Congrats on starting your family! Are you ready to travel with a baby? We mustered up the courage to take our first trip with our baby, and ultimately, we’re glad we did. Consider the following, if you’re deliberating your readiness to travel with your baby or toddler.

You’re ready to take a trip if:

  • You’ve been dreaming of taking a trip and now is the time.
  • You’ve gotten into a good grove with your infant and are ready to take them on the road.
  • There’s a trip opportunity on the table (holidays, a wedding, a family reunion, a cheap flight!) and all you have to do is say “yes.”
  • You feel brave enough to travel as a new family!
  • You’ve had help with your baby from caretakers at home, and you’re ready to travel without them.
  • You’re ready to be away from the main comforts of home for a few days while traveling with your baby.
  • You feel well-equipped to pack bags for everyone and you have travel versions of baby essentials (travel bassinet, travel crib, travel-sized baby shampoos, etc.).

What I can tell you from my experience is that my mom helped me out with pushing me into taking the first trip away from home with our baby. (Thanks, Mom. How will I ever repay her?)

I was really about to say no, because of some bad timing (the start of our baby’s 4-month sleep regression), my postpartum exhaustion and stress, being away from our comforts of home and being generally nervous. All this was despite having traveled EXTENSIVELY my entire life (Living abroad three times! Traveling by myself! Backpacking on five continents!), before becoming a parent. I was petrified.

What I learned by taking the first trip with our 13-week old baby was that I was never going to be ready: I just had to try, to start traveling with our baby, and get used to a lifetime of it. I wanted this for us: I just had no idea how to start.

In our situation, we were going to visit family, so we actually had more help during the trip than we did at home. This was crucial, considering the other exhausting and stressful factors (our newborn’s first and excruciatingly tiring sleep regression) surrounding the particular timeframe of this trip for us.

I was happy that we went, and we were glad that our family got to meet our daughter at such a young age. This trip, and our first experience traveling away from home with our baby, helped us visualize how we would travel again when she was older and it was a little easier.

As you can imagine, the “travel wish list” (of traveling with our baby!) started building after this trip, and we hope it’s the same for you.