us road trip with baby

10 Tips for Road Tripping With an Infant

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Road trips with an infant can be stressful, but they don’t have to be, and the truth is a car ride with a baby is often less stressful than getting on a plane. You can stop your own vehicle for an emergency bathroom break or to move around a restless toddler. And if your baby does throw a tantrum, you can focus your attention on their needs instead of worrying about other passengers.

Whether you're hitting the road to visit the grandparents or heading to a vacation destination geared toward families with infants , you may be surprised at some of the simple things you can do to keep your little one calm and quiet during your trip. Whether you’ll be on the road for five hours or five days, these 10 tips will help your vacation go as smoothly as possible.

While one person is driving, have another sit in the back with the baby. Having that caretaker in the back seat can help address issues as they arise—preparing bottles, wiping up, curing boredom with some old-fashioned “peek-a-boo”—which can help minimize stops and avoid total meltdowns.

It's an old bit of wisdom, but "sleep when the baby sleeps" is solid advice during a road trip with kids . When the baby is sleeping, the person in the back should try to rest, too, so they can be refreshed enough to take over driving when the driver gets fatigued.

Manage Expectations

Any number of things can go wrong on a road trip—a flat tire, bad weather, food poisoning—but those hiccups become exponentially more stressful with a young (likely screaming) infant in tow. Accepting that going in and maintaining a sense of humor about the situation can go a long way to help ease the tension. After all, the difference between a fiasco and an adventure can be as simple as your state of mind.

One way to make light of unpleasant situations is to make a game out of them. For example, put together Baby Road Trip BINGO cards where spaces are filled in with any and all potential disasters—think "blow out in the car seat" or tiny victories like "finished a whole podcast." That way, even bad situations turn into wins.  

Drive at Night

It’s a bit uncomfortable for the parents, but then again, so is a screaming child with no exit in sight. Driving at night means your baby will spend more time sleeping and less time awake and hungry, bored, or needing changes. You’ll be able to drive for longer stretches without needing breaks. 

A great way to maximize drive time is to schedule your departure so that it coincides with bedtime. Go through your whole routine (bath, pajamas, bedtime song—whatever your nightly ritual entails), but put the baby down to sleep in the car seat instead of the crib or bassinet. Drive as long as you're comfortable—or for as long as the baby is sleeping—but be sure to switch drivers, caffeinate, and rest when needed to avoid driving drowsy. 

Plan Frequent Breaks

You might be able to go six hours without using the bathroom or needing to eat, but the baby likely can't. Plan for stops every one to three hours during the day and three to six hours at night to change diapers, stretch legs, eat, and change sweaty or spit-up clothes as needed.

To avoid unnecessary stops, make a checklist of items that you go through during every break so you don’t forget anything, such as changing the baby’s diaper or clothes, using the restroom (for those not in diapers), and refreshing essential supplies. 

Skip the Scenic Route

While scenic overlooks and long stretches of the open road might seem like the very things that make a road trip worthwhile, they can also make it difficult to find help or reprieve when you need it. Choose a route in advance that has frequent access to food, 24-hour gas stations, restrooms, and service areas.

Even better, plot out some pit-stops in advance —including some potential hotels if you think you might need a real rest—so you can pull over when necessary.

Keep Supplies Nearby

You might have a giant suitcase with everything you need to survive traveling with an infant for an extended period of time, but that's not what you want to be digging through at 65 mph while a baby is screaming in your ear, or while parked at a dodgy rest stop in the middle of the night.

Keep a kit within easy reach so you don’t have to unbuckle your seat belt to retrieve any critical items, and fill the bag with small amounts of necessities (you can always refill as you go). You could pack all of these items into a medium-sized backpack or tote bag:

• A portable changing pad with two or three diapers
• A packet of wipes
• Pre-portioned bottles of formula or breast milk in a small cooler bag
• Two or three small but versatile toys
• Infant Tylenol or ibuprofen
• A baby forehead thermometer
• A small portable sound machine
• An extra blanket

In addition to the baby kit, be sure there's one for the adults, too. That could include mobile chargers for your electronic devices, a tablet or e-reader, high-protein/easy-to-eat snacks, sleep aids, sleep mask, a small pillow, earphones, and earplugs. You might also want to bring along a car sun shade to help your little one nap.

Brush up on Baby Massage Techniques

Babies can get stiff and uncomfortable after sitting for hours in their seats, just like adults. Read up on some infant massage techniques that you can modify to use either while driving (if you’re on backseat duty) and during stops. Gently massaging legs and feet, in particular, can often help calm a fussy baby long enough to get you to a good stopping place where they can stretch out their legs in earnest.

Sing Simple Camp Songs

When it comes to fussy infants stuck in car seats, be prepared with a variety of tools at your disposal. Singing songs can often be more effective than the radio at helping to put a baby to sleep, calming them when they’re fussy, and entertaining them when they’re bored. Try to pick songs with simple melodies, but where verses can be added or improvised as with many nursery rhymes or typical camp songs. Taking turns inventing new lyrics can help break up the monotony for parents, too.

Take Precautions

With or without an infant, standard prep and safety precautions should be followed. Make sure you have a spare tire, car jack, and tire iron that are ready to go, especially if you're driving through sparsely populated areas where the nearest mechanic could be several miles away. It's not fun waiting hours for a tow truck to arrive and even less so when you have a baby on board.

While packing the car, be sure not to obstruct the driver’s view, including in the rearview mirror. And always take steps to pull over to well-lit areas when stopping at night.

Admit Defeat

If you’re tired, if you’re frustrated, if everyone in the car (including and especially your baby) can’t take another second on the road, then stop. It’s okay.

Find a place to rest and give yourself a few minutes or hours to regroup. Most hotels will take bookings any time of day and many provide cribs in the room upon request. Take a nap in a real bed or freshen up with a hot shower and a meal at a sit-down restaurant. Giving yourself and your baby a chance to reset can help make the rest of the ride go more smoothly.  

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Travel Advice

Road trip with a baby: 10 essential survival tips + packing list.

How to plan successful long drives traveling with an infant

The prospect of a long road trip with a baby can fill even the most experienced traveling parents with anxiety. We know; we’ve been there!  There are just so many extra items that are needed for baby car travel and don’t forget those ill-timed diaper blowouts while you’re inconveniently between stops.

We’ve put our own traveling experiences to work for you by compiling ` 10 Tips for Road Tripping with a Baby to help make your journey as stress-free as possible. You’ll also find a helpful list of baby road-tripping gear at the end to make packing a breeze.

This post is part of our family road-tripping and best baby travel advice series

If your child is a little bit older, then pop on over and read all our best toddler road trip travel advice here.

10 Tips For Road-Tripping With A Baby

Before we dive into traveling tips for baby’s first road trip, we’d like to emphasize the importance of having a suitable rear-facing car seat for your baby .  Please check to make sure it has not expired, and if you are traveling to another country, it’s best to look up child safety laws for the area you’re driving to. 

1. Get as Much Practice as Possible

You may have heard horror stories of families embarking on a long drive with their baby only to turn around because their little one dissolved into hysterics. We have experienced a fair amount of crying while traveling ourselves, and the best solution we’ve found to this has simply been to get your baby used to being in their car seat. 

We know that getting out and about with your baby is easier said than done, especially if you have more than one child.  Even a few trips to pick up groceries or going to the park will help your little one realize that being in a car seat is not the end of the world. 

Once that is going well, perhaps plan a day trip to a park or location an hour or two away.  By increasing your baby’s time in their car seat incrementally, you’re decreasing the chances of constant crying when you’re committed to a longer trip.

2. Be Reasonable With Your Itinerary

If you thrive on making schedules and sticking to them, you’ll need to adjust your expectations when it comes to baby car travel. As tempting as it is to reach your destination as soon as possible, as new parents, you’ll need to keep your baby’s needs and your own sanity in mind when planning your first family road trip. 

Even the most well-traveled infant can only spend so many hours in a moving car (and you shouldn’t leave a baby in their infant car seat for more than a couple of hours at a time). When taking on long car journeys, build in plenty of pit stops for the whole family.

You also wanted to make sure that you are taking care of yourself and your partner.  Sleepless nights and babies often go hand-in-hand. If you’re already running on fumes, avoid trying to drive for more than five to six hours a day or through the night. Your family’s safety is the most important thing.

We’ve always found it helps to time the long stretches for what would be your baby’s normal nap time – but “normal” doesn’t always apply when traveling with a baby! If you have older children to consider too, you may have multiple napping schedules to consider, and there is no ‘best time.’

3. Bring Pumping Supplies or Extra Formula

Whether you’re a breastfeeding mum or you’re feeding your little one with baby formula , you’ll need to pack extra feeding supplies when on the road with an infant. Bringing along ready-to-feed formula can be a lifesaver during travel, as mixing formula on the go can prove to be a hassle, especially on extended journeys.

In the event that you either aren’t able to pull over and nurse your baby or that they are sleeping soundly in their car seat at feeding time, you’ll probably want to bring a travel breast pump along with you.

This can be one of the bulkiest items to pack, and you’ll need to remember to bring extra batteries or have a charging cord that plugs into your car’s adapter (naturally, this is if you’re the passenger, not the driver!).

I can’t say enough good things about the Spectra breast pump . The latest model even has a rechargeable battery. A car adapter is also available for additional purchase. The Spectra is powerful and easy to clean, both of which are pluses when traveling.

Additional recommended supplies for feeding on the move:

• Nursing Cover
• Milk Storage Bags
• Insulated Bottle Cooler
• Travel Bottle Warmer
• Milk Bottles
• Cleaning Kit

You can find our complete guide to breastfeeding on the go here, as well as our complete guide to bottle feeding on the go .

4. Car Seat Additions

In some ways, babies are both easier and more difficult to entertain than toddlers .  Your newborn won’t be screaming because you took their tablet away from them, but they may scream because of a dirty diaper, they’re hungry, or they’re tired of being in their car seat.  Yes, taking a baby on the road can be a different animal altogether.

Babies are sometimes easier in the sense that they can be distracted by much simpler items, such as favorite toys that rattle or make noise, or merely seeing their own reflection in a mirror. 

We suggest a toy strip that attaches to the handles of your baby’s car seat.  This ensures they will have a variety of engaging travel toys that can’t be thrown on the floor (A toy tether is also an excellent way to avoid this scenario!).

Some of our favorite baby road trip toys

We also recommend having a car seat mirror when you’re on a long trip with your baby so that you can keep tabs on how they’re doing.  It’s always helpful to know when your baby is napping, as this can help determine whether or not you can squeeze in another hour of driving.  A mirror can also alert you to those unfortunate milk spit-ups that will more than likely result in an extra pit stop.

