Wednesday, 23 July 2014

A few tips for holidays with your baby

Eve is generally very good at falling asleep by herself in the cot after she has had her evening milk. We put her mobile on the 'jungle sounds' setting when we put her to bed and she often sings herself to sleep. Thankfully I thought of taking 'Sammy the seahorse' with us on our trip to Greece. 

Her seahorse was really good, because of course we didn't have the mobile or a cot, so the seahorse which plays lullaby's and lights up was useful. It was something that she could associate with sleeping, is a toy that she's used to and was small enough to fit in the suitcase.


It also comes in blue and green too.







Eve didn't like being left in the room where she was sleeping as it was alien to her and very dark, so this little night light did a good job!


The most handy thing I took on holiday was a small bottle of laundry washing liquid, it really was invaluable.

Just pour some of the hand-wash liquid that you use at home and put it in a small travel bottle - it worked wonders. As I couldn't take Eve's washable nappies (wouldn't fit in the suitcase and I didn't want to bother our hosts with washing clothes each day), I just took two of them with one wrapper and enough nappy liners for the week. Eve wears a double washable nappy during the night-time, so I put one on her each night and washed it out each morning. Being able to wash some of Eve's clothes was good too so that food stains didn't set in.


I've read a fair bit that says babies should not be given mineral water - due to high levels of sodium (salt) or sulphates. However, when we were in Greece we were told not to drink the tap water and that we should use bottled water to make up formula. I didn't stress about it, it was one of those things that we could not avoid, and at least we were lucky enough to have clean water to drink in the first place.

Of course, I wouldn't give her mineral water unnecessarily, but I felt that for a week we could break the rules a bit. 


Another thing that was really useful were baby liquid medicine with syringes. If you squirt a bit of medicine in their mouths as the plane is taking off or coming down it helps to pop their ears. Alternatively you could try a Vicks vapour stick. Hold it under their nose, when they breathe in their ears should pop. I've not tried this but it sounds good.


I knew that the air stewards would fill up the baby bottles for formula, so I took milk powder ready to go in clean bottles. Thankfully I also took a couple of 'ready-to-feed' bottles of formula (unopened through customs is fine). When we were on the plane the trolley was blocking the aisle for the majority of the flight so it would have been quite difficult to ask them for water anyway. If you're going on a long haul flight I would think it will be easier to obtain water for bottles though.

During the last few weeks we have started to really notice how much Eve is developing. She tries hard to communicate with us to let us know what she needs or wants. She's a real Daddy's girl and adores playtime with him.

Eve strumming her ukelele, rather than hitting or biting it like she used to do


Wearing her big girl pyjamas - a gift from her Aunt Jayne and Uncle Peter. She looked so proud the evening that we put these on her. She had such a big grin for about 20 minutes before going to bed.

This week Eve has started flipping from her back to her front whilst she is in her cot and keeps getting her feet stuck in between the bars. She usually sleeps in a sleeping bag, but at the moment it's so warm that she just sleeps in pyjamas. I've never used a bumper in the cot, and am very strict on having nothing inside the cot with her. We went to the weigh in at the baby clinic yesterday (Eve weighed 16lb 12oz) so I asked the midwife what I should do. She told me that I shouldn't use a bumper and that I should try to place some rolled up towels around the edges of the cot. To be honest I don't really see the difference between this idea and a bumper, so I think we're just going to leave Eve to wriggle around and learn what to do.

Eve at Bristol Harbour Festival

If we hold Eve's hands whilst she is in a sitting position she easily moves into a standing position which is fun. Daddy is teaching her how to get a better grip on crawling which as yet she's not quite managing, but is definitely getting closer to.






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