I’m not looking forward to the day the baby girl outgrows her pop-up tent travel cot. We bought it for a trip to Goa when she was four-months-old, and have used it every time we’ve gone away since then, at hotels, B&Bs, in our campervan, at festivals, when staying with friends and relatives, and for nearly a month when working in Edinburgh in summer 2017.
The benefits of a pop-up tent travel cot
The pop-up tent travel cot fits neatly into small spaces
It’s handy for a lot of reasons, primarily that it functions almost like a separate space within the room because it’s entirely enclosed once it’s zipped up. It’s not soundproof, and it doesn’t entirely block out the light, but it’s better than an open cot in both respects. (If it’s not dark enough in the room, we might drape a breathable blanket over the top). The zip itself is important too: zipping the tent closed works as a sleep cue – for our baby at least (except when it doesn’t, of course). And once it’s closed, it’s a barrier to mosquitos and other insects.
Given how different sleeping in the tent is from sleeping in a cot, you’ll want to do a few practice runs before you go away. It took the baby girl two naps in the tent in our living room at home to get used to it when she was three months old.
Daytime uses for a pop-up tent travel cot
Depending on your destination and type of trip, you might find the tent useful in the daytime too; and for more than just napping. We put the baby girl in it all the time in Goa so she could roll around with her teething rings and toys in a relatively clean environment. We must have looked ridiculous carting it to and from our room all the time, but the staff took it in their stride. We thought we’d have the tent on the beach a lot, as it provides UV protection, but ultimately it was too hot to do that, so we stayed in the beachside restaurant most of the time and took turns going for dips in the sea.
We’ve used it camping too, as a way of safely stowing away the baby girl for the moments when two sets of hands are required to set up or strike camp. Further perks are that it packs down very small and is very light. It’s so small and so light in fact that you can take the tent as carry-on on a plane or pack it into your luggage. Cunningly concealing the tent like this, you can pass off another small bag as a travel cot, thereby making the most of your infant baggage allowance of (usually) travel cot, pushchair and car seat.
The downsides of the pop-up tent travel cot
A major downside of the tent is that it doesn’t provide complete shade, so you can’t rely on it in sunny places – you’ll still need sunscreen and a sun hat. It gets pretty warm in there too – in Goa we used a little battery-operated fan and covered the baby girl with damp muslins to keep her cool.
It’s very easy to pop up and pack away, but the fact that you have to be either on the floor or in a very deep bend to get your child in and out means that it won’t be ideal for all parents/carers. We use the more conventional BabyBjörn Travel Cot Easy Go when we take the baby girl to stay at her grandparents’ house.
The baby girl in her pop-up tent travel cot on the beach in Goa, her miniature fan keeping her cool.
Self-catering accommodation is almost always going to be preferable when travelling with a baby or toddler, but if you need to stay in a hotel or bed and breakfast, here are my baby hotel hacks.
Feeding
The baby girl napping in her tent in our hotel room in Egypt
Before you book, get in touch to find out what the hotel or B&B provides in terms of in-room amenities. A kettle is very useful for warming up baby food or milk, and a fridge for keeping it cold. If they’re not available – more common in a B&B – ask if you can use the management’s kitchen.
If there’s an option, and you can afford it, always go for a room with an en suite bathroom. It’s easier for baby bedtime, means you can keep dirty nappies separate from where you’re sleeping, and serves as a nightlight if you leave the door open a crack. Also, you don’t want to be traipsing to and from the communal bathroom when you realise you need to pee after you’ve got up to feed or soothe the baby. Ask for a bathroom with a tub; if there isn’t one available, pack a small inflatable paddling pool.
Washing and sterilising bottles is more challenging without a kitchen, but perfectly doable in an en suite if you’ve packed the right paraphernalia (here are my tips). You’ll need a bottle brush, a bit of washing up liquid (though I used shower gel last time and it was fine), cold sterilising tablets, and a Tupperware box with a lid.
