Travelling with baby - best age?

Hi

Just wondering if anyone could give advice their opinion on the best age to travel with a new(ish) baby at. My little one is three months old now we are looking to go back to UK and Ireland over the next few months and wondered what age is best to make the trip at. I will probably have to do one of the legs on my own as DH won't be able to get that much leave.

Things I am thinking of when trying to make decision is how active he will be for plane flight, fitting into bassinet and maximising possibility of actually getting bassinet and whether we have started solids or not (I don't think I would like to start him overthere). Is there anything else I should be considering and what age would you think is best.

Any insight from anyone who has done it before would be great.

Cheers Meadsie

I think that it's easy when they are younger. Before they are crawling it is much easier as they don't get so restless. Also, I think during that first 6 months when they don't need any food other than your breastmilk it is much easier going out and travelling.

Sounds like a great trip. Enjoy!

the younger the better! Probably around 2-3 months? You'd probably want them to have at least their first set of vaccinations (if you are getting them done)...

Not the same thing, but we went to Melbourne (a 6 hour drive) when DD was only a couple of months old and she slept the whole way, except for waking up twice to have a feed. These days she is lucky to travel an hour before she wakes up and gets cranky of being stuck in her car seat. Will be easier once we can turn her around but I dont really want to do that just yet.

BEFORE THEY CAN MOVE!!!!!
everything is much harder when they are mobile.... when they are young they can go in a sling, or in a pram, or on the floor and they won't move... once they are crawling they are a LOT less happier to be sitting in a pram for any length of time etc...

we have a holiday planned in march where bubs will be about 6-8 weeks.... we also went overseas with our dd who was 2 at the time and it was hard....

good luck, book it soon!

Definitely sooner rather than later. We went with DD when she was 6 months and came back when she was 8 months. She was actually really really good and we had heaps of people comment about how quiet she was, so we were lucky. On the way over she was happy to sit up in the bassinet which i'm pretty sure you're not supposed to do, but noone told us otherwise. She sat there and played with toys, ate some food and looked around at everything. At that stage she was sitting up and rolling but hadn't started crawling yet.
On the way back I was flying by myself as well and it was more difficult. DD wanted to stand up the chairs and look at the kids in the row behind us constantly. She didn't want to sit still. It was an overnight flight and we had a bassinet and 2 chairs but I didn't want to sleep with her in the bassinet in case she woke up, didn't want to sleep holding her on my chest and I couldn't get comfortable with her in the baby carrier as the arm rest wouldn't lift up in the seats in the row where the bassinet was.
We did baby food in jars while we were overseas (I found that there was a huge selection of organic baby food with nothing added to it) and haven't had an issue with going back to normal food once we got back. I made sure I took baby panadol and bonjela as DD was teething and tried to organise my carry on bags as much as possible. I found zip lock bags to be extremely handy.
Feel free to ask questions if you want to know anything else