FLYING WITH A ONE YEAR OLD | Tips, Tricks, & Mistakes to Avoid

Hey guys, welcome back to my channel or welcome to my channel if this is your first time here. My name is Megan, I am a 25-year-old mama to a one-year-old little boy named Rowan and I make motherhood and lifestyle videos. So if that sounds like it's up your alley, I'd love if you would click that subscribe button down below so we can be friends. Today we're talking about flying with a toddler. Matt and Rowan and I recently went on a trip to California to see my family and I got so many DMs on Instagram asking for tips on how to travel with a one-year-old. I am by no means a travel expert but what I am is an obsessive researcher. I don't know if it's just like leftover from my English major days but I like to do a lot of very thorough research. So I've compiled it all here so that you guys don't have to do it yourselves. And I'm just gonna talk about the tips that I have and what worked for us, what didn't work for us because we did make a few mistakes. So the first thing I will say is bring a baby carrier to the airport. We did this and it was a lifesaver. It was so much easier to like wrangle the bags and the car seat and get through the airport because Rowan was just like, you know, strapped to me. So I had both arms free. I mean, it was also really helpful getting through security. One tip that I have about this, which is a mistake that we made is don't bring a carrier that has metal rings. So we brought our Sakura Bloom and I absolutely love that carrier. It's so beautiful and comfortable but I couldn't go through security with it on. So I had to take it off and then go through security with him and then put it back on, which was kind of a pain in the butt. So I would recommend either the Ergo Baby Omni 360 I think is what it's called. Or if you have a smaller baby, the Solly Baby Wrap. I'll link both of those down below. They don't have any metal parts so you can actually just go through security with your baby still strapped to you. You just go through the metal detector instead of the like whoosh, whoosh machine. You know what I'm talking about? So that's definitely something I learned for next time. If you are flying during one of your baby's nap times, which probably pretty likely you are because by the time you like get to the airport and get through security and then fly and then get out and get your bags, like that's a long period of time. So if you have a young baby, they probably need to nap. The wrap or baby carrier is such a great thing to have with you. I would say that Rowan is pretty like set in his nap routine. Like he kind of needs like certain things to sleep. Dark room, noise machine, all of that. But he will sometimes sleep in a carrier. So what I did is I just put him in, I gave him a binky and then I walked the airport back and forth for like an hour and he fell asleep and he slept for like 35 minutes, which was amazing because then he wasn't miserable and screaming on the plane and we weren't worrying about like trying to get back by a certain time for his nap so he wouldn't be miserable. Something else that we did at the airport that I highly recommend that my friend Stephanie told me about was, you know when you are going to board the plane and they'll ask for first class and they ask for people with disabilities, young children who are traveling alone or families with kids two and under. Use that window, but not with your kiddo. I always thought that it was like to get them on the plane but what we use this for was to prep our seats. So when they asked for that before like general boarding, Matt went up with all of our stuff, explained, pointed to me and the baby and said, I'm gonna go on for them and set everything up. And he went onto the plane and he put all of our baggage away, he wiped everything down with his infectant wipes, he got the space all ready. And then Rowan and I were the last ones on the plane. Basically I gave him as much time to run around and get his wiggles out as possible. Also make sure your baby wears shoes to the airport. I know that probably goes without saying but I only really thought about it as an afterthought. So we got little leather like Oxfords for him. I'll link them down below too cause they're really great like first walking shoes. And he was, you know, walking around the airport trying not to get him to touch too much. So then everybody boarded and Rowan and I boarded last. This way he didn't have to sit there for 30 to 40 minutes while everybody boarded and he was on the plane for the least amount of time possible which was really great because he was super wiggly and he wanted to get down. Then when you're taking off, I recommend having something for your baby to suck on as you take off. So I just breastfed Rowan during takeoff. You could probably, I don't know if a pacifier would work. I think it would have to be a bottle because they do have to swallow because the purpose of this is to get their ears to pop because you can't really like logically explain to them like there's a pressure difference so you have to swallow or yawn so your ears will pop. So just make it easy on yourself and give them a bottle or breastfeed them as you're taking off. One tip that I have for preparing the space that we didn't think of ahead of time is to bring like painter's tape for the outlets if the airline that you're flying on has in-seat power. Rowan just wanted to stick his finger in like the USB and the outlets and we had a really hard time keeping him away from them. If we had just had like some tape to put on them, maybe he would have pulled the tape but I feel like eventually he would have maybe gotten bored with it. We like really taped it up well so he couldn't really access it. We did straight up