For trips within Europe (at least until Brexit â who knows what will happen after that), you should also carry a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC; what used to be known as the E111) for your child. This entitles them to state-provided healthcare across the European Economic Area and Switzerland; treatment is usually free, as it is in the UK, but in some countries you might have to pay a small upfront charge (usually refundable by your travel insurer, should you wish to claim).
A EHIC is not an alternative to travel insurance â it doesnât get you access to private healthcare, wonât get you flown back to the UK and doesnât cover things like mountain rescue â but itâs actually a requirement of some travel insurance policies, and is very handy to have as it means you can access healthcare fast, no questions asked. For more information on buying travel insurance for your child, take a look at my recent post on the subject.
The EHIC is free, though there are plenty of dodgy websites that will charge you for one. The official government EHIC website is a bit of a pain to use â if youâre applying for your child, you register as the main applicant, and then add her details when asked if you need any additional cards (this comes so late in the application that I gave up hope several times; itâs not very intuitive, but stick with it and youâll get there in the end). Youâll need your NHS or NI number.
The baby girl playing with her dadaâs EHIC card. This photo was in no way staged.
The good news is that a lot of travel insurance policies cover children for free (some up to the age of two, some right up until 16 or 18). The bad news is that even if yours does, you still need to get in touch with your insurer before you travel to ensure that your baby or toddler is included on the policy by name. Youâll need to give them your babyâs date of birth too, and tell them about any pre-existing medical conditions â epilepsy, for example â as these might affect the premium. Children insured for free are usually only covered when travelling with the policyholder, so check with your insurer if you’re planning on sending your toddler off with another family member.
If youâre buying a new policy, you’ll include your childâs details in the same way that you would your partnerâs when buying a coupleâs policy. Something to look out for is whether the policy covers cancellation in the case of one of the travellers falling ill before departure. Fingers crossed your toddler doesnât come down with a horrible bug on the eve of a holiday, but if she does, and going ahead with the trip is impossible, you really donât want to lose all the money you spent on flights, hotel, car hire, etc â the cancellation of the trip would be grim enough all by itself; you donât want to compound it with financial stress too. Itâs worth buying travel insurance as soon as you book your trip so you donât run the risk of being caught without coverage.
Most insurers will need to see a medical certificate signed by your childâs GP stating the reason she canât travel, before they agree to settle the claim, as well as a form from the doctor about your childâs medical history.
A lot of policies will cover you for travel within the UK (including cancellations due to illness) but there are often stipulations you need to meet â such as staying away from home for a minimum number of days, or travelling a minimum distance from home â before coverage kicks in. Check before you travel.
There’s no interesting way of illustrating the purchase of travel insurance, so here’s a picture of the baby girl enjoying herself at Mgarr ix-Xini on the Maltese island of Gozo in November 2017 instead.
Tutti Frutti Productions begins its adaptation of Hans Christian Andersenâs story of a baby bird hatched into the wrong nest using puppetry, then switching into live action as the tale takes off.
Itâs a good call on Tutti Frutti artistic director Wendy Harrisâs part, enabling the company to set the scene for a young audience before adopting a less literal dressing-up box aesthetic that makes for a very stylish piece of childrenâs theatre.
Catherine Chapmanâs inventive design uses sunglasses to suggest beaks, woolly jumpers as feathers, and paper flags to stand in for snow, leaving plenty of room for Mike Redleyâs lighting and Tayo Akinbodeâs score to help conjure up the urban park where our story takes place.
Danny Childs does an excellent line in gangly awkwardness as the Ugly Duckling, wide-eyed in his dealings with Daniel Naddafyâs Fluffy, the mean older brother who nudges him from the nest.
Also playing some of the characters that Ugly encounters in the wilds of the park gives Naddafy a chance to have fun with different accents and physicalities. Maeve Leahy, meanwhile, keeps the show grounded with her tender portrayal of the mother duck, and reveals a fine singing voice too â itâs a shame that after her sweet song thereâs little live music to be heard, replaced by recorded music that jars in both its tone and volume.