Some babies will go through phases of simply not settling in the back seat. Particularly if they are the only one in the back, a quick way to a happy baby may be simply having another adult or family member sit with your infant to entertain them in their car seat.

5. Pack a Travel Bag

You’ll want to have some of the essentials within arm’s reach in your vehicle, which is why you’ll need an extra travel bag inside the car, aside from your suitcases in the trunk. 

Your regular diaper bag can be perfectly suitable for this, or you can simply pack an extra tote.

Here are some helpful items to stock your car baby bag with:

• Travel changing pad
• Extra diapers
• Diaper Cream
• Healthy Snacks
• Hand sanitizer
• Burp cloths
• Plastic bags (for dirty diapers)
• A change of clothes (for baby and for you!)
• Ziploc bags or wash bags (for dirty clothes)
• Extra pacifiers (if needed)
• First Aid Kit

We’ve found that it’s always helpful to have a small selection of baby’s favorite toys for when we would have to stop and eat while traveling. 

These could be brought into the restaurant and swapped out, and sanitizing wipes certainly came in handy when those toys inevitably hit the floor. Bibs also became a necessity, as they helped protect our baby’s clothes from spit-ups in the car. 

• You’ll find our complete baby travel checklist here .

6. Expect a Few Diaper Blowouts

Ah, diaper blowouts.  These are a fact of parenting life, and traveling with a newborn by car practically guarantees that a few will occur between Point A and Point B – we’ve learned the hard way! 

While there’s nothing you can do to prevent blowouts, you can minimize the cleanup, thereby reducing your own stress in these situations.

We absolutely recommend a car seat liner .  Many are universal, but you should also be able to find one that fits your specific car seat.  Car seat liners can be wiped clean and are machine washable, and they prevent anything from soaking into the actual car seat (you’ll use these right through the toilet training stage up to the pre-school years).

Baby car travel also dictates the necessity of packing backup clothing, and onesies are extremely convenient.  We advise packing 2-3 onesies in your travel bag to cover all of your bases – it’ll save you needing to dig them out of suitcases on the side of the road for those emergency diaper changes.

7. Prepare for Frequent Stops

Taking baby on the road goes hand-in-hand with stopping. Frequently.  It’s just a fact of life, and if you accept it at the onset of your road trip, this will probably reduce the chances you’ll be cranky about it later. 

Babies simply require extra handling, whether it be an unanticipated nursing or feeding stop, milk-spit-up-fiasco, or the dreaded diaper blowout.  It’s best just to buck up, pull over, and take care of business.

It’s also a good idea to bring along your stroller .  This really is an essential road-tripping item, as you’ll need to stretch your legs as well as transport your baby to and from your hotel room or take in some trails during a rest stop. 

8. For Mom – Take Care of YOU

This article may be about road trips with a baby, but we’re going to take a moment and focus on you, Mom.  It can be tempting to put your needs last, as it so often seems to be a part of being a mother.  However, your own well-being is directly linked to the health and happiness of your little one, and it’s important to remember this.

For one, don’t be afraid to speak up if you’re exhausted.  Letting your partner or spouse take the wheel while you’re on the road is an excellent way to catch up on any sleep you may have missed the night before.  Even a half-hour of added sleep can do wonders, as we’re sure you know!

If you’re a nursing mom , you’ll also want to make sure that you’re staying hydrated.  You’ve already adopted the mindset that stops will be more frequent, so if that means a few extra trips to the bathroom, so be it.  Don’t sacrifice your own health because it may be temporarily inconvenient for others.

9. Pack A Few Travel Dining Essentials

Car travel with a baby means that you’ll be stopping along the way to eat, which means you’ll need to pack a few travel dining essentials.  If your baby can sit up with support, a travel high chair can make indoor dining much easier.  These fold up when not in use and can easily be stored in the trunk of your vehicle. 

As we’ve mentioned before, it’s best to pack several bibs in your travel bag for easy access while travelling.  We’re big fans of these silicone bibs , as they can be easily wiped clean for repeated use on your journey. Don’t forget surface wipes before sitting at a table and for wiping little hands that will want to touch EVERYTHING before serving up baby food!

10. Prepare for Hotel Stays

Staying in a hotel with your baby usually means that you’ll get much less sleep than normal, but we have some tips to make these experiences less tiring for everyone involved.

• Ask for a corner room.  These are often quieter and farther away from elevators.  Many hotels will work to accommodate families with infants, and you should not be afraid to speak up.  The worst they can tell you is that they don’t have any available. 
• If financially possible, spring for a suite room.  These generally have a separate space (such as a common living room area) where you can place your baby’s travel cot. 
• Bring a portable baby travel bassinet , not a bulky pack n’ play.  While useful, pack n’ plays can take up space in your vehicle that you’ll need for other items. Most hotels offer some sort of travel crib, but that doesn’t guarantee that the mattress will be lined or as thick as your baby is used to. A travel bassinet can be placed in the crib and provide all that your baby needs for a restful night’s sleep.

Baby Road Trip Essentials – Gear You’ll Need

We’ve mentioned several pieces of essential gear to prepare for a successful road trip with your infant or baby. To help you pack, here is a convenient list for your reference (you can also head straight to our Amazon store , where we set out all our favourite baby travel essential items)

• Travel Breast Pump
• Car Adapter
• Toy Teether
• Silicone Bibs
• Car Seat Liner
• Travel diaper change kit
• Travel High Chair
• Travel Bassinet

 What about when you arrive at your destination? Download our complete baby packing list when you sign up for our newsletter here – never forget an essential item again traveling with a baby!

Final thoughts on taking baby on the road

Remember, it’s all about setting realistic expectations. Give yourself plenty of time, pack well, rest frequently, and go easy on yourself if things don’t go exactly to plan! Traveling with a newborn may not be your best road trip, but it IS achievable with a little thought and planning. Safe Travels!

More Top Travel Tips With A Baby

Before you leave home with a baby in tow, firstly pop over to our Best Baby Travel Advice homepage. We cover a huge range of baby travel topics here including:

• How to Handle Baby’s First Flight – from booking the tickets to getting on the plane and surviving mid-air meltdowns, here’s how baby air travel works.
• Hiking with a Baby – babies can make great travel companions in the early days – here’s how to get yourself set up for a successful baby hike.
• Essentials Camping with a Baby – undoubtedly, tots do come with a lot of stuff! Here are the essential baby items we always recommend you take on a baby camping trip & hitting the trails.
• Bringing Baby to the Beach – Top tips for when you’re out in the sun and the surf to keep baby safe and make sure its a fun day for all of you.
• Baby Travel Essentials – the most important things for baby we never leave home without.

You can find all of our family travel product reviews here

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2 thoughts on “ Road Trip With A Baby: 10 Essential Survival Tips + Packing List! ”

I’m also bring my electric breast pump just in case!

great tip for newbie parents

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All the Gear That Helped Me Survive a 3,000-Mile Road Trip With a Baby

My husband and I recently completed a two-nation, eight-state, 3,000-mile road trip from Minneapolis to the East Coast and back via Canada. Because we’re masochists, we brought our 11-month-old son along for the ride.

Not that it was an entirely masochistic endeavor. Despite Julian’s first flight being a total disaster, we felt confident planning a cross-country journey because he’d joined us for shorter, several-day road trips since he was 6 weeks old. We kinda knew what worked: syncing long driving stretches to his morning and afternoon naps. And what didn’t: riding in the back seat with him, which just gave our budding Oscar nominee a captive audience. We mapped the route accordingly, building in enough overnight stays that we wouldn’t need to drive more than four to six hours per day and planning breaks every 90 minutes or so to eat, pee, and stretch our legs at curious roadside attractions like Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland , the world’s biggest and creepiest Christmas store.

Casual adherents to baby-led weaning, we fed Julian whenever he was hungry and kept the mood in our Mazda CX-5 upbeat with El Reino Infantil and Daddy Yankee’s “Rompe” on repeat. (Don’t knock it till you try it.) It’s absolutely worth noting that I don’t breastfeed or pump , which makes traveling with a small tyrant about 2,000 times easier. Furthermore, Julian doesn’t get carsick — I know from friends of puke-prone kids just how paralyzing that is for would-be road trippers. (FWIW, two out of two parents recommended Dramamine for Kids , which is safe for ages 2 and up; a third with an up-chucker under 1 vouched for the long-sleeved smocks from Bumkins, noting gravely, “I can’t stop her from projectile vomiting on the backseat, but at least I can keep her shirt clean.”)

Although we still made rookie mistakes in those 2.5 weeks — did you know babies hate idling in traffic? Never again will we drive through Chicago instead of around it — we also carried a few products that saved us serious grief. In addition to a trustworthy car seat (the Graco Extend2Fit Convertible is aces when paired with a piddle-proof liner ) and a good travel crib (we’re Camp Guava Lotus , despite having to YouTube instructions every time we fold it up), what follows are some of our less expected essentials for hitting the road with a BOB (that’s “baby on board” for those of you who still have lives).

Eating on the road

Before I discovered this stackable snack organizer, I was jamming random crumb-filled Ziplocs in Julian’s diaper bag. The snacks would get crushed beyond recognition, and I was wasting a ton of plastic. The modular design of this twist-off container keeps me in check: I replenish the snacks regularly, they hold their shape, and food — especially fruit — stays fresher longer. Each compartment holds up to eight ounces, and the hooked lid can be hung off strollers and totes. Julian hasn’t figured out how to open it himself yet, but he lights up whenever he glimpses his neon tower of treats — its mere existence makes it an antidote for backseat meltdowns.

Julian has been teething since he was 4 months old but didn’t pop his first tooth until two weeks ago. At home, he enjoys gumming these vaguely fruity styrofoam teething biscuits from Happy Baby, but we learned the hard way that they make an icky-sticky mess when ground into the fabric of a car seat. So somewhere between Philadelphia and Cleveland, we gave these tomato-flavored puffy sticks a whirl and haven’t looked back. They’re baked, not fried, and made with certified-organic corn meal, rice, quinoa, tomato, carrot, and rosemary, meaning they check all the feel-good boxes while still tasting awesome. (Not gonna lie, I eat a third of every bag I open for Julian.) More importantly: no gunk! The sticks are easy for Julian to hold, so he feeds himself, and they magically melt the second they touch his tongue.

