How to Travel With a Baby (The MOST Overlooked Tips)

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Traveling with babies can be tough with just the thought of it can be overwhelming. Here’s not only how to travel with a baby, but some of the most overlooked baby traveling tips.

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How to Travel With a Baby (The MOST Overlooked Tips)

Traveling is one of those things that I’m always yearning to do more of, but with kids it’s sometimes more exhausting than anything. (Check out our full recap of our most recent Disney trip here!) I was worried before our recent trip to Orlando that I would feel like I needed a parents only, vacation from the vacation, but everything worked out pretty perfect in the end. But, it didn’t come without some research on my part during the planning stages and a few lessons that taught me how to travel with a baby. With these traveling with a baby tips, it will be easier than you probably ever thought. (I also have more travel tips here for the whole family!)

If you follow along on social media, you’ve been seeing an overhaul of pictures from our recent travels and I admit that I’m kinda going overboard. But in my defense, we had such a great time together and I feel so relieved that everything was as seamless as possible. Growing up, my parents budgeted and saved so that we could have a magical vacation each summer no matter how far or close to home we were and I’m happy that this summer (after skipping vacay last year because I was pregnant and worried about Zika) we were able to do the same.

Overlooked Tips For Traveling With a Baby

I’m not talking about the basics here. These tips helped ease our vacation and made everyday a little bit more magical (because they take away some major stress)!

Schedule flights around nap time.

First, if you’re like me, you start by searching for the cheapest flights possible because #budgets. So first, do just that: set a budget for what you want to spend on your flights and then search for flights that work with your babies nap times or sleep schedules. I think it might seem like a no brainer when traveling with a baby to schedule flights during nap time, but sometimes we get excited when we see a great flight deal and just forget. You will thank yourself later. Promise. For us, we flew to Orlando during her morning nap time (9;30am) and home around the time she would be going to bed (7:30pm). It helped tremendously because she actually slept most of the flights and everyone around us commended us on how well she behaved. That was a total #momwin.

Have all your baby gear shipped to the hotel.

This is my most important tip of all! I didn’t want to take up space in our luggage on our way there with diapers, plus swim diapers, and then formula and baby food – so I had it all shipped via Amazon to the hotel. Most hotels will have some sort of a receiving station, but check in advance. Ours had a fedex, but charged $10-15 per package to receive them (we have 2 packages total). Either way it saves so much luggage room and stress, so set a little bit of your budget aside when traveling with a baby and put it towards this. Also: our hotel didn’t offer breakfast so I got things like granola bars and stuff for the room.

Don’t be afraid to bring them to fancy dinner, if need be.

Honestly, we really wanted one nice dinner out and B wasn’t having any parts of it. So we left him in the hotel room for a little over an hour, while we took Blake to a 9pm reservation in the conjoining hotel. It was a very nice sit down restaurant, but because it’s attached to a very, very kid friendly hotel they were not only understanding, but accommodating of Blake. She sat and ate lemons and bread and enjoyed herself and so did Chris and I. It was a win/win.

Let them nap when they want.

I could sit her and recommend that you stick to their routines, but we both know that it’s really, really hard to make that happen. We brought our favorite stroller with us along for the ride and let Blake sleep whenever she needed to while we were out throughout the day. Not trying to worry or accommodate nap times let us all relax a bit, it also helped me live in the moment and be much more present instead of worrying.

Let the poolside restaurant/bar become your new BFF.

Instead of trying to get everyone dressed and showered mid-day and even sometimes for dinner, I suggest just embracing the pool or beachside restaurant and bar. We had servers come around all day to bring us drinks and food and it made everything so much easer. I also suggest giving your server a nice tip and they will be extra attentive, especially for all the extra modifications and kid-friendly requests that we had for them (i.e. Branden’s daily pina colada).

Look into “linger longer” packages if you need a later check-out.

This ended up being the second biggest win for me on our trip. We had a flight coming home scheduled for 7:30pm, but checkout was supposed to be 11am. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do all day with the kids during that time, so on the last day I inquired about a later checkout and sure enough, they offered one that let us stay until 5pm for only an extra $100, and also included a credit to the pool restaurant where I already knew we’d be having our lunch. Basically, that scored us an extra day!

Looking for more family travel tips?

I get it: traveling with a baby can be intimidating. It’s not the easiest things in the world, I know, but with these tips I really hope that you learn a thing or two and can ease some of the stress so that you can still travel and have fun as a family. These moments are so precious!

Fashionably Yours,

Allison