As a parent, you may have to travel with your baby on short and long trips. This would mean taking your baby away from cozy, familiar surroundings in to new places with which your baby is not familiar. This can turn out to be a stressful experience for you as well as for your baby.
While traveling with your baby, plan early. Gather as much information as possible and try to cut down the inevitable uncertainties that go with any most travel plans and get ready to solve any problem while traveling with baby.
These simple guidelines can make travel an enjoyable and pleasant experience for yourself and fun for your baby:
• Try to plan your trip well in advance. This will minimize hassles such as arrangements for boarding, lodging, destination breaks etc.
• Make a checklist of the baby items you will need to carry with you on the trip and stock up on these in advance.
• Carry diapers and wipes. You may need more of these than you think.
• Have a back up plan in place, in case you are not able to stick to the original arrangements you made while planning the trip.
• Schedule your trip to avoid inconvenient travel timings. Your baby will be most comfortable when its routine feeding, sleeping and waking time is only minimally disturbed.
• Avoid traveling to destinations where medical help may not be readily available.
• Avoid long-drawn out trips. Try to stick to the most comfortable modes of travel available.
• If possible, avoid traveling with your baby to places you are not familiar with.
By: P Banas
Traveling with Homemade Baby Food is easier than you may think. At the same time, it does take some pre-planning and calculation. Depending on where you are going, how long you are staying and what types of “creature comforts” will be available, you may not have to rely on a single ounce of commercial baby food.
A good hint that will help ease traveling with baby – with or without homemade baby food, is to try to serve some meals at room temperature. Serving meals at room temperature will allow your baby to become accustomed to food that is not “hot”. By offering some meals at room temperature, you never have to worry about a meal being rejected because it is not heated! This will leave you free to plan your day trips and journeys without having to search for a microwave at every corner. Here are a few tips:
Storage and Packing: Take along a mini-cooler packed full of the food cubes you will need. This will require you to plot out how many cubes of each particular food you will feed to your baby during the given time frame you will be away from home. If you have been using the freezer bag storage method – simply take out each freezer bag of food cubes and arrange in the cooler with ice packs. As the cubes are already frozen, they should be able to withstand a journey of 6 hours with minimal thawing.
How Foods will Travel:
Baby Food Cubes do travel well and may be thawed/heated as you do at home if appliances are available OR may be thawed over a gas stove or camp fire via the submersion method. If using a camp stove or camp fire – warm a pot of water over the fire and place the number/types of food cubes needed into a container that will not melt and thaw the cubes. Be sure to keep a close watch on the cubes as they are thawing so as to avoid overheating!
Cereals will also travel well and you may either take your ground grains and cook as needed or take cereal that has been frozen in ice trays and prepare as usual.
Fruits are a bit tricky when taking along on a vacation. Unless they are already pureed and frozen into cubes, be sure to purchase fruits that are “almost” ripe. If you take along fully ripened fruits, you may find they will rot or go bad before you are able to use them.
Vegetables will travel well and if you will be preparing them during your stay, we recommend peeling, and if possible, cutting/dicing prior to leaving your home. Store them in an airtight freezer bag and if possible, fill the bag with some water to help maintain freshness.
Dairy/Eggs should be of the dry powdered kind, especially if you will be camping and won’t have access to refrigeration. If you will have full refrigeration where you are going to be staying, purchase your needed dairy and eggs at your destination and point of stay.
Most Recommended Tools You May Need:
Manual Food Grinder will allow you to grind as you go! This is great for when you will be eating out in restaurants as well. You will be able to order fruits and veggies and grind them up fresh right there!
Extra Storage Containers/Freezer Bags for when you leave your quarters to go day-tripping. It is also good to have extras if you need to divide servings and save them for another feeding.
Whisk or Potato Masher in case you need to further mash or mix up foods to the right consistency.
If all of these Tips seem too overwhelming or cumbersome, don’t hesitate to pack jars of commercial baby food and boxes of commercial cereal. If you decide to go this route, we suggest serving your baby some commercial baby foods a week or so prior to your journey. There are babies that will refuse to eat commercial baby foods, especially if they have been brought-up thus far on only homemade baby food. You do not have to use only commercial during this time, simply offer either a fruit or veggie or cereal for one meal along with your homemade baby food.
Happy Traveling!
By: Margaret Meade
The definition of a travel system is a pushchair with a detachable carrycot and/or car seat.
A travel system is supposed to be a more economical way of buying a pushchair, separate car seat and carrycot.
If you have a car then you will need a car seat for your baby, so that’s the first step in deciding whether or not to buy a travel system. A carrycot can be used as an alternative to a Moses basket or crib for the baby to sleep in at night, so that’s a second step in your decision and of course you will need a pushchair to take your baby out and about – so a travel system is a good choice for you.
The car seat and the carrycot are both able to fit onto the pushchair frame by simply “clicking” into place. If your baby is sleeping in the car and you need to take him/her out then you can just lift the car seat out and click it onto your pushchair frame. If your baby is asleep in his/her carrycot in the house then, again, you can just click the carrycot onto the pushchair frame and not disturb your little one.
So, now you’ve decided to buy a travel system, but which one? Well it depends on whether you want a travel system with just a car seat or do you want a carrycot too? Travel systems without a carrycot start at around £100 up to around £600. With a carrycot then prices start at around £250 up to £950.
When you’ve decided which type of travel system you want, it’s time to decide on the actual one. How do you do that? The best way is to take a look at some pushchair stores online and see which ones appeal to you. Next so a search for reviews of those particular travel systems, opinions and facts from people who have used them are invaluable. You might like the look of a particular system, purchase it and then find out it’s really not what you wanted – doing your research first will save you time, hassle and money. Also go to a pushchair store that sells the system you’re considering and ask the assistant to show it to you, have a go yourself, ask questions, then decide if it’s the one for you.
By: Louise Prior