Traveling Internationally with a Baby // Our Experience & What We Learned

Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to my channel. My name is Nicole. I hope you had a great week. If you couldn't tell by all of our luggage behind me, we are going on a trip today. This is going to be our first time traveling internationally with our baby. This is Willa. She is five months old and we could not be more excited about this trip. We're headed to Paris. We've been planning this trip for like a month and I'm just so excited to get out of the house. I'm not going to lie though, I'm a little nervous. She's never been on a flight this long and this will be her first time experiencing a different country and a significant time change. And so I don't really know how it's going to go. We're trying to be open to whatever might come. I think she's going to do great. The little trips that we've taken so far with her on the plane and in airports have been really great. And so we're hoping for the best, but also, you know, we're just going to go with the flow depending on what happens. So if you're watching this video because you searched how to fly internationally with a baby, we are no experts here. We are simply making this vlog to kind of document our experience and share what we're learning along the way. We'll share tips and things that have worked well for us, but I'm just warning you, this is our first time doing this. We're getting ready to head to the airport right now. We've already got her in her pajamas that she'll be in for the long overnight flight just to give us one less thing we have to do and pack in the airport. I need to zip up these suitcases and finish packing these. This one's mine and this one's Willa. I left plenty of extra room just in case we buy anything when we're in Paris. So I'll have two checked bags. My husband has a checked bag and then we'll each have two carry-ons. We're also carrying on the stroller. We have a little travel stroller that we put in a travel bag. So when we have it all at once, it's going to be a lot of luggage. But once we check through these suitcases, we won't have as much. We decided not to bring a car seat on this trip because in Paris, it's actually not a law that you have to have a kid in a car seat. You can actually just hold them, but their taxi service, G7, has cars that come with car seats if you need it. And when I made the itinerary, I didn't really plan a lot of things that will need to be in a taxi or a car. So we made the decision not to bring the car seat because it's just one less thing that we have to carry and pack when we probably won't use it that much. All right, everybody. We got all the things. Dad vacation mode activated. It's not activated yet. I'm really thankful that you're big and strong to help carry all of the bags. We have a lot. So one thing with Delta flights is that you can request the Skycot, which is like a bassinet that goes on the bulkhead seat of an international flight, and you have to request it in advance. So when we booked our tickets, we called and they supposedly put us in the seats that have the bassinet, but you don't find out until the morning of your flight. So it's like first come, first serve, and you just talk to the gate agent when you're checking your bags. They seem to think we have them, but we won't know until we get to Detroit. So fingers crossed. I'm just hoping for the extra leg room. So far, it's been smooth. We just checked all of our bags, and now we're going through security. Willa just fell asleep, which is perfect because it's just past her nap time. I cannot recommend a carrier enough when you're traveling with a baby in an airport. It is the easiest way to navigate an airport with a baby. From the time we get out of the car, she goes in the carrier. She stays in it all the way through security. It makes walking around so much easier, and they sleep so good in them. We have about 45 minutes until we board, and we're starving. So Chandler just went to go get some Chick-fil-A for lunch. Here come the goods. Is there Chick-fil-A in Paris? No. Probably not. That's why I'm boycotting for a week. Oh my gosh, did you get us a milkshake? Yeah, and I guess they gave us a free cookie for the window. They say all good things come to those who wait. We got a milkshake and a cookie. That's so nice of them. Thank you, Jesus. We must know. What are you most excited about in Paris? Trying the food, experiencing a country that I haven't been to for the first time with Willa. Boarded. Got our gate check tag for the stroller. About to drop that off, and then we're going to have only two bags to worry about. And I feel like Willa is about to wake up. She is awake. Well, that's good. She got a good hour nap in. First leg down. Made it to Detroit. We just hopped off the flight, and we are walking with intention because we've got about 35 minutes until our flight to Paris board, so there's no time for snacks. There's no time for bathroom. Luckily, we got the stroller off nice and quick. Willa is still awake, which is fine. But we're hoping that she falls asleep because she needs one more nap before we get on this long leg. So I'm looking for the train. I've never been to the Detroit airport before. I've heard it's just basically one big long tube, so we're going to try to find the train because we're at A7, and we have to go to A60, and I really don't want to walk 50 gates. I'm really hoping