Road Trip with Baby Pt. 2

*In this post, I recommend using a pump and bottle to feed on a trip.  I know many of you will be opposed to this.  That’s ok!  Alice is an excellent eater and has never had any problems with taking a nuk, paci, bottle, anything.  She is normally breastfed, and I avoid the bottle as much as I can, but I’m not religious about it.  I would never recommend you do something that doesn’t work in your own breastfeeding relationship, I just want to share what works for us.  Thanks!

This is the second part of a 2-part entry on traveling with a newborn.  My husband and I made the 22-hour drive from Denver to Los Angeles for Christmas this year with our 10-week-old.  The first part of this entry was about what we did to prepare for the trip and how we planned for it to go.  You can read about it here.  This installment is a recount of how the trip went and what I would do differently.

We travelled for 10 days total, including 4 days in the car and 1 overnight motel stay each way.  Alice had her own backpack packed with 10 Ziplock bags.  Each bag carried an outfit for the day.  It worked out well because I could just grab a bag when I was ready to dress her in the morning, instead of trying to root around for pants, then a shirt, etc.  I wish I could have thought of a better way to organize it than Ziplocks, though.  I had a lot of used bags to either toss or try to reuse by the end of the trip.  In the end, it seemed wasteful.  If you have a better idea, I’d love to read about it in the comments!

Feeding Alice on the road was a learning experience.  I brought my pump and some bottles so we wouldn’t have to stop to nurse.  On the way out, I only pumped enough for each next feeding.  This meant that I was having to find a microwave every other time she ate to sterilize my 2 pump bottles.  I wised up on the way back.  My research revealed that breastmilk is generally good for 4-8 hours at room temperature.  Using the 20-minute-per-side rule, I pumped as much as I could and used it for the next few feedings. Thus I only had to sterilize the pump once.  This worked incredibly well!  We chose Dr. Brown’s Natural Flow bottles to prevent gas and were pleased with the results.  Alice was expectedly gassy, but not so much that it made her fussy.  In fact, she slept for about 90% of the time!

Because of all her sleeping, we didn’t end up using her toy or nuk very much.  The Boppy pillow was endlessly valuable to the success of the trip.  Alice nursed, slept, and did tummy time on it.  It was most handy, though, when her cousin shared his cold and she couldn’t breathe well on her back.  We draped her over it to sleep on her tummy.

So, now that I’m a total expert (haha), here are my top tips for traveling with a newborn:

1. Your baby will probably sleep most of the way.  Bring a small toy, just in case, but there shouldn’t be any need to pack piles of stuff.
2. Organize your baby’s bag in a way that allows you to pull outfits easily.  You never know where you’ll be changing him/her or what accommodations you’ll have.
3. Pump and bottle feed if you can.  Milk lasts longer than you’d think, sterilization has become easier with the advent of the microwave sterilization bag, and you’ll save a lot of time.
4. Bring a Boppy pillow or the like.  It has many uses!