The Baby Products I Used the Most for 0-12 Months: Travel Edition

Six months after our son was born, we were heading to a wedding a couple of states away for a close friend of mine. A month after that, my husband and I took our son with us on a trip to a beach town a couple of hours away from our home to celebrate our anniversary, and three weeks after that we drove to Washington D.C, for a yearly gathering of my friends to cheer on our friend who was running a marathon.

That meant three car trips, three hotel stays, and a ton of on-the-fly planning while our son wasn’t a year old yet. And while we haven’t yet attempted a plane ride with him, we learned a lot about traveling with a baby in those first few car trips together. This is a list of the products I swear by and that I’d repurchase in a heartbeat if I were doing it all over again.

For the Car

Beis Diaper Bag: This diaper bag has become my favorite gift to give my new mom friends. It’s got a ton of useful pockets, and it’s just as good-looking as some of my nicest work bags. There are tons of other diaper bags out there that are just as utilitarian as this one, but I’ve been so happy with this one over the years – and I’m still using it.  

Travel Tray for Car Seat: This travel tray is great to give your kid a surface for toys and snacks (depending on their age). I’ve found that it’s helped to keep the back seat just a bit cleaner on longer car trips.

Car Backseat Organizer: These hanging backseat organizers helped to keep the car more organized – it’s where miscellaneous toys, extra paper towels, water bottles, and snacks end up, rather than being scattered across the floor in the backseat.

Sunscreen sticks: Even if your car seat has a sun cover, chances are your baby’s going to get more UV exposure than normal when they’re in the car for an extended period of time (the UV can sometimes be higher when it’s cloudy out). I always have at least one of these sunscreen sticks in the car and a couple in the diaper bag for my son’s face and hands (and all over, if needed).

For Feeding

Bottle prep and cleaning items: We basically created a mini go-bag of all the things we’d need to make and clean our son’s bottles, including a small container of kid-safe dishwashing soap, a bottle brush, a small drying rack, and a sponge. After I fully forgot to bring dishwashing soap with us on our beach town trip – which resulted in me driving through a full downpour to the nearest CVS to go get some – we never forgot that go-bag ever again.

Baby Brezza: Full disclosure, we also brought our Baby Brezza (and the distilled water needed to operate it) on every single trip with us, all the way up until our son stopped using bottles. It was beyond helpful to have this around, especially in the middle of traveling when you’re encountering germs left and right.

Toddler Snack Cup: Once our son was old enough to start eating snacks these containers became one of our favorite items to travel with – I largely attribute my car not looking like a warzone to them.

For Sleeping

Pack n Play: This was our sleep solution for our son when we traveled. He wasn’t a huge fan of it, but when he needed to nap and sleep at night it worked for us. If I could go back and do these trips over, I would have introduced it at home prior to traveling, maybe during a couple of daytime naps, so that he would already know what it was by the time we were out of home. This ended up being worth the money as well – we used it up until just a couple of months ago, and it also served as a back-up sleep solution when we had friends with babies/toddlers coming to visit us.

Hatch Sound Machine: We’re a Hatch household and it’s a big part of our son’s bedtime routine, so we typically travel with ours. It can be tough to use it with the app when you’re dealing with hotel wifi, but the basic sound functions will work just as long as it’s plugged in, so when we travel that’s what we use. We did try using the travel Hatch for the car, but to be honest we didn’t get a ton of use out of that, largely because he can fall asleep on his own in the car (if your baby doesn’t do that, then a travel solution may be better for you). But if your baby is like ours and you already have a sound machine that you like at home, it might be best to just bring that with you.