Flying with 11 montholds...

My twin girls are currently 10 months old, and in late October we'll all be flying to Hawaii (my husband is going to a conference, the rest of us are tagging along for vacation!). The girls will be 2 weeks shy of their first birthday. I'm planning on introducing milk to them about 3 weeks before the trip, but I will still be nursing. My main question is - any tips for surviving a 9 hour flight with 11 month olds? They are generally good little girls are really don't fuss a lot, but 9 hours is very long time. We cannot afford extra seats, so will not be taking their car seats on the plane. They will be on our laps. Gulp.

Also, once we get to our destination, we'll be getting a courtesy bus to the hotel. Do we need to have car seats for that trip? I cannot see that there will be any way to anchor the base of the car seat. We were just planning on takin the baby bjorns & their double stroller.

The hotel willprovide PnP's; is there any other piece of baby gear that other parents found imperative to take? And what about snacks/meals on the plane? We'll all be staying in a hotel room with no kitchen facilities so I imagine that most of our meals will be in restaurants etc, although I will be able to keep snacks and milk in the room.

Sorry to ask so many questions, but this will be our first trip with the babies - can you tell I am a little paranoid?!!

 

gulp is right! you are much braver than me!!

i don't have any experience with the plane part, but we were just recently living in a hotel for 2 weeks so i can help you out there.. one thing you should confirm is whether or not the hotel will allow you to have 2 pnps in the room, many hotels have limits on how many cribs/pnps you can have in a single room and they may only be willing to give you one. that could be a real problem..as far as baby gear goes, i did take a big bag of toys, bibs, spoons, sippy cups. if you are going to be swimming with the babies you will want to take some type of floatie things for the pool. the good thing about staying in a hotel is that they are fairly easy to childproof. make sure you take plug covers for the outlets so you won't have to be worried about that.

is there a grocery store nearby and how are you going to get there? if you won't be going to the store you may want to take all the snacks you will need with you, but that would be a pain. hopefully you will have easy access to one. and just FYI if you haven't been there before, everything in hawaii costs more $$ so be prepared for that.

i don't think you will need carseats for the courtesy shuttle to the hotel, it will be just like a bus, so you can probably just hold them in your lap. just what you are going to want to do after holding them for 9 hours!!! yikes!

my last suggestion is to just make a huge list of things that you think you will need so you don't accidentally forget something vital.. good luck and i hope you have an excellent time!!! october is a great time of year to be in hawaii!

 

For the plane, pack lots of snacks because they don't give you much food anymore. I would suggest 2 diaper bags (or other bags), one for you & one for your husband, preferably ones that will fit under the seat in front of you for easy access, each packed with food, toys, etc. for 1 baby. That way you have everything you need for the baby you are holding at the time & won't have to dig through one larger bag looking for what you need. I found this to work best, especially if I had to take one to the bathroom, etc., I could leave one bag with my husband & he had everything he needed for whichever baby he had. I always tend to buy a few small toys & books that they have never seen before to hold their attention at least for awhile. Also, I always packed extra clothes in case of accidents or spills and LOTS of babywipes!
For the shuttle bus, no carseats are necessary and, like you said, there will probably be nowhere to strap them in anyway.

As for the hotel, if they are providing pnp's, then I would think that would be all you would need.

Sounds like a great trip, I would LOVE to be going to Hawaii in October!

 

The others have already given you good advice, I just wanted to add one more thing. I'm not sure if all airlines do this but on Alaska Airlines website it says

so you may want to see if this is the case for your airlines. The only time I traveled with an infant was when my oldest DD was about 11-12 months and I brought the carseat and was able to use it both ways, it was really nice having somewhere to strap her in when she was getting tired.

 

We have stayed in Hawaii several times. Feel free to PM me if you need advice on restaurants or what things are near your hotel. I agree that a call to the hotel to see if they allow 2 pnp is worth it. We had this problem in Chicago and had to change hotels (which is not easy to do in Hawaii). Are you LO's walking? The flight will be easier if they are not. We flew with the boys at 15 months (they weren't walking yet) and were lucky enough to get 2 empty seats next to DH and I (we had to sit in different rows b/c there aren't enough oxygen masks for 2 lap babies if the row is full). If they like pacifiers, make sure you have a ton! You don't want to have to try and find one on the floor of the plane and then have to go wash it all while holding a crying baby. I think of the umbrella rule, one to use one to lose and triple it for pacis! :laughing: Do your babies use straw sippy cups yet? We let the boys drink from those during take off to help with their ears. Be careful though b/c the pressure changes cause them to leak if you don't loosen the lids. I'm sure I have more, but that's all I can think of right now. I'll keep thinking!