Emma Reevesâs script steers clear of excessive tweeness. The message of âitâs what you do that matters, not what you look likeâ is hardly revelatory but, buffered by a lot of genuinely funny physical comedy and a surprisingly moving piece of dance (props to movement director Holly Irving), Tutti Frutti more than gets away with it.
A friend gave us a SnoozeShade before I had the baby girl and itâs something we use every time we go baby adventuring, whether just around the corner or far from home. Itâs not a complicated bit of kit â itâs basically just a piece of breathable UV-protective black fabric that you put over the pushchair when you want your baby to sleep â but is no less effective for its simplicity. Thereâs a zip down the front for peeking in at your hopefully sleeping child and Velcro tags to attach it to the pushchair â they do the trick even in very strong winds, we discovered last month, when the village where we were staying on the Maltese island of Gozo was battered by a storm that nearly swept us off our feet on the way out to dinner one evening.
It took a few attempts to get the baby girl accustomed to the idea of going to sleep when the SnoozeShade went on, when she was just a few weeks old, but itâs worked a treat ever since. We give her a kiss, put one of her special cloths in her hand, tell her ânight nightâ and put the SnoozeShade over. Zzzzzzz.
If we had done more car journeys with the baby girl when she was still in her group 0+ car seat I might have considered getting the car seat SnoozeShade too. As it was, we made do with the pushchair one â itâs not a great fit on a car seat but it did the job.
Air travel is a wonderful thing, but airports are a pain. I like the teeny tiny ones where you can arrive 20 minutes before your flight, but all the others make me wish I was taking a train instead. Add a baby or toddler to the mix and youâve got the potential for a pretty wearying â not to say stressful â experience.
The key is to leave plenty of time so youâre never in rush. That might mean quite a bit of waiting around â which, letâs be honest, isnât ideal with a baby or toddler either â but at least you stand a good chance of boarding your flight calm, contented and ready for whatever the next few hours hold (Iâll be covering flying itself, as well as airport transfers, in separate posts â sign up to my mailing list so you donât miss them).
The one benefit of travelling with a baby or toddler is that airline check-in staff are almost always nicer to you than if youâre checking in alone. I get the sense that theyâre more willing to turn a blind eye to a couple of kilos of extra weight here or there, on the understanding that babies require a lot of stuff. (Though now I think of it, the baby girl has always been remarkably cheery at check-in desks â who knows what treatment we might get if she was being a grump.)
Infant baggage allowance varies from airline to airline, but most let you check in two or three items of baby equipment free of charge, usually including a pushchair, car seat, travel cot and backpack carrier. Youâll want to check your airlineâs policy before booking so you donât get any nasty surprises before departure. Check in your pushchair and car seat at the desk or, if youâd prefer to have them with you as you go through departures, get them tagged at check in and leave them with airline staff when you reach the gate. At some airports youâll be able to send your baby equipment through with the rest of the luggage, but at others you might be asked to drop it off in a different area.
Whatever you decide to do with your pushchair, itâs a good idea to keep a sling handy. The first time I flew with the baby girl, when she was six-weeks-old, I kept the pushchair with me until the gate and didnât end up using it at all. Airports are very stimulating environments and the baby girl was unhappy unless she was being carried. Also, travelling alone with her, getting the pushchair down the stairs from the gate to the tarmac was a real pain â fellow passengers helped out, but it wasnât ideal. Iâve since learnt that you can request special assistance in advance for those situations, but these days I just check everything in and avoid the problem that way.
At security they might ask to x-ray your pushchair, car seat or sling, so be prepared to carry your child through in your arms, and make sure that if you thereâs anything else in the pushchair itâs easy to lift out and put through the machine too. The last few times Iâve flown with the baby girl Iâve been able to walk through the scanner with her in the sling â if only I could remember to wear the sling under my jacket so itâs easy to remove.
Formula, sterilised water for preparing formula, cow milk and soya milk for babies are exempt from the usual rules about liquids in hand luggage, so youâre allowed to take them through security, as well as gel packs to keep them cool. They need to be removed from your carry-on so they can be screened separately (incidentally, you donât need to be travelling with your baby to carry expressed breast milk through). The rules vary slightly from country to country, but security staff have always been understanding in this regard in my experience.
