[nayaksrinivasv]

Hello Friends,

I am planning a first day trip for my 9 month old baby. Any idea while we enjoy our trip, we also make sure that our baby's food schedule and habit does not get interrupted. Need to know how can I ensure that she gets her daily food properly. Any TBHPians who travel with their babies. How do you manage ? My princess eats cerelac, Marie and Glucose biscuits and Milk. Need to know how do you prepare baby food while you travel and also ensure that you also enjoy the trip.

Srinivas

[ajmat]

When my dauther was that age, we carried lots of cerelac, hot water in a flask etc and prepared during a stop. Also most hotels fall for babies and help out !

[ntomer]

Originally Posted by ajmat

When my dauther was that age, we carried lots of cerelac, hot water in a flask etc and prepared during a stop. Also most hotels fall for babies and help out !

Same here. I also used to carry cigarette lighter powered water heater. So whenever we had to feed the baby, heat the water, mix cerelac and you are done :-)

Nitin

[v-drive]

You should carry the cerelac, and different flavours of it, as they get bored eating the same flavor everyday. You should be able to get fresh milk, fruits in every place, however, do carry your own supplies of the biscuits, as if you are going into interiors, you might not find the reliable brands.
When we traveled with my daughter , we did all of the above as well as checked up front with the resort if they will help us in cooking the baby food, and they agreed. I am sure that we are more worried and hassled by the logistics and babies just cope fine.

[nayaksrinivasv]

Originally Posted by ntomer

Same here. I also used to carry cigarette lighter powered water heater. So whenever we had to feed the baby, heat the water, mix cerelac and you are done :-)

Nitin

Any idea where can I get a Cigarette Lighetr powerd water heater in Pune or online?

[mb_jg]

One more thing, try & keep your driving style as consistent as possible. Too much braking or spirited driving in the ghats will surely make your kid lose his meal.

We learnt this on our Goa trip with our one year old, he had his meal just before we started the Amboli ghat section, & the twisties made him lose his lunch, even though I was not zipping.

[Digital Vampire]

Originally Posted by mb_jg

One more thing, try & keep your driving style as consistent as possible. Too much braking or spirited driving in the ghats will surely make your kid lose his meal.

We learnt this on our Goa trip with our one year old, he had his meal just before we started the Amboli ghat section, & the twisties made him lose his lunch, even though I was not zipping.

My 15 months old daughter seems to be an exception to the above case. She sleeps calmly for hours together on her throne (Britax Combination) while travelling on potholed roads and through ghat section twisties. But when the roads are butter smooth, she wants to play inside the vehicle...lol. May be the rocking motion of my Tucson is helping her sleep better.

In the past 6 months, she has lost her meal a couple of times during travel, but strangely, each of those times, it was when sunlight is incident on her and flickering. This happens when passing through places with lots of tree cover with sun shining through. Possibly the baby is getting upset trying to track flickering light. Now I keep a removable filter screen handy for such ocassions.

[mb_jg]

Yep, kids tend to sleep due to the rocking movements. But sudden, multiple turns or frequent braking can upset them.
My now 2yr old had a blast on the same drive to Goa but with a difference. On the same Amboli ghat twisties he suddenly tells me in a stern voice "dada, drive properly" cause he was getting irritated of being thrown around :o)
Another thing we have noticed with our kid on long drives is he prefers finger food than his usual meals. Also, have plenty of boiled drinking water, kids are usually content with biscuits & other titbits which are easily available in every town, village. We also carry all his medicines, the most imp one is for his fever & puking. It helps when the chances of getting a stomach upset & loose motions are higher with outside food.

[pramodpk]

We just finished a 3 day (750 KM) road trip (on bad roads) with my 8 month old daughter. We carried hot water in a flask, cerelac, Nan and biscuits. We also carried an electric kettle to boil water in the hotel room.
Yesterday we were on the road for 10 hours and did not face any issues.

[Maverick1977]

My kid had his 1st long trip when he was 7 months old. I was quite worried since the journey was not even in my car, but surprisingly things well quite well. I agree that the driver has to be a lot more conscious that he has a special person on-board and avoid taking sharp turns & bends at high speeds.
I too like other had a good supply of baby food but my fellow used to (& still does) hate warm /hot food so question of warm water never arose.
1 thing that surprised me the most was that during the return journey he was super irritated, may be bacuse it was night time & the headlights were just beaming from front & back. Not only was he sleepless but I also felt that he wanted the journey to end at the earliest.
All the very best for your journey...

[phamilyman]

Umm boss, what of travel kettles? Just make the milk etc anywhere you go.

I own Black & Decker (cheaper in store, Croma). its fantastic for travelers to make tea/maggi. whether its safe for milk, not sure. But you can try Bajaj, IF you can find it. I couldn't.

The B&D one is very light, comes with its mini tea set. Heartily recommended. I'm not sure if it'd run well from a ciggy lighter socket. You can always find a place to run it anywhere you go - in India, habitation is always a stone's throw away

PS: I had a bagful of dairy whitener sachets (120 bucks for 120 of them) - easy to make milk on the road (used for europe). Now whether that suffices for your baby's needs, is a good question.

