Traveling with a baby is not as scary as I thought it would be. For my husband and I, traveling is a huge part of our life. As such, it will inherently be a big part of our daughter’s life. And guess what? She is already quite the traveler in her 6 short weeks on Earth.
One of my biggest fears before becoming a parent was that I would have a child who misbehaved on planes or at restaurants. I want to expose Matilda to these things as early as possible so she gets used to them. This will hopefully not only result in a better behaved child, but also an extremely open minded one.
It all began when my parents arrived in Switzerland a week ago. Not only was I thrilled to see them, but I also found it a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. It was a trip of firsts – the first time my parents had been to Italy and Matilda’s first time in a car. Traveling with a baby had begun.
My daughter already loves her stroller and falls asleep very quickly when being pushed around. It was therefore no surprise that she responded the same way to the car. She slept the entire way to and from Milan – about 4 hours each way. She also reacted very well to sleeping in a different environment (hotel room) and to interacting with new people.
Now what do I mean by interacting with new people? Well, at dinner one evening we sat next to a table of older Italian women. They actually grabbed her from my arms for their own snuggling purposes. While initially jarring, it ended up being really sweet and making for a great story.
It was also surprisingly easy to pack for this trip. As a baby, she drinks powdered formula. Therefore, all I needed was a water kettle to both prepare her milk and clean her bottles. Most hotels have these readily available and our hotel was no exception. This also goes for cribs, although these should be requested at the time of booking.
Her clothes and diapers are also so small that they barely took up any room in my suitcase. Finally, since we drove, it was extremely easy to cart along her stroller.
Our trip to Milan was a great success and proved that traveling with a baby is very doable. It was also a nice precursor to the Swiss day trips we did the following weekend, but I will save that for another blog.
Until next time…
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