My final tip relates to food. You’ll obviously need to take enough baby food or milk to cover the number of meals or feeds you’ll be in transit for, but don’t underestimate the power of snacks either. Take as many as you can fit into your carry-on, so in the event of boring delays or just general grumpiness, you’ve got distractions at the ready.
A remarkably easy passage through security at Malta International Airport on the way back from our dive trip to Gozo, November 2017.
The first time I went to the Ministry of Sound â at the tender age of 16 â someone threw up on my shoes in the queue. On this most recent visit, to check out indoor family festival Rave-A-Roo, the worst that happened was a leaky nappy. I think you could call that progress.
Launched in early 2016, Rave-A-Roo is a brilliant concept: an opportunity for children to dance, play and generally run wild in an environment so stimulating that it takes them all weekend to wind down again, while their parents drink overpriced prosecco and indulge in nostalgia for their clubbing days.
The baby girl isnât really Rave-A-Rooâs target audience, but babies are welcome, and there are enough exciting things to look at (giant disco ball, anyone?) and different places to sit to make this little adventure worth the trouble.
Clouds of bubbles waft over us as I park the pushchair in an undercover area in the venueâs courtyard, a suitably enthusiastic DJ Cuddles (I’m desperate to know if he uses this stage name for adult gigs too) playing pop tunes in front of tables covered with jewellery-making paraphernalia.
Worried about the volume levels, I bring the baby girlâs ear defenders, but they end up staying in my bag. The main room â headlined by none other than everyoneâs favourite ovine film star Shaun the Sheep â would be too loud to go without ear protection for longer than a few minutes, but the baby girl isnât interested in being in there anyway. Crawling is all she wants to do right now, and the main room isnât the place for it, so despite the temptation of a flock of inflatable ducks, we leave it to the bigger kids.
We spend most of our time in the Funky Soft Play Room, carving out a corner for ourselves in the midst of dozens of wired toddlers. The soft play isnât quite as soft as it should be â the only cushioning on the floor of the inflatable that holds the soft play equipment is a few rag rugs â and thereâs no one in authority keeping the rowdier children from going rogue. The small pile of baby toys in the corner is welcome, but positioned in such a way that it feels like weâre in constant danger of being stepped on.
The other place we hang out is Chill-A-Roo, aka the Ministryâs VIP area, which overlooks the main bar on one side and the biggest club room on the other. No concessions to the family crowd here apart from a barista serving proper coffees, but the baby girl is happy enough sitting on a banquette and hitting her cup against the table while I drink a hot chocolate.
At ÂŁ12.10 for early bird tickets (going up to an eye-watering ÂŁ25 on the door) for adults and children over the age of 18 months, Rave-A-Roo isnât cheap, but the super friendly vibe, plus nice touches like nappy change supplies in the loos, swings it for me. The baby girl will be too little to really appreciate it for a while yet, but if Rave-A-Roo is still running in two or three yearsâ time, you can find us in da club.
The baby girl larging it in the Funky Soft Play Room at Rave-A-Roo at Ministry of Sound.
Almost every time we travel with our baby monitor we discover on returning home that we’ve left at least one part of it behind, necessitating either a trip to retrieve it or getting someone to post it back to us. The irritation we feel at our own idiocy is even more acute in those situations when the monitor hasn’t actually done its job, whether because the distances involved were too great, or the signal was blocked by thick walls or floors.
Fortunately, some friends introduced us to the Baby Monitor 3G app; not only does our regular baby monitor now stay safely at home when we travel, but we can be confident that weâll be able to keep an eye on the baby girl in whatever situation we find ourselves in while on the move.
Itâs extremely simple to use. You just buy and download the app on two devices â itâs available on Apple and Android phones, watches and tablets, plus Mac computers and Apple TV â and pair them, nominating one as the ‘baby station’ and one as the ‘parent station’. The app runs live video (or just audio, which uses less data) over wifi or 3G networks, and you can change the sensitivity of the microphone to suit the surroundings.