[MX6]

You can get a cigarette lighter powered bottle warmer in Big Bazaar as well as Reliance for under 250 rs. Remember it just warms it and not boils it.

I've been travelling with my baby ever since it was 2 months old.
Here are some tips.

1. Try not to change the feeding rhythm if your baby has one. My daughter has a set timetable what to have when and so we ensure that we stop accordingly and prepare and be ready.

2. Don't try to give outside food at your first trip. It would be better to sensitise the baby a week before on long life milk like Amul Taaza and Nestle's milk. Those can be carried and stored in room temperature. Once opened, you need to refrigerate what's remaining.

3. I bought an electric kettle from Vijay Sales that costed me around 1100 -1200 bucks. It is not the plastic one, but complete stainless steel with no exposed coil. So this was very hygeinic and easy to clean. It takes max of 10 seconds to boil a litre of water / milk and one can request any road side dhaba to use their plug point for 10 seconds. No one objects when you say it's for baby food.

4. Carry a baby bag which has all your baby's food items (like cerelac/ farex/ ragi (if you are a Kannadiga you'd know how important is ragi powder for baby) etc. Also keep your baby's fruits, utensils for preparing fresh juice, separate knives for that etc in the baby bag. Carry sufficient feeding bottles to give milk/ juice/ water (babies need a lot of water when travelling as they tend to dehydrate a lot). You can keep baby clothes and nappies in another bag along with baby's cleaning products.

5. Carry Baby's routine medicines + emergency medicines (there are standard one for fever, cold, vomiting etc for babies).

6. Ensure that the baby is comfortable when it's being fed. If it is used to sitting in a high rise chair, you can place your car seat on the boot under a shady tree or probably in a restaurant table when you are having a break and feed the baby in the car seat itself. If it is used to running around while being fed, then try find a nice open lawn and carry a mat that you can spread on the ground. Trying to make the running baby sit to eat is the biggest challenge.

7. Plan your breaks in such a way so as to co-incide the meal preparation time for your baby. Remember, first trips outside, the baby gets damn excited seeing new things. So sensitise baby to new surroundings when feeding.

8. If your baby is finnicky and doesn't eat or drink properly, don't get worked up. First time trips are always a nervous affairs, just like the nth trip. The calmer you remain, the better it is for the baby. So plan the trip with lot's of buffer time because, if the baby gets very cranky and dislikes the first trip, chances are that till it grows up and understands, you will be in for trouble. So the plans should have back up / back out plans as well.

9. Take her regular toys/ books (yes, I said books), objects of fascination along the trip. Even portable dvd player with her favourite shows help placate the baby.

10. Have a safe trip and feel free to PM me for anything. My baby has been on the road for over 24000 kms in the last 13 months. I didn't do anything great. I just realised that my baby's necessities were the most important in the trip and it becomes easier if I don't wait till she starts crying for the same.

Do have a look at this link for what all I carried for my baby.

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/1878998-post264.html

Also the last few pages of that thread has details of how I sensitised my daughter for her trips. Well, you can have a look at the whole thread as well. It was almost 6000 km trip with my daughter.

[aargee]

Well, we did about 1200+ odd Kms with our daughter when she was 4 months old; with more than I've been travelling with my baby ever since it was 2 months old; with Chennai - Mysore on a single day of about 450+ odd Kms.

Originally Posted by MX6

1. Try not to change the feeding rhythm if your baby has one. My daughter has a set timetable what to have when and so we ensure that we stop accordingly and prepare and be ready.

^^^ We just did this & we didn't carry anything addition for our daughter. IMO, this is the most important point, even as grown ups, our body reacts to any change in regular schedule. So keep this as top most priority.

We never bought anything for our daughter from outside; anyway, we're little old fashioned & never trust on cerelac/farex or any baby food. So it was little easier for us.

Originally Posted by MX6

5. Carry Baby's routine medicines + emergency medicines (there are standard one for fever, cold, vomiting etc for babies).

+10000...

Originally Posted by MX6

9. Take her regular toys/ books (yes, I said books), objects of fascination along the trip. Even portable dvd player with her favourite shows help placate the baby.

Though not with our daughter, we carried series of CD's for my Son's favs cartoons.

From my experience, babies cry mostly for food, lack of sleep or when they're not keeping well on health; we've almost never seen any other situation other than this.

[n_mouli]

I also normally carry a induction cook-top and a large vessel in the boot to sterilize the feeding bottles whenever we had to stay-over the night outside home. It is a very very handy equipment but beware; in a couple of lodges we blew the fuse away when we tried a fast-boil by setting the cook-top on max power. My experience is that a setting of 800W or 1000W does not cause such issues.

[MX6]

Originally Posted by n_mouli

I also normally carry a induction cook-top and a large vessel in the boot to sterilize the feeding bottles whenever we had to stay-over the night outside home. It is a very very handy equipment but beware; in a couple of lodges we blew the fuse away when we tried a fast-boil by setting the cook-top on max power. My experience is that a setting of 800W or 1000W does not cause such issues.

You can try the cold water sterilizing tablets and the sterilizing kit that's available in Mothercare. You don't need to boil water for that. My earlier post shows the pic of the same with instructions. Very handy even on the move.