Having a baby is such a life altering event. That’s not a groundbreaking statement, but it’s an important acknowledgement for any blog about doing something with a small child. We had really loved our years of traveling as a couple, and although we knew traveling would look different once we welcomed Isla to the family, we also knew that our traveling habits were something we wanted to adapt to our new life as a family of 3.
Before I really start, I want to acknowledge something that every piece of parenting advice should acknowledge: every single kid is different, and not everything we did will apply perfectly to your child. I think all first time parents need to hear this loud and clear. You know your baby better than anybody else on the planet, and only you can make the most informed decision for your kid.
BUT, we’re hopefully going to be encouraging in telling you that if you want to travel with a baby, YOU CAN DO IT. We’ve been so amazed by the adaptability of Isla to different circumstances, particularly considering that we’ve got a girl who knows what she wants, and is very determined in making that happen.
Our road trips with Isla are ultimately what inspired us to start sharing our travel experiences! At 8 weeks old, we put Isla in the car for two weeks en route to visiting 12 National Parks. By 9 months old, our daughter had visited 17 states, 27 National Parks, and logged about 13,000 miles on the road. She did it, and we believe that you can too!
We’ve gotten so many questions around how our baby did in the car, how we managed time in the car well, and every iteration of that question you can think of. And let me tell you, not every day was easy! We made a number of roadside stops to breastfeed or change diapers because we couldn’t handle her crying, regardless of how close we were to our final destination. And we had extra early mornings with new time zones! But the good outweighs the tough a hundred fold (story of parenting, right?) and I want to share some tips for how we made it happen.
Expect the same flexibility from yourself that you’re expecting from your kid
When I got in the car with my family growing up, the expectation was that we did not make extraneous stops. We stopped when we needed gas, which doubled and tripled as our only bathroom and food stops. And although I’ve never voiced that on our roadtrips, it’s definitely a mindset I hold onto!
But that’s not how it works with a tiny human in the car. Extra stops are important, whether it be for food, diaper, or just time to squirm around. And that’s okay! Depending on our day of driving, we’d budget an extra 5-10% of trip time for extra stops along the way.
Ease into it
I write this after not learning from our mistake the first time. You’re getting out on the road, taking time off, changing up your routing...it’s exciting! My tendency is to try to go big on Day 1. But remember, you’re totally changing up your young one’s routine for the first time. So while 8-10 hours and getting closer to your itinerary sounds nice, I’d recommend finding something in the 3-5 hour range to get your trip started. Day 1 has been tough for us every time, but it gets easier.
Don’t get discouraged
So, yeah, I’ve said that our first day kinda sucked every time. But it’s all part of the process of getting to know your kid! We quickly figured out how to adapt in ways that made the car rides easiest for Isla, ergo most enjoyable for us. Don’t be discouraged by a bad day!
Plan your food stops
Okay, so I know I said I’ve held on to this idea of just getting to our destination, but our baby needed extra stops. Seems obvious right? We started researching our food stops ahead of time, 1. Because it made it easier to support local small businesses, and 2. Because it gave us more frequent stops, and didn’t feel “extra.”
We quickly found that Isla did best when we could give her a solid play time in the morning before getting in the car, and if we had a quick first stretch before her first nap, it was generally going to be a really good day.
If we had, say, a 6 hour drive, we’d often get started by 8-9am, have a place picked out for a breakfast snack after about an hour, have a few hour stretch until lunch, and then a couple hours to get to our final stop. Breaking up the day into smaller, more manageable chunks made things so much easier for us and the baby, and generally led to better food and nature stops than outside McDonalds!
Pack your car flexibly
Being on the road for an extended period of time (even just a week) means that not all your stuff can come with you! Your car, and a rooftop carrier if you use one (we have not), is a finite space, and a baby’s stuff takes up a good chunk of that. And while the goal was for both of us to be up front, sometimes we found that’s not what the baby wanted.
We figured out quickly that our best bet was to put the car together in a way that let the back seats be folded to their upright position, filled with things that could easily be moved to the passenger seat, if needed. If we knew we had a big day of driving, I’d pack the car that morning so that Brooke could sit in the backseat, and help entertain Isla along the way. This became a quick, easy hack that led to some much easier drives, and helped engage Isla better along the way.
What does your baby need on the road?
This answer is really different based on the age of your kid! On our trips at 8 and 14 weeks, we packed Isla’s clothes in with ours to avoid the extra bag, but that wouldn’t work when we were gone for a month at 8 months old. This is where some extra planning came in to play. We didn’t go more than 10 days without access to a washer and dryer at an Airbnb, which made a big difference in bag sizes for all of us!
But, like, how do you narrow down how many toys to bring with you? We decided on one small basket that sat right behind the passenger seat, easily accessible for us up front, and filled it with toys that we knew she loved, and could engage with for a while. The week before our trip, we already had those toys packed away to give them some extra novelty as we started the drive!
The few major items that had to come with us for the baby: stroller, Pack & Play, hiking backpack carrier, and front baby carrier. We knew we’d just get frustrated every day trying to fit the Pack & Play back into its carrier bag, which is clearly too small for it, anyways. So, we got bungee cords to hold it together instead!
We also got this travel high chair off Amazon, which was so easy to open and collapsed into a really easy to stow away bag. That, coupled with our silicone bibs, made meals super simple to clean up.
Extra diapers and wipes got stuffed under the driver and passengers seats, with some also going in the glovebox for easy roadside changes.
Plan excursions that work for your kid
Our baby loves being in the carrier or the hiking backpack, but only for a limited amount of time. We knew we could hike for about an hour before she’d start to get antsy, but that she had a much higher tolerance in the stroller! So, if we were in a National Park, we knew we could only go for an hour at a time, and planned around that. If we were in a city, we knew we had more flexibility for walking around, even if we let it get away from us a couple times (see: 7 miles around Golden Gate Park)!
Ultimately, as long as we stopped for some time to squirm or crawl around somewhere in between, Isla was generally really flexible to what we were doing that day!
I totally understand if traveling with a baby feels like an incredibly intimidating thing. I understand how tired you are. But, if traveling is something you love, hear me saying that having a baby doesn’t mean that has to change. Sure, it looks different, but we’ve loved getting to expose Isla to so many incredible places, people, food, and experiences. Even if it’s something she won’t remember, the memories we’ve created as a young family far exceed the extra effort it takes to make them happen.