The app costs between ÂŁ3.59 and ÂŁ4.99 per device, plus any data charges if youâre using it over 3G, but thatâs it â no in-app purchases or anything of that rubbish. Great for grandparents or other family members who only need a baby monitor on an ad hoc basis, and also for travel scenarios where you don’t have access to mains power, such as when camping.
When travelling by myself with the baby girl I take an old handset along so I can keep both my phone and laptop with me while still using the app. The spare handset is useful for travelling as a family too â god forbid one of us having to cope without our phone for the evening: how would we tweet about what a nice time we were having?
Iâm very much a fair weather walker. Various members of my family will happily set off up a hill in driving rain, but if thereâs not at least a reasonable chance of it clearing up in the foreseeable future, count me out. I like hiking, but being soaked to the skin on a cloudy mountaintop just isnât my idea of fun. I tell you this to make it clear that hiking with a baby isnât just the preserve of hardcore walkers. If you enjoyed the occasional hike before your baby arrived, donât be afraid to give it a go now that sheâs here; as with all things baby-related, itâs just a matter of being prepared.
Slings and backpack carriers
Our first proper experience of hiking with the baby girl, climbing Lingmell in the Lake District
An all-terrain buggy will serve you well if youâre hiking with a baby in relatively flat countryside, but this post is really about the sorts of outdoor excursions that you wouldnât attempt with a pushchair. For those, youâll need a sling or baby carrier backpack. Which you choose depends on the age of your child, the type and duration of your walk and whoâs doing the carrying. Donât attempt a hike without some means of transporting your child, even if your toddler is a very confident walker; itâs highly unlikely sheâll be up for toddling along beside you for more than a few minutes and youâll spend the rest of the walk carrying her in your arms.
We only started hiking with the baby girl when she was 10 months old, by which time she was big enough to fit into a backpack carrier. There are lots of different types available, but ours (which we picked up cheap in a charity shop) does up around the waist so thereâs less pressure on the wearerâs shoulders, has lots of space for stowing all your other baby kit (of which more later) and a frame that means it stands up by itself, making loading and unloading the baby girl much easier.
The only trouble is that all of those useful features add weight and bulk â Iâm fairly slim and only 164cm (5â 4â) tall, and the carrier plus an increasingly heavy baby girl is too much for me. So my partner uses the backpack carrier and I use the lightweight sling, ideally with someone else carrying the rest of the baby gear (more on how brilliant slings are in this recent post). If it were just me, lugging the baby girl and all of both our stuff, I wouldnât attempt a walk longer than an hour or so.
What to pack for hiking with a baby
Hiking through the volcanic landscape east of the natural swimming pool at La Mactea
Whatever set up you opt for, you want to keep additional weight to a minimum, while ensuring youâre prepared for all eventualities. Take the lightest possible changing mat, a couple of nappies and a few wipes in a ziplock bag rather than your usual nappy change wallet. Spare clothes (including a hat) are essential, especially if your child is in a backpack carrier â you’ll warm up quickly as you walk, but your baby will be sitting still, exposed to the elements.
We eschew trousers and socks in favour of pyjamas with feet to stop the baby girl getting cold legs when her trousers inevitably ride up. Waterproof trousers to go over the top are a good idea if youâre walking anywhere with the possibility of rain. It might sound like overkill but for hikes in locations where the weather can quickly take a turn for the worse, it canât hurt to bring a lightweight storm shelter.
Parents of rolling or crawling babies should consider packing a mat or blanket; breastfeeding mothers will appreciate having somewhere dry to sit too. If youâre bottle-feeding, ready-to-drink formula is much more convenient on the move than making it up from powder. Finally, keep a ready supply of snacks in your pockets that you can produce with a flourish as a solution to sudden onset baby crankiness â you’ll all have a much nicer time.
Route planning for hiking with a baby
Donât be too ambitious when it comes to route planning for hiking with a baby, even if youâre an experienced walker. A hike that might have taken a couple of hours baby-free can easily become the work of an entire afternoon once youâve factored in pauses for snacks; bottle or breastfeeding; giving parental shoulders a break; and pointing and laughing at sheep. Remember, too, that there’s no shame in cutting a walk short if things aren’t working out as planned.
