Kirt

I hope to be able to attend a wedding in Norway within the next year. My wife and I are going only if we can take our young son, 10 months old by the tentative date. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Information does not have to center around Norway, but it would be a plus! Thanks for your time!

Jeff

Kirt: There were some wonderful suggestions and tips posted in response to my similar, recent inquiry. Scroll down a page or two and you should be able to find it. I don't recall its title exactly, but it asks for advice from those experienced with traveling with babies/children. Beware, there is an ugly side to that thread. See also, the get it off your chest thread.

anna

I ignored the previous Babies to Europe threadd because it was already too long by the time I got to it and I knew what kind of responses would be in it. My only recommendation to you is that if you are travelling from the US or anywhere else that is several time zones from Norway, that you plan on arriving 2 or 3 days before the wedding to allow the baby to get over jet lag before you take him to a wedding. A jet-lagged 10-month-old is not a pretty sight. Seriously.

Nix

I offer the following advice solely as a parent who has been there, done that. Frankly, I'd recommend against the whole idea. Your child is probably wonderful now, but a 10month old is crawling and maybe walking, and is therefore a handful on a plane, particularly a long overnight flight. Then there's the jet lag. Then there's the chance that the baby isn't invited to the wedding, so you'll need to hunt down a sitter, who may be a total unknown stranger. Then there's the fact that many babies (especially jet-lagged ones) have stranger anxiety and will scream for hours with a new sitter in unfamiliar surroundings. Then there's the plane ride home.

Life is short. Either skip the wedding, send one of you, or leave the baby home if you both go. But I respect your right to do as you wish, so have a great time, whatever you decide.

ilisa

If you do go, please look into purchasing a seat for your child and bringing along the carseat. Most airlines offer 1/2 price fares for children under 2. Not only is it the safest way for the child to travel, you will preserve your sanity, and possibly the sanity of those around you, as well.

Christina

At least Norway is a healthy country without a lot of communicable infectious diseases; I don't think children's immune systems are fully developed at that point and his immuniz. schedule won't be finished, but that's probably not a problem if you aren't gone long. Be sure to check with your pediatrician well ahead of time on this idea to see what the doctor thinks of it, knowing your son and his health condition. If your wife breastfeeds, that can be useful as it is more convenient and also helps the immune system and should help comfort the baby, but beware that jet lag, sched changes, etc, may affect her milk production. Ear infections and unequal ear pressure from the flight are potential problems; be sure to have a pacifier and get him to suck; you might want to look into children's earplanes, a device that is supposed to help this ear pressure problem. I've heard good things about them, but no personal experience(www.earplane.com).

Danna

Kirk,
I realize you looked at the earlier thread with tons of messages.. don't overlook it. Amidst the tons of anti child messages was "Good Stuff Maynard"
Check it out, and sift through.

Have fun, good luck

Tom

We took our daughter to Italy in April when she was 10 months old. I can honestly say our trip went amazingly well. Obviously every chlld is different but hopefully yours will do as well as ours.

Off hand I'd have to say that the two things that probably helped us most were that my wife was still nursing and that we flew overnight. Also, we did not have a separate seat for our daughter but were lucky enough to have a row of five seats to ourselves. When we arrived in Italy our daughter did not seem to experience any jet lag and was her normal self.

One tip for when you're in Norway is to use a backpack. In Italy we only used a backpack to carry our daugher around and that worked out great.

Based on our experience I would strongly suggest going with your son. We're actually taking our daughter to Norway in March when she'll be 20 months. Send me an e-mail if you have any more questions.