Plane Travel with a 14 Month Old

[Seekrit]

Cobey is going on 4 plane trips soon :p
Brisbane to Sydney
Sydney to NZ
NZ to Sydney and
Sydney to Brisbane. :p

He'll be 14 months old and.. to be honest.. I'm a bit wary..
What can I do to make it a more pleasant trip for us and the other passengers? I was going to wean off dummy at 12 months, but I decided to wait until after the air flights.

[misskittyfantastico]

Food and new toys...plus dummies and boob.

[SassyMummy]

DD went on her first plane trips at 17 months... only from Bris to Perth and back... that's about 5-6 hours.

TBH, the trip there was teh most god-awful experience. It was about a week before Christmas so most of the plane was full... and so DD, DP and I (along with a random old lady) were squashed into 3 seats. It was awful.

The way back was better... it was 10th Jan so most people had gone back to work (not travelling) so the plane was fairly vacant. Meant DD had a spare seat of her own if we wanted. Which was fabulous.

My word of advice is pack 3 times the amount of nappies you'd normally need. For some unknown reason, DD peed on me about 3 times on my way to perth. This was in disposables... ones that didn't really ever leak. It was awful anyway...

So also take along a pair of pants (or two) for you to change into on the plane as well... just in case. I had to sit with pee-stained pants...:laughing:

We also went to Melb recently... and the same think. Excessive pee. Wasn't smart enough to pack pants.

ALSO...be sure to not bring any baby sippy cups that are non-spill. Generally they don't spill because there's no holes that they can leak out... so they're kinda pressurised. Every single time I opened DD's damn sippy cup (one of those tommee tippee ones with a straw and lid you can slide back and forth to open and close it), I got sprayed with water. So I was covered in pee AND water.

Books are good IMO. Books and food. Noisy toys are annoying as all hell - and guaranteed to bother other passengers. Quite toys worked best. There wasn't enough room for drawing or anything though... even though I packed crayons and such... so I read, and re-read tons of books...

[Wivi]

We have done the plane travel thing a few times now.

The dummy is good for take off and landing so I would keep it.

Books were great (I went and bought some new ones just for the plane trip and that worked really well), lots of little snacks, Cobes could probably do some scribbling by 14 months so pencil and paper is probably good too. Actually I had a mini megasketcher thing and that was really good too.

None of the flights you have mentioned are excessively long and that is a big bonus.

Don't worry too much, they can be fine, the last time we flew the hostess commented on how good my DS was! When we landed he asked "More?"

[shed]

We went Syd-NZ when DS was four months old. It was SO easy, he slept most of the way and was on the boob for the descent.

We are flying Syd-Bris-Syd this coming weekend and I am dreading it. He won't sit still for two seconds now and he won't fit in the bassinette anymore. eeek.

I thought you weaned him off that dummy ages ago, LOL.

[kiah]

I took Jayce to the UK when he was about 16 mths. These are some of the things i did.

- Organise a cot on the wall for him to sleep in.

- Ask for the seats that have extra room, make sure u check in super early.

- Arrange for speshy food for him in advance.

- I would use the dummy as it may help for comfort.

- Take finger puppets, books, little figurines.

- Walk up and down the aisle with him in your arms.

Hope that helps. I flew straight thru on my own to the UK with Jayce and we did pretty good. Hope it goes well for you.

[SmileyBJ]

I flew from Brisbane to Cairns with a 8month and 19month old. It went surprisingly well considering there ages.

We bottle fed the 8month old as the plane took off... Organised the trip to be in there nap times so they slept the majority of the way. Dummies were a life saver for the 19month old. Lol she had two in at once and thought it was halarious that everyone was laughing at her make silly faces. We grabbed a window seat and had 3 in a row for the 4 of us so we could swap and change when needed.

Read books and took there favourite soft toys, a little snack and a drink. :thumbsup:

[vavavanny]

Van and I had our first overseas holiday together when he was 12 months old (we left the day after his first b'day) to South America.
I was still breastfeeding at that stage and that was a godsend. I also took Crayons, a drawing pad and is favorite story books. I was lucky that time - we used those things from Melb to Auckland but he slept for all but 2 hours on the flight from Auckland to Santiago.
The return flight was good too. The flight attendants were great and made sure that I sat in a spot with no one beside me so that Van could have his own seat.

This year (at just over 2 years old) we flew back to South America - this time with my hubby. And I thank goodness for our portable DVD player!!
Van was not such a great sleeper on this flight, but Andy and I took turns in entertaining him.
Crayons again, books, his "choo choo" trains, Ethy the Monkey... but the DVD player was the biggest hit.

Good luck.