What it's really like travelling overseas with a baby

What was the experience of flying with a baby like? 

I had these horror stories in my head of a baby that just doesn’t stop screaming. You’ve missed their bedtime, it’s the middle of the night and they’re just losing it. To our surprise, this wasn’t really the case.

We had moments where we thought, Oh God, everyone must hate us; he’s been crying and just generally being so loud… (he was also going through the high pitched screeching phase - well timed) but we had multiple people tell us how well behaved he’d been.

It made me realise that we were just being paranoid and the general public are not as harsh and mean as we had originally thought.

How has visibly being a mum in public connected you to other women across cultures? Or was there unsolicited attention that got too much? 

It’s amazing how just the presence of a baby makes people smile – I thought this only happened with dogs.

Especially in Italy, as it’s true what they say, they do love children over there. The toughest looking men would melt and throw out “Bambino!” and “Bellissimo!” as we entered countless cafés on the hunt for pistachio croissants.

It was also really interesting to see parenting styles across different cultures. In places like Australia, I feel as though there’s this pressure on adhering to strict bedtime routines, which often just causes more anxieties (at least in our case).

In Europe we’d see the kids at the dinner table with their family at 9 o’clock at night with a big bowl of pasta and a smile on their face. Somehow, it felt more connected. 

What were some of your biggest challenges?

Something that’s completely out of your control is the airport and flight delays. On the way back to Australia, I was flying with Caspa on my own (Tom left sooner, via a surf trip in The Mentawais, and no, I won’t be letting him live that down). 

On the London to Dubai flight, our plane was delayed on the tarmac. By the time we arrived in Dubai, we’d missed our connecting flight. It was 2am. There were no more flights until the following day. 

“Don’t worry,” the airline tells me, “we’ll put you up in a hotel until tomorrow!” 

Usually, I’d think this isn’t so bad: a sleep in a bed before a 14 hour flight, but we didn’t arrive at the hotel until 4am. The shuttle was due to arrive at 7am to drive us the 30 minutes back to the airport. Not exactly much rest time!

Thankfully, Caspa was none-the-wiser to what was going on and basically slept through the whole thing (just not a wink during the actual flight…).

What were some of your biggest joys?

With no family in Sydney, Caspa wasn’t overly familiar with being passed around too often, but on our trip, we found that lots of people wanted to hold him (eternally grateful to the airline staff and other plane passengers on the journey home). 

It was so nice to see him come out of his shell and be more open to those outside of his household. It was important for us to relax into this and allow the waiters in the restaurant to momentarily whisk him off, giving us short moments of reprieve to enjoy our dinner.

Because that’s the downside of keeping them up past bedtime so that you can go out for dinner – you don’t get that quiet meal after the baby’s gone to bed.