Our baby travel outtakes & the lessons we’ve learnt 

We are relatively lucky that in all our years of travelling we have not had too many big disasters. One of the worst was losing our luggage in Uganda before going gorilla trekking! The abundance of wine we were travelling with helped but it taught us always to have the essentials in our hand luggage! Oh and travelling with wine is always a good idea! You can read more about our disastrous Ugandan luggage experience here!

Wine helped drown our sorrows in Uganda – explains the blurry camera work!

But now we have a baby a whole new world of travel worry and outtakes open up! And I think it’s only fair to talk about them as I know some family travel bloggers can be guilty of only showing the good bits. So without further ado here are our travel outtakes and the lessons we have learnt from travelling with a baby!

Fair warning: there will be a lot of poo in this post!

When travelling with a baby I always dread the airports. Some airports are great – I’m looking at you Doha and Barcelona! But we have had some terrible experiences at airports. Some are just downright Unhelpful airports! When travelling solo at Birmingham, we were left to struggle on our own in a big queue and on another occasion they took over 30 minutes checking the babies food while the baby was screaming with hunger! Top tip prepare for the worst and make sure you feed baby before going through security just in case there are big queues and don’t be afraid to ask for help if you are travelling solo with a baby. You can read more about our worst airport experience here!

The plane poo explosion! 

Babies bowels are – I’m sure linked to the seatbelt sign. As soon as we are going down and can no longer move little lady always seems to give us a big and leaky present!

But we’ve learnt that Spare clothes are not just needed for the baby! There is nothing worse than the seatbelt sign going on and hearing that all too familiar grunt followed by a sudden dampness on your top!

One of the most memorable if not planned aspects of baby travel has been having to do an impromptu feed and change in St. Peter’s square in the rain. Not timing feeds right might seem like a disaster but actually is one of my fondest memories of our trip to the Vatican. Not many people can say they got naked in St. Peter’s square and got away with it!

Impromptu feed in St. Peter’s

Top tip be flexible and go with the flow! Baby travel is all about flexibility and slow travel!

Keeping in the Italian theme – the worst of all our baby travel experiences has to be experiencing an earthquake in Rome.  I’d never experienced an earthquake before and it was terrifying. Luckily Wandermust daddy knew all the info about what to do and made sure Baby E had safe sleeping arrangement for the night! The hotel was also great checking on all the guests.

Pre earthquake – before we had to move away from things in walls and ceiling

Top tip make sure you read up on safety advice before travelling anywhere with risks of earthquakes. This is important for everyone not just for those travelling with children!

Before we had the baby to us the accomodation was somewhere we just slept in but now we have a baby the accomodation is more important. We have had some great experiences and some not so good. Our worst was having a hotel that was loud and unfriendly. (You can read our full review of the hotel Miramar here)

Our worst hotel experience at hotel Miramar

Top tip make sure you think about new requirements like a tranquil setting even in the city! Also remember that you will probably be travelling with more stuff so make sure you book big enough accomodation (you may also be interested in our guide to picking the right cruise cabin for your family).

Before being a mum I would have said my worst nightmare would have been forced to eat Macdonalds on a luxury city break. But this is what happened on pur recent trip to Stockholm. The baby just did not want to go back in the sleep suit and I could just tell teh evening was going to be a non starter. After an earlier bad experience with room service Wandermust Daddy went on the hunt for food. All he could find was a MacDonalds. Now some of you may see this as a wasted evening but it was one of my favourite memories of the trip. It wasn’t a photo opportunity but we spent a lovely evening as a family playing on our massive King sized bed and I wouldn’t change that memory for anything!

Illness  is the biggest worry of any family traveller. We always check the NHS fit for travel website before we go to make sure we always know it is baby suitable. And we have been lucky so far in that our baby has not got ill while away yet but it’s important to know what to do in these situations and know where and what you would do.
While our baby hasn’t been ill while away she has been ill before we were due to go on holiday which meant we had to cancel. This is probably our biggest travel change and disaster we have had so far. Someday I’ll get chance to go back in the Seychelles – sob!  Top tip –As a couple we would just go but you can’t with a baby. Now we only buy refundable rates. We are still waiting for plane fares to be returned to us via insurance while the refundable hotel rate was returned immediately. For slightly extra we find it’s worth having this flexibility!

Though we have had some minor travel blips in our first ten months of travelling with a baby but at the end of the day travelling with my baby still beats any day of travelling without her! For more about why we enjoying travelling with a baby check out our post here