Sleeping
Many hotels will provide a cot if you request it in advance, but bear in mind that it might be rubbish – the hotel we stayed at in Egypt didn’t include mattresses in theirs. So if you can handle the extra luggage, bring your own travel cot. If not, pack some bedding just in case – this has the added benefit of smelling like home, thereby making your child feel more secure in a new place. The baby girl kicks off her blankets so we use a sleeping bag instead (it also comes in handy on planes).
The first few trips we did with the baby girl she slept in the carrycot bit of her pram. When she outgrew that we moved her into a little pop-up tent, which packs down very small and is super light. The other benefit of the tent is that it’s its own contained environment so your baby isn’t distracted by her surroundings. Whichever style of travel cot you opt for, have your baby nap in it a couple of times at home so it’s familiar when you go away.
If your child needs darkness to sleep, consider packing a SnoozeShade to cover the cot. That way you don’t need to worry too much about chinks of light coming in between the curtains, and can have a light on in the room after your baby has gone to sleep but before you’ve gone to bed (I find the buggy model of SnoozeShade invaluable too). For co-sleepers, bring a travel blackout blind instead, which you can sucker onto the window. They’re a bit of a faff to use, but worth it if your baby is very sensitive to light. You’ll want to buy head torches too if you’re co-sleeping – ones with an infrared setting won’t wake the baby but are bright enough to see your way around and to read by.
Choosing a room
The baby girl snoozing in her pushchair on the way to the Wasdale Head Inn in the Lake Distract for dinner after doing ‘bedtime’ at Burnthwaite Farm B&B
Noise-wise, you want to position the cot as out of the way as possible in the hotel room so you’re not having to walk past it all the time. Depending on your destination, it’s worth asking about the cost of a suite compared to a standard double – in a lot of the big US hotel chains there often isn’t much difference, and you’ll be grateful of the extra space to stow not just your sleeping child, but all their stuff too. If that’s not an option, a large cupboard can work nicely, assuming there’s adequate ventilation.
Whatever size room you’re in, white noise can be helpful to cover the sound of your creeping around after baby bedtime. There are various white noise smart phone apps available, plenty of them for free. If you’re worried about the noise from other guests and hotel staff, ask for a room at the end of a hallway but away from the lifts or stairs (this trick works the other way around too – the further you are from other guests, the less bad you’ll feel if your baby cries in the night). And remember to put the ‘do not disturb’ sign out if you’re staying in for nap time.
Baby bedtime
The most annoying thing about staying in a hotel or B&B rather than an apartment is that you can’t really leave the baby by themselves, so your own bedtime (or at least your sitting silently in the dark time) is dictated by your baby’s – not exactly the ideal holiday scenario. If you’re in a hot place, getting a room with a balcony is an excellent work round: it can’t compete with being out on the town, but at least you can have a beer and a conversation at a reasonable volume. If your hotel does room service or is okay with you bringing in a take away, even better.
The alternative is to do bedtime at the hotel – bath, book, pajamas, etc – but put your baby to bed in her pushchair (this only works if your baby will sleep in a pushchair, obviously), and take her out with you for the evening. If she’ll stay asleep while you transfer her from buggy to cot at the end of the night, do that. Ours always wakes up if we try that, so we just leave her in the buggy, in our room, until she wakes up of her own accord, and transfer her then.
For those times where you are confined to your room after baby bedtime or during naptime, I can’t recommend bone-conducting headphones enough.
Child-proofing
Consider packing a roll of duct tape for emergency child-proofing. Use it to secure drawers, tidy cables or pad corners of low tables. Just make sure you test your tape on an unseen area first to make sure it’s not going to take off the paintwork or leave a mark.
Babysitting and kids’ clubs
A lot of hotels can arrange in-room babysitting, whether you fancy an evening out or just a couple of hours child-free at the beach. Rates vary depending on your destination, as do safeguarding measures such as first-aid training and background checks, so check before you book to ensure that you’ll be confident leaving your baby.