disinfect the floor so he could like walk around in front of our seats. And another tip that I have, if you can, I realize this is definitely very privileged, but it's upgrade to premium class if you can. It was like $40 for us, I think it was like 39 and it gives you way more leg room which, you know, isn't the biggest deal in the world but it is when you have a baby because then he had room to kind of play around us. We didn't let him get down too much just because, you know, the seatbelt sign and all of that but when he needed to stretch his legs, it was a godsend. Premium class also often gives you a free drink which is a great coping mechanism for flying with a toddler. I'm kidding, but not really, but I'm kidding. You may have heard this one before but I think it bears repeating because it is important is to bring new toys onto the plane that your baby has never seen before. This can literally just be like the dollar store. Like go and spend $5 at the dollar store and buy five new toys for them. This kept him entertained so much longer than if we had brought toys that he already knew because he had to figure them out and he was like fascinated with them for a while. So we did like those magic ink coloring books that I got in the dollar section at Target and one of those silicone like little bubble popping things. We also brought a bath toy where you would like pull the tail of it and the fins would swim just because it was fun for him to pull and watch him move. Definitely recommend picking up some new toys to keep their interest for a little longer. Another mistake that we made was we brought an extra outfit for the baby which definitely do that in case something happens because if your luggage is checked and you don't have access to it and your baby poops on him or herself, nightmare. I would also recommend bringing a change of outfit for you because you get peed or pooped or spit up on and then you have to sit in it for the rest of the plane ride. I can tell you from personal experience, not great. Rowan blew out on me, which is nuts because he hasn't had a blowout in months and months. So I don't know what happened there but I was able to get him all changed and clean and good to go. But I didn't have a change for myself so I had to sit with poop on my pants for the rest of the two hours of the plane ride. Awesome, we love to see. Something else that you can do to try to get more room for your toddler and this is a little bit risky so proceed with caution but you can book both the aisle and the window seat if there's two of you flying like you and your husband or wife or partner and don't book the middle seat because it's more likely that that middle seat won't get booked and you'll have a whole row to yourself. Again, proceed with caution. It worked for us on our first leg of the trip so we had a whole row to ourselves but on the second leg of the trip, we didn't do that so we ended up with a seatmate who thankfully was cool. If you have a really, really, really young baby, I would recommend packing little care packages for the people around you with some earplugs and some candy and a little note explaining like, hey, we have a really young baby, sorry. We didn't do this because we didn't think Rowan would be screaming a ton but if he was younger, we definitely would have because I think it would have just eased the tension and like made me feel less nervous about him freaking out because then at least you're acknowledging it and maybe you won't be so embarrassed because you're like, we're trying our best and everybody knows it. At the end of the day though, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. I recommend downloading your kid's favorite show on YouTube or Netflix or whatever. We did Cocomelon and we did use it and I have no shame, Rowan gets almost no TV time but on the plane, I was like, you can watch as much Cocomelon as you want to. He's never interested in TV for more than like 15 minutes at a time but still, 15 minutes is 15 minutes. Also, unlimited snacks. We had puffs and we had yogurt drops and one of the things that we did is we took that little like bubble silicone popper thing. Hopefully you know what I'm talking about. It's supposed to be like permanent bubble wrap popping. They sell them at Target and also a lot of other places but we got ours at Target and I would put the snacks in each little pocket and he went through them much more slowly because he had to like scoop and like pinch them out and so that kept him distracted for longer. And then my last tip is if your baby is trying to get down like obsessively, Rowan was just like, dad, dad, dad. He just really wanted down and he wanted to crawl and explore the plane which he obviously couldn't do. Put them in your lap and put your tray table down. Not that it's gonna necessarily keep them in place but it at least gives them a visual barrier of like, oh, I'm supposed to stay here. We would prop the toys or the snacks or the iPad or whatever up on the tray table so he was like sitting like at a dining table and that helped us distract him when he really wanted to get down to the floor. Honestly, our flights were fairly painless except for the getting pooped on part. He wasn't like screaming. We kept him pretty entertained which I was super happy with. Remains to be seen how he'll do on a longer flight so if you have any tips for flying with a toddler, please leave them in the comments because I need the help too. But I hope that this video was helpful to any of you guys who are planning on flying for the first time soon. I know it's daunting. Just remember that no matter how badly it goes, eventually you will land. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. I love you a lot and I will see you all in my next one. Bye.