Lessons in: Traveling with Babe

My daughter is 15 months and has already taken her 31st flight. Here's my advice for travel with babies.

To preface: my husband’s and my love language is travel and adventure. We’ve probably seen more of the world together than many people do in a lifetime. There were years when we spent as many days on the road as we did at home.

One of my biggest internal battles when I knew we were going to have a baby was figuring out how to slow down without losing the wanderlust we both love and that had also become such a big part of our work. I knew I’d have to create a new normal around traveling with a baby, no matter the struggles, if I wanted to keep our lifestyle and avoid the FOMO of my husband experiencing it all without us.

So, no surprise when we took our little one on a cross-country flight at just 2.5 months old. Thank God for the sage advice from veteran moms: travel early, while they’re tiny and still sleep anywhere and everywhere. So let me repeat—don’t wait until they’re older. Go now, and enjoy sipping wine at dinner with a little nugget fast asleep in your arms.

Pictured here after her first international flight. Celebrating our wedding anniversary in the same place we were married a year before. Truly so special!

But now that we have traveled fairly constantly in my daughter’s first year I will break down the pro-tips and lessons learned from all the stages.

2 - 4 months: The best time! Even though it feels overwhelming when you’re still in the throes of new parenthood, this is actually the easiest stage to travel with a baby. I know it feels like your little one is growing and advancing by the day, but in reality they’re still just a tiny bean content with little stimulation and sleeping most of the time. The vibration and hum of a flight acts like a natural lullaby. And if you’re breastfeeding, it’s even more convenient.

We found this age to be ideal for traveling because we could still enjoy each other. My husband and I could sneak in quiet moments, have lingering dinner chats, and spend cozy evenings with a sleeping baby in our arms. I could even lay her next to me and get some reading in the sun without worrying about her rolling away.

Looking back, my biggest fear as a first-time mom traveling so early was that she might get sick or need something from her routine that I couldn’t provide on the spot. And yes—both happened. At 3 months, we took her to Europe. She was an absolute dream, but she did catch her first sickness (from my husband, once we were back home), and I didn’t bring enough of her preferred wipes.

The wipe fiasco taught me two things: let go when things don’t go perfectly, and how to be better prepared next time. It was surprisingly difficult to find fragrance-free wipes similar to the ones we use at home while abroad in coastal Italy. Picture me running into tiny pharmacies, screenshotting ingredient lists, and Google-translating labels with no luck.

That’s when I landed on my first rule of traveling with kids: bring plenty of your non-negotiables—wipes, diapers, creams, a favorite toy, or formula if you use it. But the random extras you imagine might be useful (for me, a tummy time mat and an infant life jacket)? Leave those behind.

The best way I’ve figured out what we actually need (and what we don’t) has been pure trial and error. That’s why I highly recommend doing a short “practice trip” before any big international or extended one. It gives you a chance to see how your baby handles takeoff and landing, what comforts they really want when you’re out of the house, and which items end up being dead weight.

My rule of thumb: if you won’t use it at least half the time, don’t pack it. Case in point — my infant life jacket. I bought it, lugged it around for two weeks straight, and never once used it. My husband still gives me grief about it.

Now the Doona. Many parents swear by it and use it daily, while others go for a more complex travel system. For us, it was strictly a travel item and I have a love/hate relationship with it.

If you plan to travel while your baby is very young, honestly, just invest in it. There’s nothing else on the market that’s as convenient for an all-in-one system, especially in cities. But my daughter hates the Doona. Now that she’s older, we prefer to bring a compact stroller she’s happy in—one she’ll even nap in comfortably—rather than deal with the folding, gate-checking, and airport chaos that comes with the Doona.

On recent trips, we’ve opted for car services with car seats, or trains where she can sit in my lap. Moving forward, I think we’ll just gate-check her toddler car seat and continue carrying on our travel stroller. Our favorite is the Cybex Coya

And one final note on why this stage of babyhood is the sweet spot for travel: it’s right before the dreaded first big sleep regression. Jet lag isn’t as disruptive, and babies are still flexible, sleeping when they need to rather than sticking to a rigid schedule. Of course, if you’re one of the rare few who already has a sleep-trained baby, buckle up and enjoy your first wave of sleep chaos while the rest of us are just rolling with it.