Oh, what stroller are you bringing? Pack all extra pieces in your luggage so they don't break when they put it under the plane. (ie: Graco snack trays/sunshades/etc)

 

We flew when ours were 5 1/2 months and are flying later this month as well. I'm thinking this upcoming trip might be more difficult now that they are mobile. I agree with the PP about both you and your husband having a diaper bag for each baby. That is what we did before and will do it again. Did you let the airline know you will have infants in your arms during the flight? I didn't before our first flight not realizing that we couldn't sit in the same row. They accomodated us as much as they could in the flights. We also gave Tylenol right before the flight to help with any pain from the pressure. They did pretty well except for my DD on the way back. We barely made it on the flight and when I went toward the back of the plane with her she was crying and I was sure everyone was groaning about having a crying baby but luckily she zonked out right before take-off. When we landed the guy across the aisle said I did a good job of calming her down. I was thankful that she did fall asleep but if she hadn't what could I have done? One thing I plan on doing this time is putting a night-time diaper on them before we board. Luckily our flights are short but I'd rather not have to change them in the plane. I'll just pray that they don't poop until we land. Good luck! I would love to go to Hawaii!

 

Thanks so much for all of the advice - it was truly helpful. I will definitely call the hotel about having 2 PnP's in the room. And I'll call the airline about the possibility of gate-checking the carseats. Our stroller is a Bob Revolution Dualie (my one big extravagance, and I love it!). We weren't planning on taking the carseats, but it might be nice to have a familiar place for the girls to sleep. They do nap quite well in their car seats! I'm really nervous about being stuck in a hotel room for 6 nights - Ohjojo, I don't know how you managed for 2 weeks! Did you have a suite? My DH is worried about having to go to bed at 7pm with the girls, and until he mentioned it I admit, I hadn't thought about that. I don't think we could afford a suite, although I'll look into it. There are discounted rates because of the conference, so that may help us out.

The other thing I was looking at is ordering stuff through the website "babies travel lite" - has anyone used them before? It sounds like I can order stuff, prepay & they will deliver it to our hotel. Which would be so very worth it!

Thanks again!

 

thankfully we did have a suite, otherwise, you are right, we would have had to go to bed at 6:30 with the babies.. i fully recommend trying to upgrade if at all possible. maybe your room will have a balcony or patio that you can retreat to after the babies go to sleep. my SIL/BIL took their kids to disney and ended up sitting in the bathroom everynight drinking wine on the floor after the kids went to bed because they only had a regular room, funny to hear about but i definitely didn't want to do that..

 

Those clips for pacifiers are also good to attach toys to your diaper bag. Make sure you have slip on shoes if you can for the airport, extra clothes for you incase of whatever, easy one piece clothes for them so less loose outfits, ziplock bags for poopie diapers. Lots of diapers, more than you could EVER need.

heather

 

We're in a similar situation, so I've been following this thread pretty closely. We will be on vacation for 10 days. What do you do about getting carseats when you arrive at your destination? Or do you try to bring your own carseats on the plane?

 

Our girls just recently discovered Baby Mum-Mums and love them. These would be great airplane snacks. It's just one piece (not as messy as cheeri-Os or Puffs) and takes some time to eat them. Also, do your LOs watch any Baby Einstein or anything like that? Might be worth bringing a laptop or portable DVD player if that keeps their attention. I'd also make sure to have several light weight blankets for sleeping on the plane.

Also, I'm curious...are you going to try adjust them to HI time and then back to your local time? That's a 6 hour difference for us and I don't know what I would do. My girls would be going to bed at 1:00 in the afternoon and getting up at midnight!

 

Thanks everyone for all of the responses, & I'm glad that this thread is helping out some others as well!

Yes, we are going to adjust them to local HI time. I usually follow HSHHC, but my paediatrician told me to check out Ferber's book for travel. Ferber says that children are way more adaptable than adults, so they will usually adjust in a day or 2. I'm not worried about adjustments on the trip home because I figure that once we are home we can pick up our old routine, but when we are there I want them on HI time ASAP, so I certainly hope Ferber is right! We live on the east coast, so there is a 6 hour time difference. I think it is unsustainable to try and keep them on east coast time. We arrive about 3pm local HI time - I'll try to give them a little nap and then dinner and down to bed at about 7 or 8pm. They usually go to bed at 7pm here. I'm fully expecting to be woken up at some unearthly hour on the first day, but hopefully they'll get into the groove quickly.