It doesn’t matter how divey a roadside diner is, my husband and I would never leave a mess for a server to clean up. Julian, on the other hand, is at that unreasonable age when the only way he knows how to eat is Jackson Pollock style. We travel with a thousand million baby wipes for this reason, but this placemat came in handy when dining at restaurants on our road trip. Made of supple, food-safe silicone, it’s available in an array of cute prints (ramen, sushi, anthropomorphic avocados) and takes up minimal room in his baby bag. We park Julian in a high chair , spread out the placemat like a picnic blanket, and wait for the chaos to rain down. When he’s satisfied with his edible work of art, we roll it up like a taquito and take it to the bathroom for a quick rinse under the faucet. The mat doesn’t catch everything, but it’s that much less food we have to wipe up while apologizing profusely to the waitstaff.

Sometimes dining in a restaurant with a baby isn’t worth the hassle/public humiliation. When we needed to eat in a hotel room or Airbnb, we used this two-in-one, infant-feeding seat we found at the resale chain Kid to Kid . For babies 6 months and up, it works like a compact high chair with an attached tray. For toddlers up to 33 pounds, you remove the tray and it acts as a booster seat at a table. On our road trip, we used the safety straps to secure the seat to an array of chairs, making feeding time so much easier. At first, I worried that the hard plastic design would suck up too much space in the car, but it’s surprisingly compact when folded down, fitting on the floor behind the passenger seat. It’s also easier to clean than the fabric versions.

Changing on the road

When Julian was around 8 months old, I fell for some Instagram momfluencer clucking about her beloved Caraa baby tote . The bag is useful from an organizational standpoint, but it’s the size of a clown car and throws my back out of whack when fully loaded. And I certainly didn’t want to lug it around when I was bolting into a rest stop for a quick diaper change. That’s where this roll-up changing pad came in. It slips over my wrist like a clutch and fits everything we need and nothing we don’t to get our son cleaned up: baby wipes, disposable bags (see below), Aquaphor, and fresh diapers (truth: overnight swaddlers are the MVPs of long car trips). It also has a built-in memory-foam pillow, providing a clean, padded surface for nasty restroom counters and floors (or, in a pinch, the trunk of our car).

At home, we rely on an Ubbi steel diaper pail to keep our baby’s stank under control. On the road, there’s no such option. Considering many hotels did away with daily housekeeping services during the pandemic, it was even more important that we find an interim solution to soiled nappies. Enter this pocket-size, disposable diaper-bag dispenser from Munchkin. It comes with 72 baking-soda-infused bags from Arm & Hammer, and let me tell you: These bags are big enough to hold the heaviest pee-soaked diaper and deodorized enough to block noxious smells the minute they’re tied off. They even have a faint lavender scent, which is about as pleasant as a bag designed to hold baby poop gets. We now keep a roll tucked in our changing pad, another in the diaper bag, and a third in our glove compartment — just in case.

Bathing on the road

Bathing a baby in a hotel, motel, or Airbnb is always a dicey prospect. If the bathtub or shower isn’t immaculate enough to sit in while shaving my legs, I don’t want my kiddo splashing around in there — and no way am I schlepping a free-standing baby tub on a 3,000-mile road trip. By 11 months, however, Julian was too big-boned and squirmy for sink baths. Our road trip solution: micellar water, the same quick fix I use at home when I’m too lazy to wash my face. Mustela’s hypoallergenic avocado- and aloe vera–infused cleansing water is specifically formulated for babies. I put a few squirts on a cotton pad or washcloth and go to town, wiping down Baby Boy’s face, neck, body, and diaper area. It’s a fine stand-in for a bath because it requires no water and smells soapy-fresh with a hint of spring flowers. I use it on Julian’s hair, too, as it’s very good at taming a cowlick without matting down his baby-fine locks.

Sleeping on the road

For me, the most anxiety-inducing part of this road trip wasn’t the driving bit; it was the prospect of our melodramatic offspring having a nuclear meltdown in a hotel with whisper-thin walls. (At least when he screams bloody murder in a car, nobody suffers but us.) I know a lot of parents use SlumberPods to create blackout sleeping conditions for their babies, but those seem awfully bulky when packing space is at a premium. To emulate Julian’s nighttime routine on the road, we aimed to check in for the night by 7 p.m. Airbnb rentals were ideal because we could set up his Pack ’n’ Play in a separate room, but when we had to make do with a studio-style hotel room, we’d stick his travel crib in a dark closet or bathroom, switch on a white-noise app, and plug in his rotating night-light projector — the same kind we use in his nursery back home. The Moredig is small and portable and, depending on the filter you select, turns any ceiling into a galaxy of slow-churning moons and stars or a colorful aquarium teeming with fish. We still had to sneak around all mouselike behind closed doors, but the light show provided a familiar enough distraction that Julian usually drifted off to sleep after ten or 15 minutes.

Julian is a pretty good road tripper, all things considered. On the rare occasion that he acted a fool in a restaurant, hotel, or bumper-to-bumper traffic, and no amount of tomato sticks or Daddy Yankee jams could snap him out of a tantrum, we called into play our final line of defense: Infant+, a.k.a. hypnotherapy for babies. Despite the tsk-tsking of the anti-smartphone crowd, we’ve used this app since Julian was able to turn over. Its pleasant piano music and high-contrast black, white, and red animations of simple shapes like stars and circles grab a baby’s attention like André Leon Talley at an Amish barn raising. It’s repetitive but incredibly soothing — a Sandman for the 21st century.

Playing on the road

This stupid-simple rolling car meets all the demands of helicopter parents: no electronics, sustainably made with rubberwood and nontoxic paints, yada yada yada. But here’s what I really love about this toy : It’s quiet . No blinking, buzzing, drive-you-bananas, jibber-jabbering tomfoolery to disturb other hotel guests or make you contemplate a forever walk into the ocean. It rolls like Mario Andretti on hardwood floors, tile, and low-pile carpeting, and when Julian inevitably mic drops it, it doesn’t clatter quite as loudly as its plastic and metal brethren. Its diminutive size also makes it easy for Julian’s clumsy baby paws to grasp. Although his ability to play with this toy when strapped into a car seat is limited, he takes pleasure in simply holding it, bending its articulated body this way and that and spinning its wheels with his chubby little fingers. We’ve even brought the quiet car on plane rides, grateful for the brief diversion it provides during takeoff and landing.

Car trips are tough on a baby. They’re long and boring, and I’m sure it’s very lonely in the backseat when all your people are riding shotgun. One thing that alleviated some of Julian’s restlessness was this alpaca that we mistakenly named Llama. The important thing here is not what type of camelid Llama is, but that he’s a floppy, raglike creature that wears a placid expression on his face. Like every animal in the Slumberkins’ lineup , he’s designed to teach children how to cope with big feelings. Llama the Alpaca’s particular superpower is absorbing stress and anxiety, which seems apropos for a baby on a 3,000-mile road trip. Julian loves to chatter at his friend, squeeze and strangle him, gnaw his ears, chuck him across the backseat, and then cry until I undo my seatbelt and fish him back. Their relationship is a one-sided emotional rollercoaster, but every dumping session ends the same way — with Julian passed out in the car seat, his Llama slumped in his lap and us enjoying the silence.

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A guide to road tripping with a baby, in 9 highway-tested steps

The back seat is your new best friend

The “poop-tastrophe” at the Canadian border — as one of her children coined it — still haunts Nasreen Stump. And then there was the carsickness episode in a rental car in Seattle.

“We’ve put a lot of miles in with a lot of kids, and had a lot of unfortunate experiences along the way,” said Stump, a mother of four in Texas who writes for the family travel site TravelingMom.com .

In the greater journey of parenting, road trips have it all: discovery, boredom, tears, joy, gear galore and so many bodily fluids. As the holidays approach — and as road trips have become a covid-era alternative for families who want to avoid flying — we asked experts like Stump what strategies they deployed for limiting chaos while traveling with babies and toddlers.

As a relatively new mom, I could have used the advice at this time last year. Since then — through seven round-trip drives between D.C., Florida and Pennsylvania, mostly to stay with family who helped care for our baby — I’ve learned some of my own tricks.

The following nine tips are lessons only a parent with some miles under their belt could deliver.

Should you travel with kids during the pandemic? Consider these 6 trip scenarios.

Get your car checked before you leave

Need an oil change, tire replacement or air-conditioner check? Get that done before heading out. When there’s a fussy baby on your lap and all your bags are strapped to the roof, an auto repair shop is the last place you want to end up.

It’s also a good idea, Stump writes , to find a technician who can make sure your baby’s car seat is properly installed before taking off. She recommends checking with fire departments, ambulance services or hospitals to see if a technician can take a look.

Digitize your packing list

Handwritten packing lists are fine. But if you want to get fancy about it, create a spreadsheet so every computer-using person in the family can contribute and easily update your must-have list. Bonus: it’s easy to copy the basics and customize for future trips.

In making the list, think about everything your baby needs, eats, drinks, uses and wears over the course of a day. Figure out how long you can go without doing laundry or a grocery store run, and pack what you’ll need for that time (plus a little extra). Keep the crucial stuff accessible in the car to avoid frantically unpacking a suitcase for extra clothes or diapers.

You may think you can buy just about anything on the road. But Colleen Lanin, a mother of two and founder of TravelMamas.com , says a middle-of-the-night emergency could test your resourcefulness. If the kid spikes a fever at 3 a.m., you don’t want to search for a 24-hour pharmacy.

“Have that stash of your medicines ready,” she said.

And don’t forget a bag with extra personal protective equipment and hand sanitizer.

Can you still cancel a flight at the last minute? Your holiday travel questions, answered.

Throw the ETA out the window

Google Maps says you’ll arrive in six hours? What a fun fantasy! Your GPS is not the boss of the baby.

American Academy of Pediatrics spokeswoman Dina DiMaggio, a doctor at Pediatric Associates of NYC and at NYU Langone Health, recommends stopping every two to three hours for feeding, diaper changing and taking a break from the car seat.

Dirty diapers or meltdowns might require more frequent stops, so patience is key.

Lanin suggests mapping out pit stops in advance, and being realistic about how much time they’ll add to your trip.

“Babies and toddlers are not great at being stuck in the same place for hours and hours on end,” she said.

Timing the drive to avoid traffic is also a good idea, Stump said. Ever sat in a traffic jam with a screaming baby? It’s not great!

How to travel with your pet this holiday season

Join baby in the back seat

DiMaggio, a co-author of ​" The Pediatrician’s Guide to Feeding Babies and Toddlers ,” does not recommend allowing babies to sleep in a car seat for too long, especially if no one is watching them. She said one parent should ride in the back, putting them in position to anticipate diaper stops, help naps along, and offer snacks or drinks — not to mention provide entertainment and a steady stream of distractions.

