FIRST TIME FLYING WITH A 4 MONTH OLD BABY ¦ How it went + learn from our mistakes...

What's up guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. And if you are new here, then welcome for the very first time. Today we are taking our four month old on an airplane for the very first time. I feel like we've been doing so much travel recently with like long car rides and things like that. But today we are taking her on an actual airplane because we are flying out of province to go to a wedding this weekend. My husband is officiating a wedding for a couple in our church that we're really good friends with. And so we are excited to test Vivian out on a plane. She is currently four months old. I feel like I already said that, but I can't remember. So again, she's four months old and she travels really well in cars and things like that. Like we just did a seven hour drive, not straight. We like built in stops and things like that with her last weekend. And this weekend we're taking her on a plane. It's only a two hour flight. So I feel like it's a really good intro to just figuring out how to travel with a new baby and all of that fun stuff. You guys are gonna watch our experience and see like how it goes for us. Some of the things that we're doing along the way to try and make it easier. So I'll document some of that stuff too, but we're looking forward to seeing how it goes. And if any of that sounds interesting to you, then just keep on watching. I have like a travel changing mat and then everything in here is like emergency stuff for the plane. So like her clothes and everything are in our bag, but I have like birth certificate and her health card for traveling. And then I have like a cover for nursing her, all of the wipes really handy, diapers in here, some baby headphones just in case. But everything in here is basically what we would need to like survive the plane ride itself. Our flight leaves at 12.40 this afternoon, which is a really good time because it's like close to a feed. So I'm gonna try and feed her as we take off and then put her down for her nap. And it gets back at like 10.45 on the Sunday night. So I'll film both of the different experiences. The Sunday night is obviously gonna be a little bit crazier than today is, but right now she's getting loaded up into car seat and things like that. My friend Brittany is here and she's gonna take us to the airport so we can just leave the car here and not have to worry about any of that stuff. But we should probably get going because our flight is leaving soon and we gotta get to the airport. Hi baby. Say hello. Are you so excited? Your first plane ride? You've had some fun. Good girl. We made it. She did so well on the plane. We landed around, I think it was 4 p.m. like time here and 3 p.m. for us at home because there's a little bit of a time change. And then we went straight to the rehearsal dinner for the wedding tomorrow. So we just like zipped right from the airport to that and kind of hung out with everyone there and ate food. So we just got to our hotel now and are going to get ready for bed in a little bit. But I wanted to update you guys on how the flight went. So basically for takeoff and landing, she did really, really well. The only time that she cried was like right after I fed her before her nap. She was like really overtired at that point. I think was just kind of fighting it and also really wanting to be able to just look around and see everyone on the plane. So she fought that nap a little bit but she only cried for like two or three minutes before she like fell right to sleep and stayed asleep through the landing as well. So that was perfect. The thing that I think I didn't necessarily expect is a lot of people had kind of given me the preempt with like takeoff and stuff like that, that their ears to like help with the sensitivity that you should breastfeed them or you should bring a bottle. And essentially I was planning on breastfeeding but I brought a bottle just in case. And that's something that I often do when we're traveling. I call it like a comfort bottle and I'll take them to have it as like a in-between with breastfeeding if she's like being fussy and doesn't necessarily want it. I'll kind of give that in-between. Jared literally flushing the toilet in the background. So I'll use those in-between and I luckily had one with me because I, come here and join. I'm pooping, everybody does it. So I was planning on breastfeeding her during takeoff but the people, when they were doing like the explanation, they were all so nice to us, which is another thing. It was a budget airline, so I didn't know if it would be kind of like hit and miss with that, but the like whole team on the aircraft was really, really nice. But anyway, they came over to us at the beginning and explained like what we would do and how it would work. And they told me that essentially I needed to hold her in like the burp position. So kind of the position where it's like up, feet the mullet right now, like up over the shoulder like this. And so I couldn't feed her during takeoff. My only option was to give her the soother because like I wasn't able to do a bottle like that either. So I wasn't able to feed her during takeoff, which was kind of like a little bit tricky because I had literally timed her feeding and her nap for takeoff. And so like at that point I was like, oh gosh, like I can't feed her, I can't put her to sleep because then I'm gonna have to feed her. So during takeoff, there wasn't anything that I could do to like comfort her except for the soother. And she was already fussy at that point, but she took the soother. I just like patted her bum in that like burping position and she was okay for it. So she actually fell asleep during that, during takeoff. And then I had to wake her up to give her the bottle. I was planning on breastfeeding her, but she like, there was so much going on on the plane and she really wanted to look around at