Traveling with an infant/not really an infant

Many times as a soon to be parent or a new parent you read about how easy it is to travel with a new baby. They seem to be really go with the flow and ho hum about life and when you travel for long distances they will most likely sleep through the car ride and life will be good.

With this in mind we up and left for a short, long weekend when Elijah was just shy of 4 weeks old. BJ and I took the LONG road trip down to Tennessee for my cousin's wedding. At that time we were still new parents and the challenges that we faced were more along the lines of feeding a child that wasn't on a schedule yet, bringing the right number of diapers, packing the right amount of clothes for the child and bringing things that we just weren't yet used to lugging around with us. The hardest part of the whole trip was Elijah waking up screaming bloody murder as we were stuck in crawling traffic in a construction zone. It was awesome! The second hardest part of the trip was realizing he had blown out a diaper at one of the feeding stops on the way home and not having any way to wash the car seat cover.

Overall, I felt that that trip was relatively easy. Granted I had my wonderful husband with me to help me carry the heavy car seat, and child when my still recovering body just couldn't manage. I also had my wonderful mother with me during some very long and potentially lonely feeding sessions. But as I look back it was very easy to travel with Elijah at less than a month. With that in mind that is what fueled the thought that BJ and I could make the annual trip to Michigan this year to show off the little guy almost 5 months later.

However, last minute we decided that due to BJ's work schedule it wasn't practical (or necessarily safe) for BJ to come out for just over a 24 hour period with the family so we decided I would go alone with the boy. At this point in time we have just passed Elijah's 6 month birthday and I feel that as his parents we are really good about reading him, anticipating him, and fulfilling his needs before he breaks down in utter frustration and anger which makes parenting easier. However, we are able to do this typically when we are at home and have everything our little hearts desire at our finger tips and we also have each other. This makes packing for a 4 day excursion interesting, especially when you throw into the picture the fact that I was now riding up in someone else's car and the instructions were to pack light. Okay well this should be fun. Here is what we brought just for the baby.

8 containers of baby food

4 bottles

1 can of formula

The "pump"

5 outfits

3 backup under shirts

2 sets of pajamas

2 towels

1 washcloth

baby soap

Enough cereal for 3 tablespoons of food 2 times a day for the 4 days way

2 spoons

5 bowls for food

Diapers and lots of them

Swim diapers

Wipes

1 quilt

2 thick blankets

1 receiving blanket

3 stuffed animals

4 hard covered books

1 soft book

2 rattles

Talking Cookie Monster

A Talking spinning ball toy (we knew there would be minimal baby toys)

Ice pack to keep the pumped milk cold

new baby shoes

diaper bag

stroller

car seat

What I learned: It is easy to travel with an infant if, your child has begun to stick to a schedule, is only on breast milk and can exclusively breast feed, you have NO solid food to transport and if you do it doesn't have to be refrigerated, and where ever you are going has infant toys to entertain your child, or your child still is uninterested in toys it doesn't matter if you have toys or not. Even packing light I feel I brought half our house and to make things more fun it is just me lugging (every time we leave the hotel) just about all this stuff. Fun time!! I will eventually post pictures of Elijah's bath time in the hotel.