As or car seats, I wasn't planning on taking any or hiring any. I have to check with Delta whether I could gate check them if possible, but we won't be travelling anywhere by car. The airport shuttle doesn't require infants to be in a car seat - they have nowhere to anchor them anyway (I called to check). Once I'm at the resort, I'm staying put!!!

I looked into getting a suite, but it is really cost prohibitive. However, all of the rooms have a balcony, so I guess we'll be sitting on the balcony drinking wine after the girls go to sleep. Which is a lot better than sitting in the bathroom, LOL!!!

Thanks for the advice about the Baby Mum-Mum's, I'll look for those. We do have paci clips, but I had't thought about using them for toys - great idea. And a friend volunteered to provide us with Baby Einstein DVD's, so we will take a portable DVD player & my DH will have his laptop. The girls have never really watched TV, so hopefully the DVD's will be new & exciting & keep them interested!!

 

We just returned from Jamaica (Beaches Negril All Inclusive) with 15 month old twins and our four (almost 5) year old. first you must know that this took an incredible amount of planning. A case of diapers was just enough - we took a pack of swim diapers too and used the whole pack. We bought two fold up (not quite umbrella) strollers and the Prince Lionheart clips to connect the strollers and it worked great! As long as the stroller was going forward or even turning a corner, it worked like a charm - made airport and some resort walking much easier. When we needed to, we could unclip the strollers and each parent took a kid. You had to be careful not to lose the rubber portion of the clips though and it was a 2 - 3 minute job each time. My kids have mostly been eating jarred baby food plus finger food but I took NO baby food and they ate from the buffet. It meant a LOT of food on the floor but I just did a cursory tidy up after each meal. The best solution were high chairs with the tray and we put the babies facing each other. They shared food and less seemed to hit the floor. I also depended on the Jamaican Homogenized milk and the girls made the transition with no problem. I gave them about three bottles a day and used water with a scant amt of juice in between. This was bottled water of course from the resort. We had two cribs that were great - my husband or I would take our older daughter to the evening show each night and the other parent would stay in the dark room to put the little ones down. That worked beautifully. The resort has a nanny and daycare service - plus kids camp. We utilized all three. The daycare is free at this resort and if the kids get fussy, they will come find you. The camp was awesome - our daughter didn't want to leave. The nanny service at only $10/hr for up to three kids is a steal and we tipped our nanny at the end with what it was worth to ME!! This resort does not encourage tipping so we did it at very end.
The beach was a little tough the first day as I wasn't sure how to prevent the consumption of sand or running away. Dig a pool near the ocean and keep it full of water - the twins were happy as clams. 60 sunscreen kept all without burns. They would NOT wear hats for the life of me. I would say the little girls barely ate the first few days but after day 3/4 they started to pick at pasta, watermelon, bacon (!) and chicken. I would ask the servers in the buffet for milk and they gave me boxes at a time to take back to our room. We had a mini fridge and a micro-wave (never used microwave). I bought dried apricots, apples and other fruit for the flight but they didn't like it. Mum mums were good. I brought little tupperware dishes down and filled them with pieces of fruit and pancake and bacon from the buffet. These were great on the flight.
My husband cut almost two hours off the flight by hiring a helicopter to fly us from airport to resort. Pricey. I wouldn't have done it but it sure was nice to get there faster.
Flying logistic #1 - getting older daughter to bathroom. I had to enlist a stanger with kids to help her as I was holding baby. Also when my husband had to pee we asked a lady we met at the resort to hold one twin. We were in same row with isle dividing my husband and I. Can't be in exact same row as only enough oxygen for four. Also, get an isle seat for the freedom. Plan for diaper changes between cart drink service - you don't want to have to go. The change table was only in the rear toilet and the table was hard as a rock. More like a table top. Take a soft blanket to cushion. Try to get seats closer to the back (we were 3/4 of the way to front and was long walk back). Westjet gave me a garbage bag to put dirty diaper in each time and asked me to throw in their garbage rather than toilet garbage. I had toys in the carry on, but never got them out!! We had enough of a time retrieving snugglies and bottles from other weary travelers. Pray for a stranger to make faces at your kid behind you!!
Good luck and go travel!!