Stump recommends bath toys and books for road trips because they can be inexpensive and “really easy to sanitize.”

Make your car a rest stop

Maybe some parents with an unvaccinated, too-young-to-mask baby feel comfortable strolling into a rest stop, sitting in the food court and using a diaper changing station in the restroom. My family is not.

Many of our nursing sessions and diaper changes took place in the back seat of the car. We took advantage of drive-through or curbside pickup for meals, or food delivery services at Airbnb stays. Mobile ordering at Starbucks let us order breakfast and packaged lunches in advance and then run in to pick it up quickly without having to wait in line.

Keep the baby’s schedule consistent

If the kid naps every three hours, try to maintain that timeline in the car. If white noise is helpful, bring a portable machine or use an app. Do they have a favorite bedtime song or book or cuddly toy? Keep those handy.

Driving at night while the baby is sleeping might work for some parents — and we’ve done it many times — but we found we prefer to quit traveling closer to the baby’s dinnertime so everyone can eat, wind down and rest. For us, this means breaking up a long trip into a few days.

How my wife and I have traveled with our kid, from 12 weeks old to toddler

Know your lodging needs

Maybe you can get by with a standard hotel room. Bless you. Once our baby started an established bedtime routine, we needed something with more space — and, frankly, walls. In our case, extended-stay brands checked many boxes: they’re pet-friendly, offer separated spaces and include a fridge. When we can afford it, we look for vacation rentals so we can avoid crowds and easily load and unload the car.

Stump is a fan of Hilton’s Home2 Suites because they offer a curtain to separate the bed from the couch, and the rentals have “really long counters” that are particularly useful. She warns that parents with babies should not assume every hotel will have some kind of portable crib.

“They should call ahead multiple times or travel with something for the baby to sleep in, just in case,” she said.

Prepare for a mess (or two)

Both Stump and Lanin offered the same one-word advice: “buckets.”

“Have you seen how babies and toddlers throw up?” Lanin said. “They don’t aim.”

A good receptacle is important for kids who get queasy from carsickness or the stomach flu. Stump likes a collapsible beach bucket because it folds up flat for easy storage.

After Stump’s “poop-tastrophe,” when her family was returning from Montreal , she added layers of protection to the car. That includes waterproof covers that are meant for babies to wear over cloth diapers and replacement covers for an infant seat.

“Never again on a road trip without backups on those things,” she said.

Always, always check the fridge

My toughest lesson came on an otherwise stress-free morning. I congratulated myself on being ready to check out of the hotel early — with two dogs and a 7-month-old — on the final leg of a trip home to D.C. from Florida.

Two hours later, I was weeping as we drove north on Interstate 95, realizing in horror that I forgot to open the refrigerator for the one thing I couldn’t easily replace: 36 ounces of breast milk that I’d spent hours pumping over the past few days.

When I frantically called the hotel, I was told the room had been cleaned and any perishable items tossed. I vowed then and there to never leave a room without triple checking the fridge. Due to parental brain fog, I promptly forgot this vow on a trip a couple months later. But — in an endorsement for the shared packing list — my husband remembered before we left the parking lot.

More travel tips

Vacation planning: Start with a strategy to maximize days off by taking PTO around holidays. Experts recommend taking multiple short trips for peak happiness . Want to take an ambitious trip? Here are 12 destinations to try this year — without crowds.

Cheap flights: Follow our best advice for scoring low airfare , including setting flight price alerts and subscribing to deal newsletters. If you’re set on an expensive getaway, here’s a plan to save up without straining your credit limit.

Airport chaos: We’ve got advice for every scenario , from canceled flights to lost luggage . Stuck at the rental car counter? These tips can speed up the process. And following these 52 rules of flying should make the experience better for everyone.

Expert advice: Our By The Way Concierge solves readers’ dilemmas , including whether it’s okay to ditch a partner at security, or what happens if you get caught flying with weed . Submit your question here . Or you could look to the gurus: Lonely Planet and Rick Steves .

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Road Trip with Baby: Essential Travel Packing List & Tips

Written by Becca

Updated on April 30th, 2024

How do you take a road trip with a baby for the first time? Check out my essential travel packing list for everything your infant needs during a trip.

This article may contain affiliate links. We earn a small commissions when you purchase via those links — and it's free for you. It's only us (Becca & Dan) working on this website, so we value your support! Read our privacy policy and learn more about us .

Table of contents

• Feeding & Nursing
• Clothes & accessories
• Grooming & medicine
• Transport: strollering, driving, car seat and carrying
• Learn more about road trips for babies!

Traveling with an infant is incredibly daunting when you first decide to take a short trip with your baby. How will you set up a safe place for sleeping? How will you pack enough to cover every possible situation? How many bottles is enough?

We took three trips between our baby being three and six months, and having a standard packing list gave us peace of mind. We borrowed suggestions from friends and family, and put together the best of all the recommendations.

In this packing list, you’re welcome to switch around the quantities of all items based on how long your trip is. Also, note that this list was for three road trips and not for flying. Nothing we brought was specific to TSA-approved sizes and our luggage wasn’t optimized for a flight.

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• UPPAbaby Minu travel stroller Check Availability
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• BabyBjorn Travel Crib Light Check Availability
• Blackout Cover for Pack 'n Play Check Availability
• Baby Tula Lite Baby Carrier (with fanny pack) Check Availability

Here’s the list of road trip items we took, many of which are the best baby products for travel .

The below list is based on a three-day two-night trip during which I’m nursing and giving a few bottles here and there. Of course, you have your own methods of feeding your infant during the trip , and no two parents nor babies are alike in this regard. For all the clothing recommendations (along with sleep sacks, bibs, etc.), I liberally pack an extra in case there are “accidents.”

Ready for our road trip baby packing list? Here it goes.

If you are flying with your infant, check out this list of crucial tips for taking a flight with your baby!

Feeding & Nursing

Whether you’re nursing or exclusively bottle feeding, there are some essentials to consider.

• Bottles : We like Comotomo and Lansinoh .
• Bottle brush & stand : This OXO stand has been great.
• Pacifiers (2) : Check out Avent and the Avent + animal !
• Burp cloths (3-4) : We like aden & anais .
• Bibs (3-4) : aden & anais make great bibs as well.
• Vitamin D drops : We have these .
• + flanges (6)
• + duckbill valves (6)
• + tubing (2)
• + backflow protectors (2)
• 6 Spectra milk bottles and tops : Check them out .
• Milk cooler with ice pack : We have this one , and it fits most standard 5oz bottles.
• Frozen milk (1 bag) : We use the Lansinoh storage bags . I bring frozen milk on our way when we leave home, so that it survives the car ride in the cooler.

Our strategy for bottles is to have enough for feeding, storage and a few extra. When they are empty, we clean them right away and cycle through them like that. We also put Vitamin D drops in each bottle for feeding, so we’ll always have a few storage bottles ready to dish out.

Also the bottle supplies that I mention are optimized for 5oz bottles. You might need slightly different supplies for the bigger 8oz bottles.

For babies eating solids

• Jars or pouches of baby food (however many your child consumes)
• High chair : Take a look at this clip-on high chair . A foldable travel high chair also works!
• Booster seat : Try this one from OXO .
• Spoons/utensils : We’ve had the best luck with these spoons .
• Silicone bibs : Check these out and pick from lots of different colors.
• More wipes !: We like these water wipes .

We make our own baby food, and our baby eats whatever we have in the house! For convenience, I can see how the pouches could be a quick and easy solution to have food on the go. You can put out only as much as you need and use your own spoon, then save the rest for minimal clean up.

Sometimes at home, we keep our daughter sitting up right and hold her to give her some food. So the clip-on high chairs and booster seats are only necessary when independent solid eating is more of a thing.

More diapers are better than fewer, especially if you’ll be in a remote location like we were when we went up to the northwestern Catskills to stay in a country house. There wasn’t a Walmart for MILES! Luckily, I learned from our trip the month before that I should pack diapers like they’re going out of style, and we survived plenty fine.

I had already corrected all my former mistakes when we went away to Litchfield County, CT , when our daughter was 7 months, and came home with a heap of diapers to spare.

One thing I like to have on hand is little plastic throw-away baggies for diapers when disposing of them in a hotel or Airbnb. I save the ones we use as produce bags at the supermarket and then load up my diaper bag with those. They are so handy. If you’re looking for something more compact for storing (or already have a dog) these dog #2 storage bags might also work.

• Diapers : Find your brand and size on Amazon . For a three-day trip, I took 30 diapers.
• Wipes : We use these water wipes .
• Diaper balm : We like diaper balm with a lid , to prevent accidental spills.
• Little garbage bags for diapers
• Changing pad : This one is great for most babies.

For the diapers, it’s best if you leave them in the original packaging to help save on space. We found that bringing loose diapers takes up more room in our already cramped bags.

Our diaper bag has a changing pad that never leaves our bag. When we travel, we change our daughter with the pad on the floor. This is a good practice in case there’s an accident. We are not prepared to scrub any carpets while away!

It’s also likely that you may have these items in your diaper bag. It would be a good idea to make sure you have extra / a spare set for a makeshift changing station at your accommodation.

Clothes & accessories

When we went upstate to Livingston Manor for three days, I almost laughed: we came home with exactly one diaper left in the diaper bag and our daughter’s luggage combined. ONE!

This was because we went through quite a few changes of clothes, if you know what I mean. And if there are overnight accidents, you may have a soiled sleep sack or swaddle.

In addition to the extra outfits I leave in the diaper bag, I was happy with the number of backup clothes and pajamas I had packed, as we almost went through everything. In my guide to how to visit NYC with a baby , I discuss the importance of bringing clothing layers for changes in weather.

• Zippy pajamas (3-4) : We’ve had good luck with Carters brand PJs .
• Outdoor blankets (1) : For colder months, try this type of blanket .
• Daytime outfits (with spares) : These Carter onsies and pants are great staples!
• Booties or socks : You can never have too many socks .
• Sun hat : Hats work great for keeping the sun out of your baby’s eyes.
• Headbands or hair bow clips : So cute !

We’ve liked bringing plenty of headbands and hair bows for times when we’ve wanted our daughter to look cute in a photo.

Grooming & medicine

For babies with hair, you might want to consider packing a comb or brush. For us, we do a quick hair combing at bedtime as part of the routine.

For all other medicine and health products, it’s up to you. We haven’t had to use any of the medicines while away from home, but you truly never know what can happen and what you’ll want to have in your back pocket if your child is soon to be teething, comes down with some congestion or is having bouts with gas pains.