everything. So she was too distracted to breastfeed. And there was also like, I know, I understand that it's like a very natural thing and normal thing, but there was like a man, like literally two feet away from me, like very close by. And it was just like, it felt kind of weird. So I just ended up giving her the bottle and then feeding her like when we got off the plane. But you did so good, you were so good. She's a natural on there. And during landing, like my ears hurt so bad. So I was like, oh my gosh, like I hope she's okay. But she just slept through it the whole time. It honestly went so much better than I thought that it would. So that was really nice to just have that go well. What else, girl? What else did you think? We didn't even need any of your toys. We didn't even need them. A cool like hack that we learned is if you carry your or push your stroller in the car seat, like right up to the gate, instead of like paying to check it, it's free. Like we didn't even have to pay for the stroller and the car seat to come. I think car seats are generally included, but not all airlines will take strollers like free of charge the larger ones will, but budget ones usually don't. So we just pushed it right up to the gate and they put it on the plane for us. And then they had it ready for us when we got off. So that was really nice. Is there anything else that was like a special or notable thing that we did? I don't know. I also wore her up to the gate. Like I put the baby Bjorn carrier on and just carried her like that. Cause we had to have the stroller and the car seat like ready to be collapsed by the time that we boarded. But I think that's everything. Like it was honestly pretty smooth, pretty painless but we still have the flight home, don't we? And that one's really late at night. So you guys will have to keep watching to see how she does on that one. But we will report back tomorrow with our fun hotel party day. Ready? Watch out. Ready? Do your laugh. Do your cutie laugh. Good morning guys. We are hanging out in the hotel right now. The wedding was beautiful. We got home at like, or back to the hotel at around like 10. So that is very late for Vivian. And she stayed awake the entire time from the moment we left the hotel at 2 PM until 10. She napped for maybe a total of 30 minutes, like all together with like a 15 minute nap here and there. But like that was it. She just wanted to see people and hang out. And so she was exhausted last night and did a really great sleep. So now we're just hanging out in the hotel room and enjoying the chill time that we have together before we get onto the plane tonight, which is at 9.20 I think. And we get home at our time at 10.45. So this afternoon we're checking out of the hotel at one and then going to hang out with some of our friends that live in Nova Scotia, like in the Halifax area. So we're gonna go and visit them while we're here. And I think it's just been nice to just have a hardcore chill day coming out of last night and out of the rest of this weekend because it has been really busy. So we're enjoying a little bit of downtime here before we get back on the plane tonight. All right, we're here for our 10 PM flight back to Ontario. This little girl has been such a trooper on this trip. She's currently sleeping. I think right now it's like 7.45. So we just checked in and are getting ready to go hang out before boarding. She's fainting and she's fainting fast. She has not napped since probably 2 PM today. And yesterday she also did not nap from two to 10. So she's just wanting to see everything that's going on and then crashing hard in the evenings. And I'm really hoping that she'll be okay on this flight. Just going for removal and donning instructions. Please pay attention to the ordinance signs. And we made it. Okay, so now that we are home, I wanted to fill you guys in on how the rest of that flight went and just update you on some of the biggest things that we learned in the whole flying with a baby experience were. Because if I can help anyone, then that's great. So essentially on our way home, you guys saw that it took a little bit for Vivian to actually get down to sleep on that flight. I think it was less about her ears bugging her with takeoff or anything like that and more about the fact that she was exhausted. So I think I kind of updated you guys in the airport, but our flight didn't take off until I believe it was 9.20 and we weren't gonna land until like 11.45 p.m. our time. And at that point she had already missed so many of her naps during the day because we were on the go, coming out of the hotel, like visiting with friends, getting to the airport and she needed to be awake for all of that because we had to like take her out of the car seat and do all the stuff in the airport. So all in all, that time was just really hard for her to actually like manage and to fall asleep at an okay time. So it was tricky getting her down. Eventually Jared passed her to me. I calmed her down. He took her back and held her because the flight that we were on, like the seats were so close together that like where I was sitting, if I held her for more of it, her legs were literally like draping across to the side of the guy that was directly beside us. So that flight felt very long. It ended up being like two and a half hours and she was okay for landing and she was okay and went back like straight down to bed when she got home that night. So the rest of it went okay. But in terms of the things that I learned throughout the whole experience, I actually wrote down a list of four things that I feel like I would either do differently next time or say that would be really helpful for you guys to do if you are going to be flying with a baby soon. And the first thing is to book daytime flights. So the first flight that we booked during the day, we had like no problems with whatsoever. Vivian did a great job. She like took the soother during takeoff, no issues