We flew long-haul with babies—it was chaos, but we made it

There’s a moment at the boarding gate that every parent of young children knows too well.

It’s not just the juggling of passports, snack bags, and folded strollers. It’s the mental math—how long until the next nap window, how many minutes of distraction a sticker book might buy, how likely your toddler is to scream the moment you finally sit down. It’s the quiet breath before takeoff, where you accept that whatever this trip becomes, it probably won’t resemble your pre-kid adventures.

And still, you go.

Across the world, parents are showing up at airports, rail stations, ferry terminals—with babies strapped to their chests and toddlers skipping beside them. They’re flying across continents for weddings and funerals, dragging car seats through customs, and praying for just one stretch of uninterrupted sleep in a hotel room. It’s messy, unpredictable, and often exhausting. But for many families, it’s become a rite of passage.

Not because it’s easy. But because it’s worth it.

Kerry Kennett remembers the first time she took her son on a long-haul flight. He was 15 months old. The journey from Los Angeles to Auckland stretched over 13 hours, and it could’ve gone very badly. But it didn’t.

She credits the bulkhead seat that gave her baby room to sleep and herself a moment of stillness. And sure, that was luck. But it was also the product of deliberate choice—a belief that staying connected to her husband’s family in New Zealand was worth the risk of midair chaos. Now a mom of three, Kerry still travels regularly. And she hasn’t looked back. “I haven’t ever regretted going on a trip with the kids,” she says. “It’s absolutely worth it.”

This isn’t just anecdote. More and more, young families are choosing movement over pause. Travel with babies isn’t seen as indulgent anymore—it’s seen as inevitable. For immigrant parents, it’s a lifeline to cultural roots. For working parents, it’s a rare chance to break routine. For many, it’s simply what love across distance requires.

There’s a scene that plays out daily in airports across the globe: a baby wailing as the cabin doors close, a parent pacing the aisle with a bottle in hand, a toddler clapping along to a YouTube cartoon playing on loop. It’s chaotic, but it’s also deeply revealing.

Traveling with small children exposes the quiet truths of modern parenting. It shows how parents are no longer waiting for the “perfect age” to travel. They’re booking flights because the baby stage won’t last forever. They’re showing up at weddings, crossing borders for reunions, saying yes to opportunities that don't fit neatly into a nap schedule.

They’re also increasingly aware that the world won't always accommodate them. So they build systems. They book flights for 7 a.m., not 7 p.m. They choose aisle seats. They memorize the layout of airport nursing rooms. They ask for help when they need it, and sometimes they don’t get it—but they go anyway. In this way, travel becomes more than movement. It becomes an act of resistance against the idea that parenting must be small, still, or self-sacrificing. It becomes a statement: our children belong in the world, and so do we.

Ask any parent who’s traveled with a baby or toddler and they’ll tell you: the logistics are only half the story.

Yes, there are stroller tags and TSA-friendly milk containers and emergency changes of clothes. Yes, there are sticker books and suction toys and quiet snacks. Yes, you will absolutely forget something. But beyond the gear is something else entirely—a mental reframe. Emily Krause, a travel writer and mother of four, puts it simply: “Travel with young children is a wonderful adventure—but not a relaxing vacation.”

This matters. Because so much of the stress around family travel comes from expectations. We expect it to be manageable. We hope it will be fun. We compare it to the freedom we once had—boarding late, packing light, choosing boutique stays with rooftop bars. That era is gone, at least for now.

But something else has arrived in its place. A toddler’s delight at seeing sloths in Costa Rica. A preschooler watching the clouds from a plane window for the very first time. A baby being rocked to sleep not just by a parent’s arms, but by the hum of an unfamiliar train. These are not the markers of a perfect trip. But they are markers of a connected one.

Meredith Hansen lives in Spain with her husband and young child. They travel often—visiting relatives, exploring new cities, moving between time zones. The first time she flew with her baby, she did everything “right.” She read all the blogs, packed every recommended item, triple-checked her lists. And then, she says, her son ended up playing with a plastic water bottle and a barf bag for half the flight. The lesson stuck.

These days, her family travels light. One bag per person. No excess. Just the basics—clothes, wipes, comfort items, snacks. They’ve learned that the less you carry, the easier it is to adapt. And the easier it is to accept what you can’t control. Because that’s the real secret. Not perfect preparation. But presence. Not knowing exactly what to expect—but being ready to roll with it anyway.