5 - 7 Months: This stage was the hardest for us in the first year. Of course, every baby’s timing is different, but once my daughter became mobile (she was crawling everywhere by five months), travel became more of a mission. It’s that awkward phase when they crave independence but don’t yet have the tools to manage it.

During this time, I still traveled quite a bit with her—work trips to New York and Miami, a vacation in Mexico, skiing in Utah, and a few other quick getaways. But she hated the car seat, which made any car travel miserable. I vividly remember one New York trip: a cross-country flight that got delayed, followed by a rental car and a three-hour drive. About halfway through, she was screaming, I was crying, and we ended up pulled over on the side of the road with me trying to nurse her just to calm us both down. That was the one and only time I said out loud, “I will never do this again.”

Looking back now, I think this stage felt especially difficult because I was a first-time mom. It was my very first truly challenging phase of parenting. Sleep was harder, she was opinionated and stubborn without any real way to communicate, and while she was curious and eager to explore, she also needed constant attention and quite literally, hand-holding.

The only travel essentials that really mattered during this phase were the things she already loved at home: her favorite books, flash cards, stuffed animals… basically anything that brought her calm and joy.

6+ Months starting solids adds another layer to travel. I was very intentional (and a little high-maintenance) when introducing solids with my daughter. I traveled with frozen meat stock, and even had her very particular 24-hour fermented yogurt overnighted to wherever we were staying.

That said, if your baby is still breastfeeding, don’t stress too much. You can keep it simple with easy, nutrient-rich foods like avocado or egg yolks—both of which are fairly easy to find in good quality just about anywhere.

When people say “the first year is just for fun,” they mean it. Try to take the pressure off. Once your baby doesn’t feel like such a fragile little being, you’ll naturally become more comfortable sharing bits of what you’re eating. And in turn, they’ll start to become more flexible eaters too.

8-12 Months things really start to get easier. Babies are more mobile, less fragile, and their personalities begin to shine through. The travel we did during this stage brought me the most joy so far. It was everything I had dreamed of when I pictured her seeing the world.

She was curious and engaged: interacting with other children, gazing out the windows of cars, planes, and trains, and showing a hunger for adventure all her own. Watching her take it all in was pure magic.

Of course, with that came a few new challenges like mealtimes becoming more complicated, and she needed more stimulation. Parenting on the road became a tap-in/tap-out situation so each of us could get a breather. But even with the extra effort, I finally felt like we were coming out of the thick of the chaos. For the first time, I could really picture what our future of traveling as a family might look like.

12-15+ Months only gets better from here. Friends tell me that 2.5 is the golden age for traveling with little ones, and I can already see why. Although she’s as busy as can be running, never walking, she’s so much fun. She can start to communicate what she wants to do, what she likes (and doesn’t like), and she fully understands what’s going on around her. Honestly, I swear she sleeps best in a hotel room.

That said, now that she’s older and needs more stimulation to stay entertained while traveling, I’ve learned to always keep a few go-to favorites on hand:

Sicker Book / Peekaboo Interactive Book / Doodle Board / Organic Lovey / Fidget Spinner Toy / Montessori Busy Board

And when all else fails I now let her watch Little Bear (low stimulation and sweet story telling TV show from the 90s) on an iPad attached to the seat in front of us. It doesn’t always last too long but it helps in meltdowns.

Other mommy on the go favs (all super clean and non toxic): Honest Disinfecting Wipes, EcoLunchBox(on sale) BruMate Mini Bottle, Coterie travel wipe packs, HealthyBaby face and nose wipes (i use on hands too), Changing pad kit, Mushie silicone mats, Primally Pure stick SPF

In conclusion, just travel! While the chaos is exactly that—chaos. I can’t express enough the joy of watching your little family make memories and see the world together. I like to remind myself that hard moments happen even in the safety of your own home, so why not experience the meltdowns or sleepless nights with a view…and maybe a cocktail in hand?