Kids’ clubs used to be limited to older children – and in many destinations that’s still the case – but more and more resorts and hotels these days are waking up to what parents want and providing childcare for the under-2s too. Travel in the off-season and childcare might even be included in the cost of your stay.
Some areas of the world are better represented with early years childcare than others. It can still be tricky to find in South East Asia and the Middle East, for example, while in Europe and the Caribbean, creches for children under the age of 2 are fairly common. Mostly it’s beach destinations that offer it, but there are a handful of ski holiday companies providing childcare for under-2s too.
Even if there’s no dedicated creche for under-2s at a hotel you’re considering booking, you might be able to hire a babysitter to look after your baby within the confines of a kids’ club for older children.
It’s worth bearing in mind that, as with creches at home, you’ll most likely need to stay on site at the hotel or resort. And booking ahead is a good idea. Make sure you check the individual hotel’s policy when booking.
Trying to get a baby to sleep can be tedious at the best of times. Throw in an unfamiliar location, early starts, late nights, missed naps, hot weather and jet lag and it’s probable that you’ll be spending more hours than you’d like at the start of your holiday pacing around a dark hotel room with a baby in your arms, or sitting next to a cot soothing a grumpy toddler. Which is where bone-conducting headphones come in.
Your child will settle into their new surroundings at their own pace, depending on various factors (stay tuned for posts on how to deal with jet lag and hot weather), but in the meantime, a pair of bone-conducting headphones can provide some relief.
How bone-conducting headphones work
Bone-conducting headphones allow you to listen to music or podcasts while still being able to hear your baby
Initially developed for military operations, and now used by some cyclists and runners, these headphones sit just below your temples (see picture) and send the sound through your cheekbones to the inner ear, bypassing the ear drum altogether. With nothing in your ears, you can hear the world around you – including the baby being rocked to sleep in your arms – while keeping your brain occupied listening to podcasts, music or audio books. The fact that they’re wireless means no cord to get tangled up in.
My partner bought me a pair of these headphones when I was pregnant and I’ve used them practically every day since the baby girl was born. They came in particularly handy those first few months when I was still feeding her frequently at night and needed something to keep me awake (I recommend getting an Audible account too), but these days it’s when we’re travelling that they’re really useful, whether we’re heading off long distance or just around the local area.
It’s possible to push a buggy one-handed while having a conversation on a mobile, but it’s safer and easier to use wireless headphones instead, and bone-conducting ones mean you’re still aware of traffic noise. I don’t generally listen to podcasts when I’m with the baby girl unless she’s sleeping, but there have been a couple of occasions when I’ve broken that rule, like on the four and half hour train journey back to London after a month at the Edinburgh festival, when I hit a wall of tiredness and had to keep my mind occupied so as not to nod off. It was only by listening to BBC World Service documentaries that I was able to stay awake for yet another round of take-things-out-of-all-the-bags-and-hit-them-against-the-table. I stand by my choice.
At around £100 a pop, these headphones aren’t cheap, but they’re definitely worth it.
The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern is always a great option for little one, but the stripy-carpeted installation by Superflex was a particular winner
Babies may not seem like ideal companions for gallery-hopping, but with some advance planning, taking a baby to a museum can be a surprisingly fulfilling experience. I’ve actually been on more visits to more museums and galleries with the baby girl than I did in the year leading up to her birth – which is saying something, because, you know, I’m an arts journalist.
The easiest time to take your baby to a museum is before she’s interested in rolling around. Those first few months, it’s just a matter of putting her in a sling and making a note of where the café is so you know where you can sit down and have a rest. You’ll need to bring all the usual baby paraphernalia with you, of course, so I’d recommend taking a pushchair too, or you’ll get pretty tired pretty quickly carrying it all around. Most large museums and galleries will be accessible with a buggy, but if they’re not – or you don’t fancy walking around with it – ask to leave it in the cloakroom. Smaller, quirkier institutions, or those in developing countries, can be less well set up in this regard, so consider packing light and leaving the pushchair at home, in the car, or wherever you’re staying.
