TRAVEL MUST HAVES FOR BABY
/I’m not sure if it was beginners luck, or the fact that Emerson is still a newborn, but we had a great experience on our very first road-trip. If you don’t follow me on Instagram, we recently traveled up north to my parents lakehouse with our then 7-week old baby. We stayed for about 2-weeks, and it was so nice to be able to slow-down, relax and spend some time with our family. I’m not going to lie, I was super nervous about not only traveling with a newborn, but how she would transition to a new environment (aka: how she would sleep). But honestly, it went way better than either Nathan or I could have anticipated! I will say, we left for this trip feeling super good about our packing job. We literally packed everything we thought we needed for Emerson, and we ended up using everything. Trust me, if you would have seen our car, you for sure would have thought we were a family of 5 , but hey, at least we were prepared. Babies might be tiny, and not truly need much, but I will say by bringing what we did we were truly able to relax and enjoy our time at the lake. So today I am going to share with you travel must haves for baby.
BABY ROAD-TRIP GEAR
I was extremely anxious about our 6 hour drive to the lake. Emerson hasn’t been in a car longer than 30 minutes since she was born, so I had no idea how she would do in a carseat for that length of time. I think the best decision we made, as far as our drive went, was to leave as soon as she went down to sleep for the evening and drive throughout the night. At that point, she was used to going longer stretches without eating during the night verses daytime, so that worked out really well. We knew going into the trip that we would have to stop after about 4-5 hours to feed her, but at least we didn’t have to compete with the daylight on waking her up before she was ready. As far as road-trip gear, I’ll say two words: Sound Machine. This is the portable sound machine that we used, and it’s a definite must-have if you are traveling via the car. Not only did we use it on our drive, but also multiple times on our trip when we were out and about, and wanted to cancel out the noise. Since we did have to stop and feed Emmie during our drive, we also packed this cooler with breastmilk for her bottles as well as drinks for us! I would also suggest making sure you have your diaper bag stocked and well organized, that way when you do stop, you can do the diaper change easily without having to scramble looking for what you need. I have this one, and highly recommend! You can CLICK HERE to receive 25% off if you’re interested.
BABY SLEEP TRAVEL GEAR
Let’s talk about the most important part of the trip, making sure your baby sleeps at night in a new room. To ensure Emmie made a smooth transition, we packed everything that we use for her at nighttime in our home, which included this bassinet. Now I wouldn’t necessarily recommend traveling with this bassinet because it is HEAVY, takes up a lot of space and honestly, isn’t made for travel at all. However, it is what Emmie was accustomed to sleeping in during the night and for most of her naps, and I didn’t want to mess with the good thing we had going ( I know you mamas can relate on that one, right??). As she gets older we will use a pack n’ play with a nice mattress. We also brought this sound machine that we love, as well as our Owlet monitor for that extra piece of mind. My parents had recently converted one of their spare bedrooms into a nursery for Emmie, so fortunately we didn’t have to worry about bringing anything other than these couple of items. I will say, if you are traveling during the summer months you may want to look into packing paper black out shades if the room baby will be sleeping in gets a lot of daylight. We had these neutral blackout curtains in the lakehouse nursery, and they worked pretty well, but in the future I will bring these paper shades to make it extra dark.
GENERAL GEAR FOR BABY
I knew we’d be taking plenty of walks on our trip, so our stroller was another must. My parents had this stroller at their house, but we love the bassinet feature of ours so I’m glad we ended up bringing ours. It was pretty hot on our trip, so we used this portable mini-fan a lot to keep Emmie nice and cool. We would attach it to the stroller during our walks, and also brought it with us out on the boat when there wasn’t a good breeze. Speaking of the boat, if you’re going to be on or near any body of water, you’re going to need an infant lifejacket as well. While we were out on the lake, I kept Emerson under the boat canopy, and we also used a simple umbrella for extra sun-protection and to help keep her cool.
FOR FEEDING
Depending on if you’re breast or bottle-feeding, you’ll need to bring what you need! I am still pumping so I brought my pump and pump parts as well as all the other supplies to bottle feed such as bottles, a drying rack, a bottle brush and the dish soap that we like to use.
FOR LOUNGING
When you are inside hanging out, you’re going to want to have a place to put baby unless you plan on holding/wearing the entire time. We brought this infant lounger, but honestly, we maybe only used it once or twice. So unless your baby loves a lounger, I think this is an item you could skip. Thankfully, my parents had a rocking play chair for Emerson, and she LOVED it! You better believe that it went back home with us lol. And as soon as we got home I ordered this bouncer as another option for Emerson to sit and hang out in. I also brought a wrap-style carrier with us, which I used a couple times when Emmie was fussy in the evenings and just wanted to be held. Looking back, I wish I would have brought this play gym for Emerson to hang out in because she loves this thing! This playmat looks like another fun option for baby and we are thinking of purchasing this one when she gets a little bit bigger!
There ya have it! I hope this post was helpful, and Happy Traveling with your little one!