• Frida nail file & clipper : The Frida Baby Grooming Kit has everything you need.
• Hair comb or brush : We like this comb because it has an extra fine side.
• Medicine for unexpected scenarios : ( Acetominaphen , gas drops , Snotsucker )
• Thermometer : We got this digital one .
• Rattle toys, teether toys : Our baby LOVES these teethers .

A tip from my cousin, an expert mom of two, is to bring along “identifying docs” for your child, even when your baby doesn’t have an official ID or baby passport yet, like an immunization report or other medical record (even a physical photocopy of baby’s birth certificate would be a “better-safe-than-sorry” thing to have!).

Transport: strollering, driving, car seat and carrying

We have become UPPAbaby people and we are super happy with the choice to buy into the UPPAbaby ecosystem of strollers and car seats. We picked up the Minu stroller for traveling purposes and it has saved a ton of trunk space when compared to the larger and sturdier UPPAbaby Vista stroller we keep at home.

For unexpected weather or bugginess in summer locations, opt for bringing both the rain cover and the insect net covers for your car seat or rumble seat.

• UPPAbaby Minu travel stroller : We’re happy with ours and it saves trunk space. Check it out or read our UPPAbaby Minu review here!
• UPPAbaby Mesa car seat : Check prices on Amazon for this sturdy car seat.
• UPPAbaby stroller parent console : Ours lives on our stroller, even when folded. Check it out .
• UPPAbaby Mesa rain cover and bug screen cover : The rain shield and bug screen have been helpful!
• UPPAbaby car window shields : Help keep the sun out of your baby’s eyes. Check it out .
• Baby Safety Car Mirror : We have one of these in our car at home, and if you will be renting a car at your destination, be sure to bring along your own baby car mirror .
• A baby carrier you love : If you have car space to spare, opt for a strong baby carrier like the Baby Tula Explore Carrier . If you’re short on space, go the route of an ultralightweight carrier like Baby Tula Carrier Lite ; for more ideas, see my list of the best baby carriers for travel .
• *A hiking carrier : For adventurous parents, as well as for toddlers and larger kids who like being carried, consider a hiking carrier. We like ours, which you can read about that the Deuter Kid Comfort Venture review .

While our daughter doesn’t exactly love the Pack ‘n Play, it’s a fact of life when you leave home for travel. The first trip we took with her when she was 13 weeks was when we used the bassinet from our UPPAbaby Vista stroller ! That way, she wasn’t sleeping in a foreign environment.

With the Pack ‘n Play, we make sure the mattress cover is clean before we leave home, and we bring a backup sheet in case it gets soiled. Another hack has been the blackout cover, which simulates darkness for the baby if you’re in a place with lots of windows or no dark curtains. It also gives the baby their own sense of space if you’re all in one hotel room, like we say in our guide to staying in a hotel with your baby .

• BabyBjorn Travel Crib Light : This travel crib is so easy to set up and take apart, and it’s tons lighter than a Graco Pack ‘n Play. Check it out or read our review .
• Pack ‘n Play sheet with spare sheet : This one should work great!
• Pack ‘n Play blackout cover : We have this one .
• SlumberPod : This is a blackout tent to use during travel! It goes over an entire travel crib and parents swear by it.
• Baby monitor : We’ve been happy with our monitor . You don’t need Wi-Fi, so it’s easy to set up anywhere.
• Audio baby monitor : If you want as a backup, or alternative to video, you can check out the audio-only options.
• HALO & Nested Bean sleep sacks (2) : We love our HALO , and we’ve been using the Nested Bean as a backup.
• Hatch Rest+ sound machine : We like the Rest+ because it has an easy charging base.
• Amazon Basics portable suction cup blackout curtains : These curtains help to darken a room so your little one sleeps longer!

We feel a little silly bringing the Hatch because it’s such a big sound machine. The backup battery has actually been a huge help because we once lost power and we’re glad we still had some white noise going. Something like this might be a better option.

Plus, we use a portable travel sound machine (you can also get it on Amazon ) on our stroller or with our a travel-friendly baby carrier while taking walks, to help create some familiar and consistent white noise It works out great, whether on the road or at home.

Learn more about road trips for babies!

From our experience, here are some of the things that we’ve learned that have been helpful in making everyone happy during the adventure.

And as a heads up, you can check our the rest of our articles on traveling with a baby to learn everything you can, as well as our list of the best essential road trip accessories for everyone in the car.

What to expect on your first trip with a baby

I actually kind of expected the worst, in traveling with a baby. How would naps work? Would we have to stop for feeding? How would our child sleep at night, the first time away from home?

This all felt kind of crazy, but we knew we had to take the plunge if we ever wanted to introduce our daughter into our world of travel.

Our first trip with her was at 13 weeks. I was largely doing okay, three-ish months postpartum, and we were finally comfortable with the world of being parents. Also, I don’t want to sugarcoat this at all: our baby was far from sleeping through the night, and as my best friend put it, “If you’re going to be sleep deprived and doing night feeds, why not at least be away from home on a vacation?”

While New Hampshire at the end of winter is far from tropical and didn’t involve any skiing or snowy sports for us, it’s where my extended family gets together every year in mid-March. I didn’t want to be left out, so we took our tiny newborn along (easier said than done).

Here’s a few tips for what to expect and how things really went, that time, and the two times we went up to the Catskills when our child was 5 months and then 6 months. While both trips were very different from each other, we decided to risk it (again!) by going up to Litchfield County, CT , when she was 7 months old as well!

Naps and sleeping tips for road trips

On the way up to New Hampshire and down from New Hampshire, our baby took some of her best naps of the month in the car. Her naps were a total grab bag and we never know what to expect, especially if we were going to be in the car for more than two hours. We were graced with some two-hour naps during the five-hour drive, and when we stopped for bathrooms, I fed her in the rest area or in the front seat of the car.

When we went to Nova Scotia, we planned a day trip excursions from Halifax and timed our planning with the baby’s three-nap schedule.

Keeping your baby entertained during the car ride

When she wasn’t napping, one of us sat in the back and tried to entertain her with toys and a book. It’s hard to say if it worked. During our road trips with her two and three months later, we both sat up front and if she needed consoling, I’d reach my arm back to hold a pacifier in her mouth. We had her teether beads and a fruit teether attached by a pacifier clip in her car seat.

I recommend having some toys or teethers, depending on your baby’s age, attached to the car seat straps so they don’t get lost or dropped during the ride.

Feeding during car rides

Most babies eat every 1.5-2 hours in the first few months of life, and ours certainly did. Even at five and six months, she likes to eat every two hours if she can. Some babies are on an every-three-hours feeding schedule by this point, but that’s not something that worked for us. Much of this experience inspired me to write about how to feed a baby during travels .

If a baby is hungry during a car ride, you’ll know. It’ll be chaos. If our child cried, we turned up the music, held a pacifier in her mouth and sang her favorite lullaby on repeat. Being a parent is far from glamorous!

During some stops, we gave her a full feed, depending on when she had last eaten. I did this in rest area cafeteria booths, the front seat of our car in a Trader Joe’s parking lot In Connecticut and in a Panera off the highway, most recently. I think a good tip is to get comfortable feeding your baby at the right time, and the place is less important.

The importance of the diaper bag

Just like when you go out for the day, having a robust diaper bag is crucial during a road trip. And I mean “two spare outfits” level of robust. We have been using Nike’s diaper backpack and it’s good for travel. Check out more photos at my Nike Diaper Bag review .

On our most recent trip with our baby when she was six months, there was a diaper blowout just as we hit our first stop, and I wound up doing an entire outfit and diaper change on a picnic table in a covered pavilion as it began to rain. Good thing we had weather-appropriate attire in a packing cube in the diaper bag, along with enough wipes and diapers and of course, hand sanitizer.

Other things I keep in the diaper bag are my new nursing cover, a small Hakka pump, a disassembled Medela hand pump, spare Medela milk vials, a changing pad and a spare light blanket for miscellaneous use. I suggest keeping your diaper bag contents constant so that if something is missing, you can figure it out.

I use the same diaper bag contents on a regular trip to the supermarket, as well as a trip up to the countryside.

As a secondary diaper bag for when I’m just getting out of the car at a rest area, or going somewhere with only the carrier and not a full stroller setup, I’m into the Kibou fanny pack diaper bag .

It’s also crucial for a diaper change on a plane , for the next time you fly.

For a limited time: Join the list for 15% off your first order + get free shipping on orders $75+!

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This cute belt bag is the most minimalist (and chic) diaper bag. I review the Kibou to talk about all the features.

It has a fold-out changing pad, and in the main compartment I can fit diapers, diaper cream, a pacifier, my phone and a slim wallet. Plus, it has a waterproof zippered wipes pocket on the inner side, which is so handy and cool.

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Tips for Road Tripping with a Baby ( 0 – 12 Months) – A Complete Guide for First-Time Parents

Who says you cannot travel with a baby? Yes, it is different, but it is totally doable! One of the best ways to start traveling as a new family is by going on a road trip with a baby.

After one year of road trips with our son, we have learned a lot. From short 2-hour road trips to a 2-week long road trip – we have experienced the best and the worst parts of road tripping with a baby. 

Through personal tried and true experience, I have created this guide of “How to Road Trip with a Baby” to help new parents navigate their way as easily as possible. My guide includes product recommendations, expectations at different months of age, and 12 essential tips for road tripping with a baby.  

Full disclaimer: I am not a children’s practitioner, nurse, or expert. This guide and tips are purely from personal experience and fellow traveling parents. If you have any medical or health concerns, please seek advice from your pediatrician. 

Furthermore, This post may contain affiliate links. When you click on the link you will have the option to purchase a product at no extra cost to you, but I would receive a small commission. I want to thank everyone for following and supporting us on all of “Our Sweet Adventures.” 

Table of Contents

12 Essential Tips for Road Tripping with a Baby

First and foremost, EVERY BABY IS DIFFERENT!

Yes, I believe my guide can help first-time parents navigate their way to a successful road trip with a baby. However, what has worked for other parents and us, may not always work for you. Some tips may work, some may not – you will not know until you hit the road and go through trial and error.

We have found these 12 essential tips to be the most helpful during our road trips with a baby. Whether you are taking a road trip with a newborn, a 12-month-old, or any age in between – these tips can be helpful for any stage.

The Trifecta Checklist

Of all the tips for road tripping with a baby, this one is KEY! We call it the “trifecta checklist.” So what does that mean? Sleep, diaper, food.

If our son was crying, the first thing that helped us was to check for a diaper, see if he was hungry, and find out the last time he slept.