Once your baby is of an age where she’s not content to be carried around for extended periods, you need to be pickier about where you’re visiting. Is there an area at the museum you’d like to go to where it would be safe and appropriate to let your baby roll or crawl around on the floor to give her a break from the sling or buggy? Dedicated children’s galleries like the ones at the National Museum of Scotland are ideal, but large foyers like at the Barbican Centre also work, as do immersive installations like Gustav Metzger’s Liquid Crystal Environment at Tate Modern.
Visiting with a small person in tow, you won’t be able to spend hours absorbing every detail of every exhibit in the way that you might if you were there by yourself, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Knowing that you can’t possibly do it all removes the pressure of trying to do so, and the experience can be more enjoyable as a result. That said, if your baby will nap in a sling or buggy, you can probably squeeze in an hour of uninterrupted culture if you time it right.
With toddlers there are a few more things to consider. Lots of museums and galleries run free activity sessions for children and families, so check before you go to see if there’s one that coincides with your visit. Self-guided activity trails can be fun too. If there’s nothing like that on offer, buy a few postcards at the gift shop on your way in, and make a game of finding the object or art work as you go through the museum. Not all toddlers will have the patience for such an activity, but you could try the simpler, DIY version instead: do basic drawings in a notebook of objects that appear – trees, cars, etc – and get your offspring to race around trying to find them.
Applying for a British passport for a child is very similar to applying for an adult, but as it’s probably been a while since you did that for the first time, here’s a refresher.
You can apply online or with a paper form for a child passport, which you can pick up at the Post Office. The online form is more convenient, but you’re on your own with it, whereas there’s a ‘check and send’ service available with the paper application, via the Post Office.
As with an adult passport you’ll need to include two identical photographs, though the rules about how children and babies must appear in photos are not as stringent as for adults. Children aged five and under don’t have to have a neutral expression and don’t need to be looking straight at the camera. Babies under 12 months can have their eyes closed.
I had the baby girl’s taken at our local Snappy Snaps, with her lying on a beanbag, photographed from above. This got around the problem of trying to support her sitting up without my hands appearing in the picture (she was only two weeks old at the time).
Child passport photos have to be countersigned by someone who has known you (the adult applying on behalf of the child) for at least two years. That someone has to be ‘a person of good standing in the community’ – which is a bit nebulous – or someone who works in or is retired from a ‘recognised profession’. You can find a list of accepted professions here. They can’t be related to you, or live at the same address, and they must be a British or Irish passport holder who lives in the UK.
I know several people who have been tripped up by the countersignature thing, and have seen their child’s application delayed as a result, so be careful with this bit. Make sure the person who does your countersigning has included contact details – the passport office do check up.
Child passport paperwork
For most applications for first passports, the only other piece of paperwork you need, in addition to the form and countersigned photos, is your child’s birth certificate (particular circumstances require additional documentation, though, so do read the forms carefully). Child passports currently cost £49, or £58.50 if you use the ‘check and send’ service, and you can pay by card, cash or cheque.
If you’ve filled everything in correctly and sent in the right documents, the passport will be ready in about three weeks. If you need it sooner than that, there is a fast track service to turn around a new child passport within a week. To use that service you have to complete the paper form, attend an appointment in person, and pay a total fee of £122. Note that while adult passports can be processed on the same day, the one-day service isn’t available for child passports.
If you do need to attend an appointment, bear in mind that the passport office in central London has lifts and baby change facilities, but there’s nowhere to sit at the counters where you get your application processed. I’m pleased to report, however, that the guy who did the baby girl’s application for me didn’t blink an eye when I had to undertake a few minutes of emergency stand-up breastfeeding at his desk.
You can find more information on applying for passports for children here.
Other paperwork for travelling with children
In addition to a passport, don’t forget that your child will also need a visa if one is required for your destination. And if you’re ever travelling with your child but without her other parents, you’ll technically need to have a consent letter too. More on all this on my travel documents for baby post.