with that or landing and she just slept the entire time. The real issue that we had was the flight that came home in the evening, which I had just been talking about a little bit because it really was just thrown off with her sleep schedule at that point. So I feel like if we did both flights during the day, then she would have been able to like manage that with her nap schedule, shift things a little bit more and be slightly more flexible than she was able to be because the reality is there's just no scenario where she would be up as late as she was for that flight home. And that was just like an unfortunate thing because for us, there were no flights home coming from the airport that we were leaving from to the airport that we were arriving to on that day. Our only other alternative would really be to have like booked another hotel for the night and then come home in the morning, but that would have been a lot more money. So I mean, if you have to do it, it's not the end of the world. We did it and it worked, but it sucked. So I would definitely only book daytime flights in the future. The next thing that I would say that was really, really important for us was bringing a bottle. So Vivian is exclusively drinking my breast milk. She hasn't had formula or any other food at this point of her life, but sometimes we will give her a bottle and we introduce that when she was pretty young so that when we are in a pinch, she's able to take it. And that was really important for us on this flight. As I said earlier in this video, she did not want to breastfeed on the plane because she was too distracted by everything that was going on. And they also would not let us do it during takeoff. On the plane ride home, she also was not able to breastfeed. And I cheated a little bit by giving her a bottle in the upright position. So I mean, if you're a flight attendant, I'm so sorry. Don't get mad at me for this, but basically we just held her upright, but kind of tilted her back a little bit that we could still give her the bottle and not have her be fully laid flat for takeoff. Essentially, she was starving at that point and we needed to calm her down, nothing else was working. And so having a bottle for that was really helpful for us. And also just the fact that we were so close together with other people that I don't know if there's a scenario that I would have been able to nurse her. As I said, that guy was so close to me that he would have literally been also holding my baby if I tried to nurse her on that flight home. So I feel like having a bottle was really key for us. Even if you are a mom that only feeds your baby breast milk, then try and pump if you can. Try and keep that bottle refrigerated until the time that you need it for takeoff, which I think is a four hour period. So honestly, just try and do anything that you can to get your baby a bottle, because I feel like that was the only thing that really calmed her down on that flight home. The next thing that we learned, which was something that one of our friends actually told us before we left, was to bring the car seat and stroller right up to the gate. So we brought our stroller that has the car seat adapter and put that right on, and we traveled without the base for the car seat. So that made it really easy. It reduced the piece of actually having to carry that base along with us, and it allowed us to push everything right up to the gate. So that meant that we didn't have to pay for all of that equipment to go as checked luggage, in which case it would have been anywhere from 50 to $100 for the plane that we were riding on. So this was a really nice way for us to be able to save all that money, and there wasn't actually any damage to the car seat or stroller that we know of. Everything that we saw on it was what we would have seen on it before it left. So that was a really nice way for us to be able to save money, but also have the convenience of pushing the stroller through the airport, putting our bags on it, but also keeping Vivian in there until we got to the gate and needed to actually take her out. The last tip that I'll share with you guys that I learned was to book the aisle seat. So we had booked the middle seat and then the window seat on both flights, but I feel like for future flights, I would probably book that middle seat and then the aisle seat, and I would just sit in that aisle seat with Vivian and have Jared in the middle one, just because if you need to get up at all to bounce the baby or to change the diaper or anything, if you're in the middle seat or the window seat, it's really hard, especially on a smaller flight, to get past that other person. So as much as I feel like before, I was always vying for that window seat when I was not traveling with a child and could just kind of do whatever I wanted on planes, I would not do that anymore. I would always opt for that aisle seat because it's really important to be able to stand up if you need to because if there was someone right there, it made it a little bit trickier for me. Well, that is all the tips that I have for you guys when it comes to flying with a new baby. If you are going on a trip with your baby soon, good luck, you've got this. It honestly was not as bad as I thought that it would be. I've heard so many horror stories and things like that, but honestly, it all went really well and I hope that these tips and tricks can make it a little bit easier for you when you go on your next trip as well. So if you guys liked this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up before you leave today. Drop a comment with maybe where you're going with your baby, how long the flight is. I'm sure if there's any other tips and tricks that you have that other moms would love to read those as well. But before you go, make sure that you subscribe to my channel for more content like this. And until my next video, I love you guys, I'm praying for you guys, and I will see you soon.