Nine times out of ten (especially before our son was 6-months-old), he would cry for one of those three reasons. He would immediately stop crying once we figured out if he needed a diaper change, a bottle, or sleep.

Moreover, the “trifecta checklist” is a great tip for traveling with a baby , period.

Plan For Several Stops

This brings me to my next tip – you will need to plan for several stops when road tripping with a baby. This is important and inevitable. Depending on your baby and their stage in life, you may need to plan a stop every 1 -3 hours.

Why? Because you need to give your baby breaks. The best way to take breaks is by incorporating fun activities, tours, or stops at cute little towns. As a family who loves to hike, we plan our stops around hiking places.

You also want to be prepared to carve out a couple of hours on your road trip for diaper changes, breastfeeding, and walks. Honestly, these stops are so healthy because a nice break is beneficial for both the parents and child when the baby gets fussy.

Plan for Itinerary Changes

With that said, you can also expect to change your itinerary. Going on a road trip with a baby is not always easy. You may get behind schedule. That is OKAY!

I recommend setting a goal for Plan A, knowing you most likely will end up with Plan B. This could mean taking an activity (or two) out of the day, going to a drive-thru instead of dining inside, taking the highway instead of a more scenic route, etc.

If planning road trips is daunting for you. Do not worry! There are awesome apps for road tripping planning that can help you.

Find Patience!

I am probably one of the most impatient people in the universe, but I had to find the patience to succeed when road tripping with a baby.

As you may have already gathered from my previous tips, a typical 2-hour road trip may take up to 4 hours. So take deep breaths, and remember it’s about the journey and the memories you create with your family. It is not a race to the finish line or, in this case, the destination.

Once you can find patience, your road trip with a baby will be so much more enjoyable.

Plan Driving Around Naps

If possible, plan the driving around your baby’s sleep schedule. We always try our best to drive 30 minutes before our son’s scheduled nap.

If you do not already keep track of your baby’s sleep schedule, now would be the time to start. Our favorite baby app is Huckleberry because it keeps track of sleep, feedings, medicine, and more.

Another tip for road tripping with a baby and their naps – pack a swaddle blanket with patterns and keep it in the car. We use swaddle blankets for three things. Of course, we use it to wrap our son, but we also use it for two road trip tips.

We place the swaddle blanket over the car seat to help provide more shade and a quiet space for our son to sleep while on the road. We also use it to keep our son calm and engaged by looking at the patterns. He would always stare and try to touch the patterns on the swaddle blanket.

Be Prepared to Pack MORE Than Ever!

My goodness, I think we had a full-sized suitcase packed to the top just for our son. From the 2 – 3 clothes per day to diapers, baby wipes, towels, and everything else – our son had more stuff than the two of us combined.

Not to mention, the car seat, the stroller, the pack-n-play… everything will quickly add up. So if you are renting a vehicle for the road trip, I suggest an SUV.

Pack the Car with Easy Access 

What is a road trip without snacks, right? I think this tip works for any road trip – make the snack bag easily accessible. More importantly, when road tripping with a baby, you want to make sure all the essentials are also easily accessible.

Whether that means a cooler with baby bottles, a bag of toys, or a diaper bag, you want to make sure you can easily reach these items.

Pack Extra Batteries

Today, so many of the best ways to keep a baby happy and calm require batteries. Therefore, you do not want to forget to pack extra batteries.

Before your road trip, check all electronics that require batteries and either replace them with new batteries or pack extra batteries for them.

Stretch and Massage Baby

Just like adults, a baby’s body and muscles will get stiff and sore after sitting in a car seat for long periods of time. So it is recommended to massage and stretch your baby when you take breaks or at night in your accommodations.

The benefits of massaging and stretching your baby are significant. It can help calm a fussy baby, ease tummy troubles, boost muscle development, and most importantly, soothe babies to sleep.

Baby Wipes are like Gold 

One of the most important things I have learned as a parent is that baby wipes are gold! We use baby wipes for EVERYTHING!

We use baby wipes to change diapers, clean spills in the car, wipe dirty hands, clean hard surfaces or utensils, and more. With that said, at least two stacks of baby wipes are essential when road tripping with a baby.

New Toys or Rotate Toys

Something we learned from the Montesorri Method is rotating toys. We do this at home and find it useful for road tripping with a baby.

Before a road trip, we will remove a few of our son’s favorite toys. Then when we are on the road trip, we reintroduce the toys (one at a time) so that the toys are “new,” exciting, and engaging. Of course, you can also buy new toys for a road trip.

It is essential to give the baby only one toy to focus on at a time. This way, when they get bored with one toy, there is a new one to play with because, let’s be honest, babies LOVE NEW things!

Music Matters!

Okay, this tip is from personal experience. I am not sure of any scientific research to prove this works, but it does for us – and I hope it does for you too.

During my pregnancy, I listened to this one trance album that I found calming and peaceful while I worked. Adam read that the music I listened to during pregnancy is what the baby would find relaxing after birth. It turns out it worked at least 80% of the time for us.

On our road trips, we would listen to this one trance album on repeat until our son was fast asleep. I swear it made our son calm and fall asleep almost every time.

Now, fast forward to when our son was 9 – 12 months old – things changed. Children’s music that we listened to at home helped our son stay calm during road trips. It was not music to our ears like our favorite trance album, but it kept our son happy, relaxed, and quiet – and that IS music to our ears.

So , music that is familiar with the baby at home will most certainly help put the baby at ease during road trips. You can also use a portable sound machine or play white noise from the car speakers.

How to Feed a Baby on a Road Trip

Whether you breastfeed your baby, bottle feed your baby, or are in the stage of providing snacks/solid foods – here are a few simple tips for feeding a baby on a road trip.

Breastfeeding a Baby on a Road Trip

First and foremost, do not breastfeed your baby in a moving car. This is very dangerous in the event of a car accident. Therefore, allow extra time to stop the vehicle and breastfeed your baby. If possible, utilize this time for restroom breaks, to get gas, food, etc.

If you pump, pack a breast pump car charger , breastmilk storage bags , spare parts, and a cooler to store pumped breastmilk. Moreover, continue to practice good nursing hygiene and habits as if you were at home.

Bottle Feeding a Baby on a Road Trip

Whether it’s breastmilk or formula, you want to pack a cooler to bottle feed your baby on the road.

Make sure you pack enough bottled water and formula powder (if you use formula). To help with space, I recommend pouring a small amount of water into the baby bottles and adding the formula when needed.

Furthermore, a formula dispenser can come in handy in the car. Then store a large container of formula in a suitcase.

Feeding Snacks to a Baby on a Road Trip

Once your baby can eat solid foods and/or pureed food, it can make feeding on the road a lot easier. I recommend packing snacks/food that your baby is familiar with, will enjoy, and is easy to eat on the go.

A few snacks that are easy to eat on the road are the squeezable veggie and fruit pouches , yogurt pouches , and Cheerios.

How to Change a Baby on a Road Trip

Honestly, sometimes there is no easy or right way to change a baby on the road. Through trial and error, find what works best for you!

For us, we have stopped at gas stations, rest stops, and have even needed to pull over on the side of the road to change our son. If a changing table in a bathroom is not available, we utilize our car. Moreover, a travel changing mat has been the key to our success because we can use it on any hard surface.

What to Pack for a Road Trip with a Baby

Believe me when I say you will probably pack your entire nursery when you road trip with a baby. Babies need soooo much! So do not feel like you packed “too much” because you will probably use everything.

Here are a few essential items to pack when road tripping with a baby.

• A car seat, obviously
• Pack n Play for sleeping
• Stroller (if you find you will need/use it)
• Plenty of diapers (if you run out, you can always buy more at a store)
• Plenty of baby wipes (again, if you run out, you can always buy more at a store)
• Portable changing mat
• First aid kit
• Baby Tyenol and Benadryl (approved by your pediatrician)
• 3 sets of clothes per day
• Swaddle blankets and/or sleep sacks
• Batteries for any toys
• Portable white noise machine
• Baby bottles
• Travel sterlizing bags for bottles
• Bottle soap and brushes
• Travel high chair

How Long Can You Go on a Road Trip with a Baby?

There is no exact number of hours that you can road trip with a baby, but it is highly recommended to give your baby plenty of breaks. Just like adults, our bodies can only take sitting in a car for so long. So imagine how a baby feels.

From personal experience, when our son was 2 – 4 months old, we could only go on 3-hour road trips. From 5 to 12 months old, we have only been able to drive up 8 hours a day. When we would drive 8 hours, the day would get divided into several stops at different cities. So really, it was two, 4-hour drives in one day and even then we had to break that up at times.

To figure out what is best for you and your family, I would practice around your city first, especially if you have been nesting for the first few weeks/months. Start with a short 30 minute to one-hour drive.

Then gradually work towards a 2 – 3 hour day trip. Eventually, you will learn your baby’s road trip habits to plan for a weekend getaway with a 4-5 hour road trip.

Road Trip with a Baby ( 1 – 4 Months)

The first few months of going on a road trip with a baby are the easiest and the toughest because everyone is still learning their roles. On one hand, a baby sleeps the most at this stage, so driving through naps is easier. On the other hand, this might be the most challenging stage because, as first-time parents, we are all just trying to survive, right?

Moreover, I recommend waiting at least two weeks before going on a road trip with a baby because the first few weeks as a parent are the hardest!

Additionally, I went with my pediatrician’s recommendation and waited for our son to receive his vaccines at 2 months before we traveled outside of our city. I would always consult with your pediatrician and do what is best for you and your family.

After we figured out the amount of time we could drive without stopping, this was the easiest and best time to road trip with a baby. Our son would sleep for the majority of the time. We would engage him with black and white toys and books when he wasn’t sleeping.

Here are a few products that I highly recommend for road tripping with a baby between 1 – 4 months old.

Road Trip with a Baby ( 5 – 8 Months)

At this stage in life, if your baby is becoming mobile, independent, and napping less – road tripping with a baby might become a little more complicated. Mainly because you may need to help entertain your baby.

In our experience, once our son became mobile and napped less, we had to entertain him more on road trips. It would require one person to always sit in the backseat to play with him. It also meant stopping more frequently to keep him active and happy.

Furthermore, rotating toys will become essential during this stage because of the developmental leaps. A baby will want to be constantly engaged and challenged. At 5 months, a baby should also start seeing colors well.

Therefore, I recommend these colorful toys for road tripping with a baby between 5 – 8 months old.

Road Trip with a Baby ( 9 – 12 Months)

Road tripping with a baby at 9 – 12 months old may or may not be the most challenging time. It could be the hardest if your baby is mobile, enjoys being active, and just doesn’t like car rides – period. If you’ve been road tripping with your baby for several months, it might just go as smoothly as one could hope.

