Travelling with Children

[Milli]

  I have never travelled abroad with children and sometimes the logistics seem quite daunting. I came across this link  Havebabywilltravel which has lots of tips for trip preparation and actual travel.


This link is taken from the news article in today's Times Transcript:

Travelling with kids?

Published Saturday July 26th, 2008


By Shi Davidi

 TORONTO - There are pretty much two reactions when Melissa Pimentel tells friends and family about the trip to Portugal she plans to take with husband Carlos and baby daughter Malaina this summer.

Enlarge Photo “Some people are like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s just too much of an inconvenience and too much of a hassle,’” says Pimentel, 29, of Toronto.

“Their perspective is it’s not much of a vacation for the parents, so they don’t really see the point of doing it.

“Others have been very supportive, they say you shouldn’t stop living just because you had a child,” says Pimentel.

“That’s pretty much our philosophy.

We were avid travellers before our daughter was born and we want to continue that as much as possible.”

There’s little reason for them and other new parents not to do exactly that. While travelling is certainly more challenging with a baby or toddler, a combination of smart planning, taking the necessary precautions and an all-important adjustment of expectations can bring even exotic destinations within reach.

“I think most things are doable,” says Dr. Mark Wise, who runs a travel clinic in Toronto and is the author of “The Travel Doctor.”

“It’s definitely not unsafe for small children to travel, the flight is not a danger to the baby. You have to be a lot more cautious if you’re going off the beaten path or if you’re going to poor areas where there are questions about the food or the water, or infectious diseases like malaria.

“But children are mobile,” Wise says. Having them with you “keeps the family together, and it’s a great way to break the ice with the local people.”

There are, of course, a host of worries new parents must take into account, something Wise regularly points out to parents of Indian or African descent who are travelling home to show off their child, or less frequently to others venturing out to the pristine beaches of Southeast Asia with young ones.

He generally recommends more adventurous travellers tone things down a bit — “backpacking through Ghana and Mali to get to Timbuktu and Senegal is a bit much,” he says — and start considering things they never did before.

“The one priority, more for your child than for yourself, is good medical care wherever you go,” he says. “I don’t think you’d feel comfortable being as remote as you might want to be with children for that reason.

“You’ve got to anticipate things, like where to get food and water from. That’s not a problem if you’re going to Disney World but it is if you’re going to India. What medications are you going to bring along, so you’re a little self-sufficient for fevers, vomiting, diarrhea, diaper rashes, heat rashes and ear infections — stuff like that.”

Even seemingly simple trips require additional planning.

Corinne McDermott founded the website www.havebabywilltravel.

ca after she and husband Darcy Fedorchuk took baby daughter Megan on an all-inclusive vacation to Cuba 2 1/2 years ago. A self-described “travel snob” who always preferred independent travel to pre-planned packages, she quickly discovered how much more preparation was needed with Megan around, even at a resort where most of a visitor’s needs are taken care of.

“Before, we never spent any time in the room. And once you have a baby — especially if they’re napping, and our daughter won’t nap anywhere but in her bed — you actually spend some time in your room, so we paid a little extra for a nice balcony with a view,” says Mc- Dermott, 37, of Toronto. “Where a room may have not been important before, it kind of is now.

“You play it by ear a lot, too. If you have a routine at home that the baby is used to, it takes a day or two to find your new vacation routine.

You’re not going to pack in as much as you used to, you’re just going to have to go with the flow. As long as you know that in advance, you’re not fretting about not climbing that ancient tower.”

Knowing not to pack in too much activity is something Cathy Ryan and husband Michael learned the hard way when they took fourmonth- old son Caden to Paris back in May. Her main concerns heading into the trip revolved around the flight and jet lag, yet once there they found their long days walking the city made for some short, difficult nights.

“We were out walking around all day, so he had never spent as much time in his stroller before,” says Ryan, 37, of Toronto. “He slept a lot, which was great during the day, but come bedtime he did not want to go to bed — he’d scream for a couple of hours. So the nighttimes were rough.”

The plan for the next trip, she says, is to stop more, taking him out of the stroller and playing with him more often, so he’ll sleep less during the day.