3 months on a international flight to see my family and meet baby.

4 months. Adjust their nap schedule to the flight time and they usually sleep the whole way. Toddlers are definitely harder, but getting them their own middle seat to play there and in the floor between mom & dad plus bringing along their favorite toys/activities usually gets the job done. I fully expect my six y.o. to quietly watch a movie on his own and not bother anybody around him….practice makes perfect at this age.

Anonymous wrote:It’s not so much that I don’t think the baby can get RSV at home, it’s just that the risk of getting sick on vacation outweighs the benefit of going on vacation.

I don’t think I’m going to have fun on a vacation at 6 weeks anyway. If the baby gets sick and I have to deal with the sick baby in a strange place and a random ER and then going back through air travel with a sick baby to get home? It’s probably a no for me.

So anyway it’s not so much the plane itself as it is I don’t want to go on a vacation with my small baby, and the farther it is the worse I feel about it.

OP here - I think this is also a good point. We would be visiting relatives in a rural area. The closest ER is over an hour away.

It’s not so much that I don’t think the baby can get RSV at home, it’s just that the risk of getting sick on vacation outweighs the benefit of going on vacation.

I don’t think I’m going to have fun on a vacation at 6 weeks anyway. If the baby gets sick and I have to deal with the sick baby in a strange place and a random ER and then going back through air travel with a sick baby to get home? It’s probably a no for me.

So anyway it’s not so much the plane itself as it is I don’t want to go on a vacation with my small baby, and the farther it is the worse I feel about it.

We flew at three months pre Covid and I felt fine about it. I would not fly before two month vaccines or fly with young infant during winter Covid/flu season.

8 weeks, which I did, three times. Best age to travel with and still on maternity leave. 2018, 2020 and 2022

Anonymous wrote:OP here - interesting to see the range of responses!

We have a toddler, have flown with him multiple times, and are definitely aware of how hard plane travel becomes around the 1 year mark. I wish we could put off plane travel indefinitely because we’ve had some hellish travel experiences with our older son, but unfortunately we can’t get away with insisting that people come to visit us instead of us going to them for years on end. We’ll probably travel to see these same relatives for Thanksgiving. Baby will be 7 months old then and will have gotten Tdap, flu, Covid shots. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wait until then (especially because, as I said earlier, these relatives have already met the baby and will probably come back for another visit sometime in the late summer or early fall).

It sounds like you want to hold off, so you should hold off. You can use the pediatrician's advice as an excuse if they are very critical, but I don't think you should have to say that -- you should simply be able to say that you don't feel ready to fly with the new baby yet. And the fact that you have an older child who is at what many consider to be the worse age for flying would just make me feel even more confident in that decision.

Also, it sounds like you have the kind of relatives who are very insistent about you traveling, and like to dismiss any potential obstacles as unimportant. In that case, I'd get used to saying no now. Because these same people will be demanding that you travel even when it means the kids miss school or activities, or even if they are sick or the trip will be too disruptive to family schedules. My parents are this way and I've had to learn to just say no and ignore their wheedling. The more you give in, the more they think they can get away with. You have to start setting these boundaries now or it just gets worse as the kids get older.

OP here - interesting to see the range of responses!

We have a toddler, have flown with him multiple times, and are definitely aware of how hard plane travel becomes around the 1 year mark. I wish we could put off plane travel indefinitely because we’ve had some hellish travel experiences with our older son, but unfortunately we can’t get away with insisting that people come to visit us instead of us going to them for years on end. We’ll probably travel to see these same relatives for Thanksgiving. Baby will be 7 months old then and will have gotten Tdap, flu, Covid shots. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wait until then (especially because, as I said earlier, these relatives have already met the baby and will probably come back for another visit sometime in the late summer or early fall).

Anonymous wrote:We flew at 5 months, so he had most important vaccines and Dr thought it was reasonable. It was summer, so not flu/RSV season.

It's so awful when they get sick that young. You can hold firm on whatever you feel comfortable with.

Adding that it was relatively easy to travel with him at this age. He nursed or slept for most of the flight, and fit into the bassinet. Much harder after 10+months

We flew at 5 months, so he had most important vaccines and Dr thought it was reasonable. It was summer, so not flu/RSV season.

It's so awful when they get sick that young. You can hold firm on whatever you feel comfortable with.

Three years. I got suckered into flying with my dc during the baby/toddler years and it was horrible. They can visit you until your youngest is three. The trade-off is that if you have any in-laws with younger kids, you then extend the same courtesy to them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With Covid, colds and flu, at least a year.

This logic only applies to your first child. If baby has an older sibling, the "call is coming from inside the house" -- they will be exposed to germs no matter what.

No, your older vaccinated sibling will not expose your infant to certain diseases… but strangers will. This is why docs recommend to wait until they’ve had certain shots.

I lived in a country with endemic diseases that don't exist here anymore (rubella, TB, etc.) when I had an infant. It's actually pretty easy to shield a newborn from getting sick if there are no siblings in the house. Babywearing is great for it. It's when they turn into booger-eating toddlers that it's hard to shield them. That being said, I did wait until the first set of vaccines at 8ish weeks to fly, but that was largely just an arbitrary milestone that felt safe. I didn't really think someone was going to expose my kid to rotavirus or whatever on a flight.

Well, I wouldn’t consider that an arbitrary time re vaccines. My infant was exposed to measles and our doctors office (!) because an unvaccinated family came with a child symptomatic of measles. We had to quarantine for 2 1/2 weeks per the health dept.

Ugh, sorry to hear that, that's terrible. But MMR isn't given until 1-1.5 years old. And it's unrealistic to shelter a baby until they're over a year old IMO