For most of the babies and toddlers in my life, bath time is an important part of the bed time routine. But what if you’re away from home, and the hotel or holiday rental property where you’re staying doesn’t have a bath tub? Here’s where an inflatable baby paddling pool comes in.
Hosing her off in the shower will get your little one clean, but if she’s not used to it you risk stressing her out with a new experience just at the time of the evening you want her winding down. It’s also a job that really requires two sets of hands until your little one is able to sit up confidently by herself.
You could forgo the bath altogether, of course, and use baby wipes instead, but that’s only really a solution for a short trip. Especially if you’re somewhere hot, and dealing with additional grubbiness-inducing elements like sweat, sunscreen, insect repellent, sand, chlorinated water, etc, you’ll definitely want to find a way to give your baby a proper wash at the end of the day.
The trick is to travel with an inflatable baby paddling pool, which you position on the floor of the shower, or just on the bathroom floor if the cubicle is too small or awkwardly located. If you don’t have hot running water, as was the case at the place we stayed in Goa when the baby girl was four months old, you can ask the management for a jug of hot water and blend until the temperature of the water in the baby paddling pool is what it should be.
A baby paddling pool is also handy for camping, allowing you to do bath time in the warmth and comfort of your tent or camper van, rather than interrupt the bedtime routine with a chilly walk back from the shower block.
Even if there is a bath tub where you’re staying, a baby paddling pool is a very handy piece of kit for hot climates, and beach destinations in particular. Unless you’re somewhere tropical, the sea will probably be too cold and rough for more than a quick splash. Hotel swimming pools, meanwhile, are often unheated and too chilly for all but the hardiest of babies and toddlers. A baby paddling pool, however, left in the sunshine to warm up a bit, is the perfect option for cooling off and splashing about in.
Even an activity as mundane as taking a bus or local train (you can find my post on longer train journeys, including which seats to reserve, here) can be a scary experience the first time you attempt it with a pushchair. It doesn’t take long for this new way of getting around to become second nature, however, once you get the hang of a few key manoeuvres.
Buses
Another day, another opportunity to take off your shoes and socks on the bus
There’s space on most buses to park a couple of buggies, though if someone in a wheelchair wants to get on, they take priority and you’ll either have to fold your pushchair or get off and wait for the next bus. If it’s just you on the bus, try and position your buggy so another one could fit in without you having to get up and faff around with it mid-journey. I usually end up taking the baby girl out of her buggy on the bus, as she’s easily bored, but if that’s not possible, it pays to have a couple of toys or snacks with you to serve as distraction. When it comes to getting off, wait until the bus has stopped before taking off the pushchair brake, then exit backwards.
Trains
Trains are a slightly trickier prospect, but are worth the additional hassle in terms of increasing your range of options of places to visit. When dealing with stairs, you’ll find yourself relying on the kindness of strangers…a lot. A reassuring number of people offer to help when they spot you at the top of a flight of stairs with a buggy, but it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes you have to pluck up the courage to ask, and sometimes you have to be quite vocal about it. On several occasions I’ve been known to call out, ‘excuse me, man carrying the duffle bag/woman in the trench coat…’ Once you’ve done a particular journey a few times, you get to know which carriage to travel in so that you can get to the stairs before all the other passengers have already rushed away – getting stuck on an empty platform waiting for a potential helper to get off the next train is no fun at all.
Escalators
It’s nerve-wracking taking a pushchair on escalators, but actually very doable. As you board a down escalator, keep your focus on the back wheels, positioning them against the upright of the step; the front wheels will be hanging in mid-air. To board an up escalator, position your front wheels against the upright of the step, holding the buggy handle up high so the wheels are level (this time the back wheels will be in mid-air).
Some stations have lifts, which are obviously the safest and easiest option when travelling with a pushchair. The only downside is that beeping doors risk waking a sleeping baby, so I’ll sometimes take the escalator even if there’s a lift.
Finally, and this might be stating the obvious, but try and avoid rush hour. Some of the most stressful times in those first few months after the baby girl was born were on super busy buses and trains, having mistimed my journey home. Not recommended.
