Posted: 10/07/2011 at 15:38
This may be long...
We took Isabelle to Egypt in April when she was 6 months old. The airline allowed us to take a buggy whcich wasn't included in our luggage allowance and we kept this with us at the airport and it went in the hold as we boarded the plane. We could have taken a car seat free too but knew I wouldn't use it abroad (I know, bad mummy!).
We took a car seat in the taxi on the way to the airport and left it with them. They kept it in the office for the week and bought it when they collected us.
While we were away I sat with her on my knee in the mini bus/taxis. Realistically it wouldn't have worked taking her car seat unless we pre booked taxi's and asked them to keep it in their boot until they collected us or took it to restaurants with us.
Isabelle was absolutley fine on the flight, it was about 5 hours so we took a few toys, bottles, pouches of food and water. The flight there was midday so she was awake for lots of it but they flight back was during the night so she slept for most of it. My 21 month old niece was with us too and she was fine during the flight as well. They dealt with it a lot better than we expected.
Mosquito repellent, we used a band that I put around her ankle and a mosquito net over the stroller at night. We also had a plug in in our room that we left on all night, we had quite a large room so we got a few and scattered them around.
I started weaning Isabelle at about 5 months, she seemes ready and I wanted her to be comfortable with food on holiday. I took a box of porridge which I made up with formula for her breakfast and lots of different Ellas Kitchen pouches and jars for lunch and tea. She did have some finger foods which I felt were safe like toast and omlette for breakfast and toastie at lunch but these were just nibbles for her not actual meals. Don't know if you BF but we went onto bottles about 2 months before we went so I took steri bags and fairy liquid so that I could use normal bottles. I had bought steri bottles but she was very fussy after having boobie and wouldn't take them, little monkey :lol: I used the tap water to fill the steri bags and then rinsed the bottles with boiled bottled water before using. She was fussy with cartons too, I wanted to buy loads of cartons from duty free before we boarded the plane so it wouldn't come out of our luggage allowance but she wouldn't take them so I used bottled water to make up her powder formula.
The hotel provided a travel cot but it was Egypt and it wasn't great so she slept with us every night. The beds were huge and she was very unsettled anyway (a phase that had started before we were away) so it just seemed the easiest solution all round.
Gosh that was long, to be honest it was so much easier taking her abroad than I thought it would be. We went to Center Parcs last month and that was more difficult than going to Egypt. I think the younger the easier really so go for it and have fun
If there's anything you want to ask feel free x
