We recently travelled to an all-inclusive resort (Dreams Tulum Resort and Spa) with our 10 month old. It was a fabulous idea for our first family vacation. I was super stressed leading up to it but it ended up being one of the most memorable trips of my life! I wanted to share some tips that were helpful for moms who are considering travelling with their little one.

Passports – Baby needs one!

Our little one was born outside of Canada and getting a Canadian passport requires her to be a citizen which is a FIFTEEN month process right now! We had to get her a US passport in the mean time to be able to take her on our trip. This took almost two months to receive, so get that passport sooner than later.

Choosing a resort that is baby friendly

Ask for the crib to be set up before you get there! We arrived close to bed time and it took two tries to get the crib to the room, which was slightly stressful
Highchairs were super low, either bring your own, or stack towels under baby. We ended up feeding her while she sat in her stroller. I would recommend bringing one of those snack trays for the stroller. We used towels as a little table for her food.
Ask for a larger room if they can accommodate. Our resort was kind enough to give us one with extra space for her crib
Ask for your room to be on the ground floor, and close to the restaurants/pool/action – this makes it easier for you to leave the room and get back and forth easier

Invest/Rent a SlumberPod

If you’re not co-sleeping, invest or rent a SleepPod! This was so worth the money, it’s essentially a blackout tent that goes over the baby’s crib, it allowed us to have the lights on in the room to watch a show or pack, or just roam around without it being pitch black in the room
Keep babies routine similar to home. We brought our sound machine, sleep sack, her favourite bedtime books and bath toys.
We were so surprised to see that her naps and sleep times did not waiver much on vacation!

Bring the full stroller

I looked into buying a travel one, and boy am I glad I didn’t! My little one did all her afternoon naps in the full stroller and we were able to still be outside enjoying the sunshine/pool.

We did the morning naps in the room to ensure she got atleast one long nap a day.

Download Annie (app)

This was a huge lifesaver for us. I bought a wifi monitor for the trip but sadly the monitor did not connect to an unsecured network with a password (most hotels use this) I scoured the internet for help and I found that some people had found this app helpful. Wow, it was perfect for us! You use one phone as the camera and one as the monitor.

Bring Baby Food

We are at the 10 month mark so solids are still a very confusing time for us... sometimes she eats, sometimes she doesn’t…sometimes she wants purees other times she will not go near a spoon… some days she will eat a full plate of real food and other days she only wants to nibble on peas.
We brought about 15 pouches, some rusks and puffs and they came in handy for the days she didn’t want anything from the buffet.
On the good days where she would eat real food, she consumed some chicken, broccoli, peas, a little bit of bread and lots and lots of fruit!

Think through Transit

Try and book a window seat for yourself and an aisle seat for your partner so you potentially get lucky with the middle seat being open
Try your best to align your travel with your babies naps
We couldn’t have gotten luckier with flights. The first one coincided with her morning nap and I fed her on the way up to help ease the pressure on her ears
She napped for 1.5 hours of a four hour flight, and made friends with the people sitting around us for the remainder, we packed some toys and books but she was so intrigued by everything going on around her we barely had to use them
The hotel was a two hour bus ride from the airport, if the purpose of this trip wasn’t to celebrate a wedding, we would have chosen to stay much closer to the airport, but we chose to sit at the back of the bus and again, she enjoyed the ride and looking out the window!

I think that’s the gist of it. I hope this helped. All in all, if you’re considering traveling with your little one, don’t think twice. We had the best time and are already so excited to plan our next trip!