Dad's 5 Tips for Flying With A Baby

With a child under 1

TLDR: Flying for an hour or 6 hours? Get these 5 items to make your life easier while flying. Portable booster chair (mini seat for eating), car seat bag, plenty of snacks, milk, empty gate near yours, get 3 seats. Save yourself the stress. All of them are best for Dads, tested and proven, except the booster chair unfortunately.

Give your wife a laptop, a problem, and a credit card… she’ll solve ANY PROBLEM. The wife and I were both nervous about traveling with the little one for the first time. Of course we picked the longest flight, from coast to coast with a layover but gosh was it just what we needed to get over our anxiety about it. Went pretty smooth after the communication and preparedness training I went through from my wife. It was a 2 week in-person course, which I think it was outdated since it could have been virtual, but certainly insightful. So of the things I learned… PRICELESS and I’m going to share it with you below.

Always curious if my wife has done this before…

Anyways! Let’s get into the list…

Portable Booster Chair

If you click on the bold title above, you’ll see the exact one we use. I get no commission from it FYI.

We didn’t eat at restaurants, but we did have snacks for the little one to calm her down at times just before boarding. We would sit her down give her too many snacks for her to handle, and then it free’d up our hands and lap to organize our life a bit. Also be a bit distracted with people watching. Best reality TV known to man is making assumptions about couples and people around you on who their going with, why, and if they are running away to the White Lotus Hotel in Hawaii.

We are civilized so we take one of my shirts, or the one off my back to place under her chair. That doesn’t make much sense because I only have that to travel with so after the first time it was a mess and I smelled awful, we decided to just let things drop on the floor. If it was big enough for us to pick up, we would wait until the end. Clean her hands and mouth, take her out the chair, dump all the left-overs from the chair onto the floor, fold the chair, then clean up the floor. At this point she’s made eye contact and friends with several people. So the worry isn’t anything other than her running up to some random traveler and grabbing their phone. The phone thing is an issue. It’s my wife’s fault.

Car Seat Bag

This car seat bag was a last minute purchase that came in CLUTCH. We don’t exactly trust that the rental car agency will provide a car seat when requested. At least that’s the story my wife hears as the excuse. In actuality I’m too insecure to learn the new car seat in the moment to make sure the little one is safe. Yeah! I said it!

MORE IMPORTANTLY, you can hide extra stuff in the bag for free. For example, extra diapers, the portable sleep tent, and even the airline will check the bag for free. Don’t go overboard with it because they still do check the weight for some reason.

It looks really awkward, wearing it as a backpack, but worth it.

Snacks for pre-flight, mid-flight, post-flight and layovers

This is needed for the all parties involved; the wife, the little one and you. Load up!

The snacks are important for the little one to be distracted in some situations. Clearly, our baby focused during the inflight instructions of masks, and understanding the seat floats. The snacks help keep her in one spot during transfers, boarding, and even during the flight. Milk certainly helps and we will get into that next but nothing is better than your kid snacking as you take a moment or two not to be concerned about where they are and who’s stuff they are touching. What a relief?!

Milk During Take Off

Milk does the body good. Definitely the ears.

We heard that ear popping for babies and cause chaos. So we figured a pacifier would be good but a bottle full of milk would be BETTER. It delivered!

While she was bothered by the noise the first take off, after that she was fine. Leaned back, zoned out, and downing this milk. The hard part was getting to that point. TSA needs to screen it, and send it through the metal detector and the milk needed a valid driver license, AND they asked of the milk had preCheck. But they took it easy on us and just screened the milk with their machine because we knew somebody in the TSA ranks. It’s all about who you know.

Frustratingly, some airports check the milk and others don’t have a problem. One TSA agent said not to worry about the milk because on our ticket is said a baby was with us. No idea how that works.

Either way, we kept it in a small freezer bag which was in a backpack filled with all our snacks, toys, and pacifiers. So once it became time to give the little one the milk, we started searching. Eventually she placed the bottles in the side pockets for easier access. But see what I mean, almost like she’s done this before. Suspicious if you ask me.

Find An Empty Gate Before Boarding

Find an empty gate near yours when flying. Let the little walk around. Get that energy out. Occasionally “let them” lick a few of the chairs and even the disgusting carpet. I don’t know what it is about our little ones 6 sense to know we aren’t looking. My wife my go to the bathroom or go to our gate to make sure we know where it is. If she sends me a message or my phone buzzes, I look down for a second and our little one someone has managed to find the single spot on the carpet that has the largest stain. OF COURSE she is nearly doing and head stand trying to figure out how much of this stain she can get out by licking it. MADNESS! Ultimately though, worth it, because during the flight, just after the bottle she is knocked out.

She also loved the audience of people walking by cheering. This was when she first started walking so she was doing a waddle and stumbling. Plenty of people walking by clapping and cheering her on, she loved it.

All in all this exhausted much of her energy which is exactly what we wanted.

Extra Tip: Buy The Third Seat in Your Row

I can count, this is tip 6 but if you can afford it, buy the extra seat. If you have the window, isle and middle seat it will be so much easier. Yes your baby can sit on your lap until 2 years old, I had no idea, but at least by the 2 seats next to each other if you can’t get all 3. It’s awkward to ask someone to switch seats and if you don’t, of course my little one is pulling at their phone and headphones. Sorry about that Jacob. Eventually she’ll sleep but its a strange conversation about how to handle crackers and cheese on our babies hands and face with Jacob sitting in between us. He’s just trying to stream his league of legends youtube live and here we are passing wet naps across his face. Not to mention passing the baby back and forth.

By no means are these the only 5 things, but these are the 5 that come to mind for me as essential to travel with.