Traveling Lessons Learned

Well, it has been a busy week. More exciting posts to come next week. All I have for you now is more information on traveling - jotted down right after we got home from our trip. If anyone reads this and has other tips for traveling with children, please do post a comment.

Practical information for traveling with children:

• pack things in gallon ziploc bags to help you retrieve them from the carry on bag
  
• pack one of the gallon ziploc bags as your "take off" bag, with the things you need while taking off and landing, when you won't be able to dig around in your carry on. Mine had a sippy cup (for drinking to relieve ear pressure), some snacks and a few toys. Including some wipes is probably a good idea, too.
  
• pack a diaper changing kit - the all in one kind that folds out for a changing pad with wipes and diapers tucked in. This made changing the baby in airports or airplane bathrooms easier- only two things to carry- the baby and the kit.
  make sure you have enough food for baby (and you) so that if you don't have time to get things in the airport, you won't get stuck.
  
• ask the flight attendant if they have milk on board as soon as you get on the plane. They often only have a few cartons, if any at all.
  
• think about going through the security line and have things organized to make this easier. A friend of mine who had to travel alone with an infant wore a fanny-pack (against all personal fashion standards) to keep her ID and tickets handy but her hands free.
  
• rig a strap of some kind on the car seat, so you can carry it on a shoulder while pushing a stroller. The car seat was the most awkward thing to carry around. If I was traveling by myself, I would have checked it instead of carrying it on. Baby Z didn't want to stay in the car seat for very long anyway. However, I must say that I enjoyed having a car seat for the first leg of our trip, when he did sit in it for a while. On the way back, we knew there wouldn't be any extra seats, so we checked it.
  
• think twice about the special boarding privileges for people with young children. I'm not so sure it's a privilege to be trapped in a confined space with a toddler for that much more time. I tried to bring Baby Z on at the last possible moment. My husband went on ahead and grabbed the overhead space and got things set up.
  

Airline policies & TSA recommendations for traveling with kids:

• Most airlines allow you to hold an "infant" (child under the age of 2) on your lap instead of purchasing a seat. We did not need to provide proof of age, although some airlines recommend you bring a birth certificate just in case.
  
• After buying your tickets (if you did it online), you have to call the reservations number to tell them you'll have an infant on your lap. They note that on your ticket and boarding pass.
  
• Check with your airline to be sure, but ours (American) allowed us to bring the car seat to the gate, and if there was an unoccupied seat, we could put the car seat in it. We asked if there was a seat when we checked in and they actually moved us to a spot where there was one and "blocked" the seat, so that no one else would get seated there. I believe they actually turned away some stand-by customers on our flight and we still had our extra seat.
  
• I've only heard this through others, so I'm not absolutely sure about it, but I guess an airline is required to provide a car seat for you if something happens to yours. A friend of a friend didn't get their car seat when they arrived so they got a new one from the airline. The airline then found theirs later and sent it to them. It makes sense that they have to give you a car seat since you can't go in a car with your child without one. (By the way, has anyone traveled without taking a car seat? I'm curious how one would do that, since we couldn't have even gotten a taxi without it. I know you can get one from rental car agencies... but we would have been out of luck since all the cars were booked because of the mass cancellations.)
  
• Packing food for the baby: although you can only pack liquids (in a carry on bag) in quantities less than 3 ounces, you are allowed to bring greater quantities if it is medication or food for the baby. For our airport (reading their packing guidelines), they said to pack it in a separate ziploc bag and put it in one of the bins that get x-rayed. So, we had a quart-sized bag each of toiletries (3 ounces or less) for John and I plus a gallon bag of food for Baby Z. On our way back, I failed to put this bag into one of the bins, and we got pulled out of line for an additional "screening." The TSA guy told me to be sure to pull out the baby food and put it into the bins next time.