once we get to the gate, they say we have the bassinet seats. Guys, we made it to the gate, and we just found out we got this guy caught. That feels like a major win. I'm going to sleep on it. I don't know. I'll let you know how helpful it's going to be. I honestly don't know because I do know that you can't have them in it when you take off and when you land. If the bassinet seatbelt sign ever gets turned on, apparently they can't be in it. So if that happens, like if we hit a bunch of turbulence in the middle of the night, we're going to have to take her out, and I don't think she'll sleep good if we're like taking her out and putting her back a bunch of times. I'm not really sure, but that is really great that we got them because I think that means we get extra leg room too, huh? I think so. Yes, and we have time to spare. How do you feel? I got a little leg room. Yeah. Willa finally fell asleep, which is great. We're just playing this all by ear. Usually I feed her around now, but we're just going to see how she does. I hope that we have nice neighbors, and then I think right here is where the little sky cot goes, but I'm not really sure. How does it go back? Oh, yeah. That's really great. I'm going to be sleeping. I'm just planning on holding her the entire eight-hour flight and sleeping like this, so maybe I'll use her as a pillow. The only hard part about this seat is right by the bathroom, and literally right in front of us are the flight attendants. They're going to be there all night talking and chatting. Willa might sleep a little. I do feel like sitting near a bathroom really is hard because people use that pretty much the whole time, and that's really loud. Because I always think it's interesting what food they give you on international flights, we have chicken and rice. It looks like a dinner roll, a truffle brownie, and then what's in the little thing? Corn? We just got her to sleep in the little sky cot. It took a while because she pulled the blanket over her eyes, which could help her stay asleep, but I think because we only have a couple more hours left of this flight, when I go back out there and she's not asleep, I might just get her out and put her back in the carrier and just hold her for the rest because I do want her to get some sleep, but I ran to the bathroom really quick to take my makeup off and brush my teeth so I can at least feel clean before I try to get some rest. All things considered, though, I am really proud of her. She is doing so good on this flight. She really hasn't cried at all except for right before we put her down, so that's cool. One thing I always do when I travel internationally is pack a little bag with some makeup remover wipes or a little mini hairbrush and other toiletries like a toothbrush, some toothpaste. She feels so much better. You can have a little reset on the plane before you get to your destination and before you go to bed. 🎵 Music 🎵 Bonjour! Good morning. We made it to Paris. I slept for I think a total of 45 seconds. Oh man. I don't honestly think I slept at all, but having those two seats in the middle saved me. It was nice to just be able to spread out a little bit. This sky cot didn't really work out for us. I think it's a nice idea in theory. And I do, I feel like it's meant for smaller babies. Willa is still asleep on me. We're going to get her up here in about 20 minutes to try to get her around the time zone. But we made it, I'm so excited. All right, we just made it through customs, which I have to mention, because we were in the very back of what would have probably been a three hour line. I mean, it wasn't moving. You get a special line for Sky Priority, then it merged. And it was like moving faster than the regular line. But then a lady with a little paddle that had a family logo on it told us to get out of the line, and while she literally- Just took us to the front. We walked right to the front of the line. I felt so bad. I mean, with her, she would have never made it, but I did feel really bad because these people are probably going to be waiting in that line for hours. So that was really nice that they did that. We got through really quickly. Now we're looking for our bags. And Willa is awake. Say hi everybody, I'm in Paris. One bag, two bags. I think it's this one, this one coming right here. Three bags, all right there in a row. We got them, what a blessing. Just did a little quick change for me and Willa and some fresh clothes. We're about to hop in our taxi. Paris has a taxi service called G7 that has the option to do a family car with a car seat, which is great because we didn't bring our car seat on this trip. So I'm really excited about that and that they have that option. He's trying to say hi to everybody. Yeah, you want to show me your cute bow? Okay, we made it to our Airbnb. I'm actually filming this a couple days later because turns out I accidentally deleted the last part of this video. But what I said was we made it to our Airbnb. This is home sweet home for the next week. We have such a fun week ahead of us here in Paris and we're so excited to bring you along. That'll be part of another vlog that will come next week. So if you liked this video, please give it a big thumbs up. And if you haven't already, hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss it. Thank you so much for watching this week and we'll see you next time. Je veux un croissant avec bébé. Bye, au revoir. A bientôt.