In the old life, travel was about optimization—early boarding passes, lounge access, squeezing in one more city. But when you’re traveling with a child under five, that model breaks.

Instead of ticking off sights, you wander aimlessly, stopping for a rock your child refuses to part with. Instead of fine dining, you end up splitting fries in the airport food court because it's the only thing they'll eat. Instead of jetlag recovery yoga, you’re up at 3 a.m. feeding Cheerios to a baby who thinks it’s morning. But here’s what happens, if you let it.

You slow down. You notice the quiet morning light in a hotel room. You see how your toddler giggles at a pigeon in Paris the same way they would at home. You realize that travel, when paced by a child, has a different texture. Softer. Less curated. Sometimes frustrating, often tender. Children force us to de-escalate our adult urgency. They ask us to stop seeing travel as a checklist—and start seeing it as a series of shared experiences, however small.

Let’s be honest: much of traveling with kids comes down to snack strategy and nap windows.

Emily Krause is a fan of lollipops during takeoff to help with ear pressure. For younger kids, pouches do the trick. And for babies, feeding during ascent and descent helps soothe the discomfort. The real rule? Overpack snacks. Then pack a few more. Because travel hunger isn’t just physical. It’s emotional. It’s boredom, overstimulation, delay, and meltdown prevention rolled into one. A cracker at the right moment can buy you 10 minutes of peace. A lollipop? Maybe 20.

Sleep is trickier. Some parents swear by car seats on planes. Others aim to book flights that align with nap time. Many have resigned themselves to the fact that airplane sleep is chaos incarnate. And yet, every now and then, a miracle occurs—a baby sleeps the entire flight, a toddler curls up on a parent’s lap, and for a moment, the cabin becomes calm.

These are the moments parents live for. Not because they’re easy, but because they remind you it’s possible.

Here’s something that rarely makes it into travel guides: jet lag affects more than sleep. It affects milk. Meredith Hansen discovered this the hard way. After a transatlantic flight, she found her baby adjusting faster than her breastmilk. “I never considered that my milk was used to coming in at certain times—and now we were six hours off.” It was a quiet panic. And a real one.

Solutions exist—formula, pumped backups, lactation consultant planning. But more than that, stories like this remind us how travel stretches not just our routines, but our biology. We’re not machines. And neither are our babies. When things go off-schedule, it’s not failure. It’s evidence that you tried something bold. And that you’re adapting in real time.

Every parent traveling with young kids can point to a moment when a stranger stepped in. Someone lifts your suitcase while you’re wrangling a stroller. A flight attendant moves you to an empty row. A fellow passenger offers a sticker, a smile, or just a look that says, “You’re doing great.” These moments don’t fix the hard parts. But they soften them.

Kerry Kennett remembers being on flights where people offered to hold her baby while she used the bathroom, or where airline staff gave her extra water bottles and kind words. “People everywhere are so ready to help and be kind,” she says. In a world that often feels too busy for children—or too judgmental of parents—these small kindnesses land heavy. They tell us that family, even when loud or messy, still belongs in public.

Traveling with babies and toddlers is not about ease. It’s about exposure.

It teaches parents to let go of control. It teaches children that they can sleep somewhere new, eat something different, meet someone unexpected. It shows them—long before they have words—that the world is wide and strange and welcoming. It also teaches us something else. That we are more capable than we thought. We can handle a tantrum on a plane. We can improvise bedtime in a hotel. We can show up to unfamiliar places and still parent with love, humor, and grace. Not perfectly. But honestly.

Will your baby remember the Eiffel Tower? Probably not. But you will remember the way their face lit up at the sparkling lights. Will your toddler recall the airport playground in Madrid? Maybe not. But you will remember the way they made friends without speaking the same language. These moments accumulate. They form the kind of memory that lives not in the details, but in the shape of how we showed up. How we said yes. How we kept moving even when it would have been easier to stay home.

Traveling with babies and toddlers is chaos. But it’s also something else. A kind of care that spans time zones. A belief that presence matters more than perfection. A reminder that adventure doesn’t wait for ideal conditions. It just asks you to show up—with snacks, grace, and maybe an empty bottle turned toy. And when you do?

That’s when the real journey begins.