San Diego. {Traveling with a Baby and Photo Dump}

When Traveling with a nine month old, plan realistic distances and allow for reasonable breaks for both diapering, feeding and mental sanity.

We drove a 6 hour drive, allowing for her sleep schedule of about 2 hours sleep, 1 hour awake, BREAK, 1 or less hour awake, 2-3 more hours sleep.  Knowing what your child’s normal sleep schedule allows for you to plan optimal sleep to drive ratios. 

Feeding.  Make sure to bring food (weather that means homemade purees, pre-pumped breast milk or the real thing, make sure to have it!)  I leaned into her car seat in order to feed her, although if she was used to a bottle I would have gladly chose that option, as it would have saved my rib cage unnecessary trauma. 

Diapering.  On this trip I packed 18 cloth diapers. We use gpants so I brought 4 shells and the rest pads.  But she ended up going through her diapers much faster on the first 2 days and I had to do laundry in a rush on the 2^nd day.  We decided that disposable was a better option as the laundry cost $2.25 in the beach condo’s laundry room.  We purchased her some gdiapers disposable liners since we brought the shells and they’re biodegradable.  I strongly recommend using a combination of E.C. and cloth when possible, biodegradable/flushable when not. 

Toys and Entertainment.  I sat in the back the majority of our trip and read books, played with rattles and joked with Cupcake while on the drive.  Make sure to pack a variety of books and toys because they will get sick of them rather quickly when confined to a tiny chair.

Sleeping.  If you co-sleep, this is a simple arrangement. Get a king bed.  Sleep like normal.  We actually had to sleep in a Queen size bed two of the nights, and although it was a bit tight we are used to having our Little Miss in bed with us so we adjusted fine.  If you’re not co-sleeping, bring a pack and play, even though our hotel had one, I don’t trust the safety protocols and recalls that a non parent might follow.  Make sure you have your own, which you KNOW is clean and safe.

{Photos on DSLR}

{Photos from Phone}

...and there's a few more on my tumblr.