For us, it was hard, but not that bad. Our son had grown used to traveling and taking road trips. So he would be okay for 3 – 4 hours at a time. Granted, we made an epic 2-week road trip through West Texas and New Mexico. Therefore, we had plenty of overnight stays in fun towns such as Fort Davis and San Angelo with fun activities to keep everyone entertained.

The best way to road trip with a baby between 9 – 12 months old is to keep the baby active and entertained by exciting roadside attractions and pit stop destinations. Let your baby be mobile, and your road trip just might be the most enjoyable family vacation you could ever imagine!

We mostly entertained our son with activities at different destinations along our journey, but here are a few products that I also recommend for road tripping with a baby between 9 – 12 months old.

And that’s a wrap! I hope you have found my guide on road tripping with a baby helpful and insightful. Like all parents, I wish I had all the answers, but my knowledge and experience are all I have. I hope it is enough to help you and your family have successful road trips for many years to come!

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Friday 15th of December 2023

Mind blowing article! I have a 1+ years old baby boy.So this blog will be very helpful for us and every guide is very important for newly parents. Thanks for sharing.

oursweetadventures

Tuesday 26th of December 2023

Aww thank you so much for your kind words. I'm glad to hear you found my guide helpful! :)

Katherine Hurt

Sunday 19th of March 2023

Since my baby is 8 months old and we live in San Diego, I appreciate all of your advice. We are preparing to drive to San Francisco so that our baby can meet the family. Many people advised us to travel after the baby has gone to sleep. Then I came across your essay, which has been a huge assistance to us with all of our issues. Many thanks

Aww thank you. I’m glad my post has been helpful to you. I know some say to drive at night when the baby is sleeping, but that never appealed to us. And every baby is different! If you can, I would try a day trip to get some experience. We now have twin babies and the same has applied with them. We drive an hourish before nap and they are out for at least 2 hrs. And have learned that they really can’t do more than 5 hours without getting out of the car for a break. If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Tuesday 7th of June 2022

Thank you for all the tips; my baby is 9 months we live in San Diego and are planning to drive to San Francisco so our baby can meet the family. A lot of people told us drive at night when the baby is sleeping. Then I found your article and help us a lot with all our concerns. Thank you

Wednesday 8th of June 2022

Hi Emma, thank you for your comment. That makes me so happy to hear you found my guide helpful. I hope my tips help you for your family road trip!

• Family Travel

11 Road Trip Essentials for Trips with Babies & Toddlers

If a road trip with your rugrat has you stressed—don’t fear! A smart stash of supplies will keep your little one comfortable and content on your travels. This road trip with baby checklist includes everything from snacks for all parties involved, ways to keep kiddo comfortable in their car seat, and extra supplies like books and new toys to make the trip actually enjoyable.

1. First Aid Kit

Buy a ready-made kit to keep in the car or put together your own with the essentials (adhesive bandages, antiseptic pads, gauze pads, tweezers, cold packs, scissors). Bonus: A box of bandages can keep a toddler busy in a pinch. Simply open up the box and let your little one take out the strips and put them back in, over and over. If that loses its magic, let them peel and stick bandages all over themselves and the car seat.

2. Bags to Hold Dirty Clothes

You may be leaving your house, but you’re not leaving laundry behind, unfortunately. Pack a few plastic bags you can use if there’s a blowout or spit-up situation. Better yet, buy Wash.It.Later’s Soak & Save Bags to give you a place to stash dirty clothes until you can toss them in the wash. These bags are pocket-size, leak-proof and have built-in stain-busting solution inside them.

3. Sun Shade

Who doesn’t get cranky when they’re too hot? That air conditioning doesn’t always reach the back seat. To keep kids cool and block UVA and UVB rays, attach one of these sun shades to your car window.

4. Diaper-Changing Kit

When you’re dealing with a dirty diaper on the road, a good diaper kit is a game-changer. You’ll want one that includes a changing mat, wipes, and diaper sacks that lock in wetness and odor, for when you don’t want your car to smell like…you know. No more digging through bottomless diaper bags looking for changing necessities in a panic! Now your trip just got a whole lot smoother.

5. Extra Baby Blankets

Muslin swaddling blankets are lifesavers on long road trips, and in general. They can keep your baby cozy when it’s nap time, act as a light and sound-reducing cover, mop up messes, and can even be folded into a makeshift diaper in a pinch.

6. New Toys & Old Favorites

Pack your little one’s favorite toys, especially a lovey, and throw in a few newbies, too. Put a cardboard box or plastic bin on the seat next to your child’s car seat and fill it with a mix of easy-to-grab toys, like this Oball Shaker and a drawing board . Small trucks and dolls are always a hit too. To maximize the wow factor and keep kids busy longer, wrap each toy before the trip. For more ideas, check out The Best Baby & Toddler Toys for the Car .

7. Mini Vacuum

Crumbs and toddlers go together like peanut butter and jelly. If all that mess drives you nuts, buy a portable vacuum cleaner with a car-compatible power plug, like this one . You’ll use it (and love it!) for years to come.

8. Extra Outfits—for You & Your Babe

Bring at least two or three changes of clothes for your baby, and keep it easily accessible. Keep a clean shirt nearby for yourself, too, as there’s a good chance you’ll get soaked in spit-up. It’s the law of the road.

9. Board Books

A few board books are perfect road-trip distractions for babies and toddlers. Littler ones love to gnaw on Indestructables , drool-friendly books featuring faves like farm animals and smiling faces. Interactive  lift-the-flap books  and texture-packed books are made to mesmerize toddlers. For more book ideas, read 25 Board Books Every Baby Needs .

10. Tunes for Days!

Your favorite jams will help put everyone on board in a good mood! No need to resort to the Wiggles; put on any music that makes you happy, and chances are your baby will bop along to the beat too. Just be sure to put together a lullaby-packed playlist for nap time.

11. Munchies

Road trips always induce snack attacks, no matter what age you are! We have some smart travel-friendly snack ideas  here .

Make sure to capture all your adventures on the road—and share them with your family and friends near and far—with the Tinybeans app . The secure platform puts parents in total control of who sees and interacts with photos and videos of their kids.

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The Essential Packing List for a Road Trip With a Baby

If you’re like me and a first-time parent, it is daunting to go on your first road trip with a baby. What to pack, what to bring, the mental checklist runs on.

Our first road trip was from Sacramento to Los Angeles with our 8-week-old. Now home, I want to share what we brought on the trip to help make it go smoothly.

We booked a six-night trip that was split across two hotels and around a 5.5-hour drive each way. I spent probably too much time thinking about what to bring. But I would much rather be prepared and it certainly helped calm my nerves.

Now back home, I can say the trip was much easier than it felt in my head. The prep work definitely paid off and having a game plan was helpful. We thought about where we wanted to stop and made sure our car was set up for the stops to feed and change. More on that below.

So here’s my essential packing list for a road trip with a baby. It’s everything we brought for the car drive and what you may consider bringing on yours.

Essential Packing List for a Road Trip With a Baby

Travel tips for the road trip, time budget.

We chose to stop every 2.5-3 hours to give the baby a break from the car seat, feed, and change. These longer stops took around 45 minutes to an hour. Then we had the occasional one-off stop for a quick feed or change.

I would recommend the essentials being within hand’s reach and setting up a diaper changing area. We didn’t want to use public bathrooms so we changed her in the front seat of the car.

If you’re headed on a longer trip, try to time it with one of the longer naps. I know our baby sleeps longest in the morning and after the middle of the night feed. So we left at 5 am promptly after her feed. We got a really nice long stretch before having to stop.

Flexibility

Sometimes you may have to stop in the most random places or even only after being on the road for 15 minutes, roll with it!

Always double-check your car seat. Map out where you want to stop, it is super helpful.

What to Keep in the Front of the Car

Diapering station.

• Several diapers + wipes
• Butt cream (we used this one since we were going for 3-hour stretches)
• Changing pads. For the changing pad, I bought these puppy puddle-proof liners to protect our car seats underneath our Gathre changing pad .
• Plastic bags for dirty diapers or soiled clothes.

Feeding Essentials

• Burp cloths and lots of them. I had a single bag just of burp cloths for the trip.
• Haakaa if breastfeeding (super helpful if you get engorged/overfull on the trip)
• Any other feeding essentials like bottles + formula

Other Essentials

• Portable sound machine — we use this all the time in the car.
• Nasal bulb suctioner in case you need to suction.
• Blankets — we keep two in the car.
• Outfit changes for you and baby. At least 2 for baby.
• Sun shades for car windows — these block UVA
• Safety mirror to see baby
• First aid kit + one towel
• Toys or books for baby for entertainment (see my toddler travel essential gear list for our favorites!)
• Diaper Bag: I kept ours up front stocked with our normal go-to’s. I love our Caraa Diaper Bag .
• Snacks and water

Everything Else to Pack

How much you pack is dependent on what gear you choose to travel with. Since we were road-tripping and using our SUV, we packed what would be most convenient for the trip.

I’ll share what we packed for gear and some alternatives to consider.

• Car seat ( Cybex Cloud G ) + Mios 2 Stroller . These connect together as one travel system. (rain gear for carseat and a stretchy car seat cover — great for protecting baby from curious eyes!)
• Baby Bjorn Bouncer — loved having another spot to put baby in our hotel room.
• We have the Guava Pack & Play which is what I pack every time
• The Slumber pod — a black-out tent for naps and fits over most pack & plays. Wouldn’t travel without it.
• Artipoppe Baby Carrier — this was amazing to have on the trip, it’s one of our most used baby items.

Sleep Essentials

Whatever you may use to get baby down at night. For us that is:

• Swaddle (brought 2 in case one was soiled) or sleep sack
• Hatch Sound Machine – we use it as a nightlight, could use the portable sound machine instead. Certainly wasn’t necessary but we had the room.
• VAVA Baby monitor . You don’t need any internet for this to work.
• 2-3 outfits a day – we live for bodysuits and kimono-style onesies.
• Sweaters and outerwear
• Sleep sacks or pajamas
• Socks, shoes, beanies, and sun hat

Hygiene + Medical + Diapering

• Laundry detergent — we did a bit of hand-washing
• Baby Shampoo + Soap and brush
• Thermometer and infant medications
• Rash Cream and body ointment
• Diapers, wipes, and changing pad
• Baby brush and nail clippers if a longer trip
• Nasal aspirator and saline drops
• Burp cloths — these muslin ones are our favorite
• Formula, bottles , cleaning brush
• Fork and spoon set and suction plates
• Breastfeeding: cover , disposable nursing pads , Haakkaa , breast pump if needed

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PS — Are You Booking a Trip Soon? Use My Booking Checklist!

