have any facial expression on her face at all – this is crazy, the lady behind the counter ended up photo shopping the photo to make it look normal and also something that would be excepted by the officials.

Now one good thing about travelling with her is that we can still take a 20kg luggage allowance for her and any excess of our’s will go in her, now don’t make the same mistake of thinking that she might be allowed an alcohol allowance – she isn’t.

So my wife basically packed up (again) everything but the kitchen sink, and it seemed like more. Now the trip has 2 stretches of travel to it, one from Wellington to Auckland, and then the other from Auckland to Cairns. The first one was fantastic and she loved it and didnt have any trouble with her ears we packed a few bottles and also pamol, rusks etc, the second one we had to make sure that she would also take off ok but also with the 5 + hours in between, that she should be able to sleep as her routine was going to be out!

She was very good getting to Cairns and had no problems taking off or landing, as we fed her a bottle both times! This proved to be the easiest part.

The thing that gets me is that you havet to carry so much stuff with a child and really the airport is getting stricter on the things that you can carry on! I find this a little worrying to be fair!

The bassinet in the plane that we have been allowed was big enough for her, but she wouldnt have a bar of it, its located just under a movie screen so occassionally when she got bored a leg or arm would move from left to right! Nice one Boeing – children really shouldnt be allowed on your planes should they – NOT!

Now since we managed to have a good flight over – we prematurely thought she had gotten her “air legs” as such well thats were it ends really. We left Cairns at 10.50pm on a Sunday night, poor little girl and we thought we were tired, she slept until 9pm then we got her up to get her ready for the airport, the flight was problematic in the fact that she would try to sleep for 10 minutes and then wake herself up and give everyone a small scream which was like waking the dead.

She didnt sleep the whole trip home and had 2 parents whom were getting slightly stroppy! and she basically stayed up until she got home which was around 8.30am into NZ.

We gave her milk on the decent into Auckland she was fine with that, but very tired. She didnt sleep much on the flight from Auckland to Wellington either, we got home and put her straight to bed she was a little bit upset but

So advice for travelling with babies:

1. Make sure you have 3-4 bottles available for take off and landing so they dont get sore ears.
2. Give them something to do, play with them if they are stroppy if they dont want to sleep they wont and theirfore you need to make sure they are looked after.
3. Make sure you get the seat behind business class that has the ability to put a cot up on the adjoining wall
4. Dont worry too much if your baby is crying just try to calm them down as best as you can
5. Make sure you travel with a partner so they can take turns looking after the baby and also sleeping
6. Ask a doctor about seditives for small children to help them sleep if your travelling along way
7. Make sure you have your nappy bag packed and everything is easy to get to because some airlines dont allow for taking food etc to be taken on board so make sure you check their policy first

Good Luck

- Scott

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