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International Travel with a Baby

Ready for Japan!! ✈️❤️

We’re home!
If you’ve been following my instagram account then you know that our family just spent two amazing weeks in Japan visiting my brother.
There are many, many pictures coming, but first I thought I would write a quick note to tell you about the ups and downs of travelling internationally with a baby.

Our baby girl was a rockstar on this trip! (As usual!)
She only took a day to adjust to the huge 15 hour time change (it was harder for Daddy!).
Honestly, we didn’t really do anything to help her with this, except we tried to keep her up a lot during the entire travel period (i.e. she only had two long naps – 4 hrs?). The timing was on our side because when we arrived at my brothers place, it was close to 7pm there so we put her straight to bed and she almost slept through the night immediately.

I learned a few things from my last airplane trip that made this trip a cinch – I was very well prepared with toys, clothes, food, bottles, etc.
We sat in the front row of the economy section (hello leg room!) and also had access to the bassinet on these airplane trips, which meant that we could just put her down when she fell asleep, and then we could rest too. It was glorious! I actually watched a full movie on the way there and on the way back!
She got a bit fussy towards the end of the first trip. Our last plane ride within Japan wasn’t so fun (think super over-tired child screaming at the top of her lungs and not falling asleep), but she hardly made a peep the whole way home to Canada. Not much to complain about.

Most people would assume (correctly) that a baby would slow them down, but as long as Ellie was moving, she was happy.
We brought a tiny stroller before we left ($20 at a garage sale!) so that we could navigate the busy streets and subways of Japan a bit easier, and we also brought our Ergo carrier for the days with hikes or the days I wanted her to sleep longer.
She stayed out and about with us on a few looong days and seemed to enjoy every minute.

As far as food goes, I’m very happy that we started with baby led weaning before we left! We brought some foods that we knew she would like such as baby gourmet squeezy foods, and the rice baby mum mums, but we were able to let her try a bit of everything we were eating too. She particularly liked the udon noodles! We still had to take breaks so that I could breastfeed her here and there – although I often did this while we were on trains, etc. Bringing food and allowing her to try new foods made it much easier to keep her full and happy whenever the grown-ups needed a break to eat or relax.

As far as baby supplies go, we brought almost everything we needed. We brought diapers and wipes and food that we needed. We had her sit on our laps when she needed to eat.
My brother was able to borrow a car seat for his car, which was great because I didn’t want to bring our expensive one! (Sidenote: if you were just taking trains and subways, you wouldn’t need one). The only thing we really needed was a bed, and my brother made a fabulous one out of a plastic bin from his apartment :) We brought her favourite crib blanket from home so that she would be comforted when she fell asleep too.

Overall, travelling overseas with a baby was just as easy as I thought it would be!
A lot of people told me that it would be super hard, but I think the good far outweighed the bad on this trip. Taking our baby with us for an international trip was well worth it!
Especially taking her somewhere as mom-and-baby friendly as Japan! But that’s a whole new blog post… (stay tuned!).

"Excuse me! I'm trying to take a picture!"Hanging out with Uncle Nate!10589684_622162281232766_29111782_n10556240_622157914566536_2290525635350704031_nHeaded to Hiroshima without our tour guide, hopefully we don't get lost!

Stay tuned for more pics!

{xoxo}