These are the sites I use most to book my own trips. Using the links below is a great way to support Bon Traveler’s travel journalism at no extra cost to you . If you need help organizing your itinerary, get my free travel itinerary template here .

1. Book Your Flights

Use Skyscanner to find the best flights. It searches 100s of airlines and websites across the globe to ensure you’re not missing out on any route options or deals.

2. Book Your Accommodations

Use Booking.com for hotels and guest houses. They have the biggest inventory and consistently offer the best rates.

3. Book Your Tours & Experiences

Use Viator or Get Your Guide to find the best tours and experiences. They are my favorite tour search engines. I always check both as their inventory varies depending on the destination.

4. Book Your Car

Use Discover Cars or Rentalcars.com to find the best car rental deals. I recommend comparing rental agency reviews on Google to ensure you are booking with the best company in that destination, as the reviews are often more accurate than the car rental search engines.

5. Don’t Forget Airport Lounge Access

Get a Priority Pass membership to gain access to 1,400+ VIP lounges and airport experiences worldwide. The Priority Pass app is the first thing I check when I have a layover. I’ve been a member for over a decade, and having a comfortable place to relax before and between flights makes air travel so much more enjoyable.

6. Don’t Forget Travel Insurance

I never leave the country without travel insurance. It provides comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong (ie. illness, injury, theft, and cancelations, etc.). I use it frequently for my travels to stay protected.

My favorite companies that offer the best coverage and rates are:

• World Nomads (best for all-around)
• Safety Wing (best for frequent travelers)

Xx, Jessica

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15 Insanely Easy Tips for Road Tripping with a Baby

Thinking about road tripping with a baby? No worries! Let the good times roll with these simple tips and hacks for making the most of your time on the road, honed from thousands of miles spent with our own two boys.

Before our son, Noe, was born, Lori and I made a pact not to let a baby change the basic essence of the unconventional life that we had built together and enjoyed over many years.

At the same time, we had enough friends and family with kids around us to know that our lives would change in many unavoidable ways and there would be limitations on the amount of spontaneity and flexibility we would have.

But change is truly the only constant in life, and living a nomadic lifestyle for our entire adult lives has instilled a love and appreciation of change, bordering on a sort of fanaticism. Regardless, change—by its very nature—is never comfortable, or rarely easy.

Prior to our adventures road tripping with a baby, we road tripped as a couple often. In the two years we’ve had Noe, we’ve road tripped often. The frequency hasn’t changed one bit. But the way we road trip has changed forever.

It’s an understatement to say we’ve made mistakes since the first time we started road tripping with a baby (and traveling with a baby in general)—we’ve made lots. And we’ll continue to make lots. But we always try and learn something from them.

Here’s what we’ve learned (so far) from our countless adventures road tripping with a baby and young toddler.

These tips are for road tripping with a baby (i.e. infants and very young toddlers, birth to walking). Once the babe goes mobile (12-18 mos.) it’s a whole other ballgame. Look out for a Toddler post in the future!

Top Tips for Road Tripping with a Baby

1 | Be Prepared!

Yes, our number one tip for road tripping with a baby is BE PREPARED!

Sounds simple, but it’s easy to drop the ball when you’re mental road trip prep list has suddenly tripled. Gas? Check. Phone charger? Check. Diapers? Check. Snacks? Uh oh…

Pack travel essentials for the day (or days) ahead, but always have emergency snacks, toys, etc. stowed in a convenient place, just in case.

Being prepared also means having your route planned out ahead of time. I love winging it on the road as much as anyone, letting the wind carry my soul like a bird on the wing…

But not with a baby. You couldn’t pay me enough.

Take the number of snacks you think you’ll need for the entire family and double it. No, triple it.

Same with diapers. Think that baby’s going to play for hours with that cool new toy that s/he’s been playing with…for hours at home? Think again. Bring extras.

Babies are like ninjas, masters at defying all expectations and always keeping the adversary guessing.

When road tripping with a baby… Always. Be. Prepared.

2 | Make Road Time Coincide with Nap Time (and Night Time)

This is the single most important tip in this post. If you take anything away from here, take this.

So, why is it my number two? ‘CAUSE I JUST THOUGHT OF IT. You think this is a high school term paper or something? Damn.

When executed properly, it’s almost like you’re road-trippin’ pre-kid…for a while, at least.

The true masters of the craft can make it happen with two or more kids. We’re not quite there yet, but I’ve heard tales of parents possessing the gift and making their car their dojo.

Depending on his age (and how far over to the Dark Side he had ventured), Noe napped anywhere from 45 minutes to three hours on a trip.

When he was still taking a morning and afternoon nap, we’d even get two 1-2-hour naps out of him in a day.

And traveling at night? As long as he was fed and it was past his usual bed time, we generally wouldn’t hear a single peep. Priceless.

3 | Avoid Heavy Traffic & City Driving

Based on our experience, stopping and going can be a parent’s worst enemy when road tripping with a baby.

This may seem obvious if the baby’s trying to get some shut eye, but even during waking hours, it just seems to mess with a baby’s mental state. 

I’m sure there are studies out there that explain this phenomenon (or maybe not…), but I sure can’t.

If you find yourself suffering from this, either because your baby (like ours) prefers inertia, or your city’s traffic is akin to a medieval torture device the size of Rhode Island, adding an extra hour to the drive to take secondary roads and avoid traffic was much preferable for us.

If you know you are going to run into traffic, try and make it coincide with awake time—avoid nap time and breastfeeding time at all costs.

4 | Music Can Be Magic

Our kid loves music in the car (who doesn’t on a road trip?).

It generally doesn’t matter what type of music (though he definitely has his preferences), but a little music goes a long way when road tripping with a baby.

When Noe was younger, a noise machine app on our phone helped to drown out our conversation up front and send baby off to dreamland quicker.

We like the RelaxMelodies app in the car, though we use a portable sound machine at night time , which we love.

5 | Bumpy is Better on a Baby Road Trip

We were surprised to discover the difference between long stretches on U.S. Interstate Highways and less-maintained secondary roads.

The feeling of movement, bounce, and rough roads always made Noe happier. Silky smooth and straight-as-an-arrow freeways were often a recipe for disaster.

Older babies dig the scenery of secondary roads too!

6 | Made in the Shade

It gets hot here in Laos, particularly riding in a car. And when we’re back in the States, our visit seems to coincide with the hottest time of year there, too.

Adults don’t like to have the sun on them for hours on a long trip, and neither do babies. We’re able to mitigate this to an extent by placing the rear-facing carseat in the middle of the back seat, but even that’s sometimes not enough.

One or two safety shades like these  work wonders, are way more convenient (and safer) than stuffing a towel in the window, and you don’t have to worry about them becoming a flying projectile like the older retractable car shades.

7 | Anticipate Feeding Times

It can be absolutely hellish trying to drive with a screaming baby in the back. Nine times out of ten for us, the crying and screaming would be related to hunger.

Nothing’s worse than being stuck in traffic, or on a rural road in the middle of nowhere with no good place to pull off to do a feeding. Also, when Noe was young, breastfeeding could take up to an hour.

I’m all for taking breaks on a road trip to eat, enjoy the scenery, or stretch the legs, but the last thing I want to do is hang out at a rest area or on the side of a rural highway for an hour when we could be getting miles behind us.

We found that, for us, the solution was surprisingly simple. When baby was still breastfeeding, we would do our best to align his feeding time with our feeding time. Once he was on the bottle and/or eating solids, it was even easier, as one of us could sit in the back seat and feed him while we’re rolling down the road.

Just a warning with bottles—setting a timer 20 minutes before baby’s usual feeding time allowed us to make sure the bottle was out of the cooler and warm enough for baby to take when he did get hungry.

8 | One-Diaper Per Road-Hour Rule

We first discovered this while traveling on flight after flight with Noe, but it’s equally applicable to the road, particularly in warmer climates.

Baby’s out of his/her element, maybe eating different foods than usual, on a different schedule, or simply adjusting to the new environment. For our kid, that often meant more frequent full diapers.

In reality, he’s rarely gone through one per hour, but there have been times when he has, and on those trips, it paid to be prepared.

As an added bonus, an extra diaper makes for a great diaper cover to contain a blowout until you reach the next pitstop.

Nothing will ruin your first experience road tripping with a baby faster than coming up short in the diaper department!

9 | A Carseat Protector (aka “Piddle Pad”) is a Parent’s Best Friend

Speaking of blowouts…

Having a dependable piddle pad (…yep…that’s what they’re really called…) is a must for any length of trip in a car.

We love our carseat , but it’s a royal pain in the butt to wash. A good carseat cover will catch and contain all but the very worst that your baby’s backside can hurl at you, and it’s much easier to clean (or throw in a plastic bag on a long travel day) than most carseats.

10 | Gallon Zip Lock Bags To the Rescue

Many of us feel car sick from time to time, but babies seem to get sick with surprising frequency. Fortunately, this hasn’t been a big problem with Noe, but we have many friends who have had issues (some, every time they go on a long trip).

The worst is getting caught unprepared on this one. And let’s face it, when baby’s really young (and facing backwards), it can be impossible to know stuff’s headed north until it’s too late.

If you do make it in time, gallon zip lock bags work a million times better than a grocery store bag. Best of all, you can zip it up until the next pitstop.

11 | Take Lots of [Short] Breaks!

Want the absolute best advice for road tripping with a baby? Don’t forget to stop!

Even as an infant, our son seemed to get cabin fever even after just an hour of being in the car.

Pre-baby, Lori and I didn’t make it a point to stop much on road trips, particularly when doing a lot of Interstate highway driving. Since baby, however, we’ve grown to appreciate the value of taking short breaks every hour or so.

It generally only took 5-10 minutes of being out of the car to buy us another hour.

Besides, if you’re the driver, the experts say you should be taking driving breaks about every two hours anyway, for health and safety reasons, so it’s not that much of a stretch to double that.

12 | Less is More when Road Tripping with a Baby

It wasn’t uncommon to pull 8-10 hour days on road trips before having a baby. Nowadays, with the wee one, we try not to do more than 4-6 hours on the road per day, if we can help it.

Breaks every hour or so only get you so far, and their effectiveness seems to wane as the day goes on.

If we’re traveling more than a few hundred miles away from home, and it’s not absolutely necessary to reach our destination in one day, breaking up the trip over multiple days makes for an infinitely happier car.

13 | Center is Stellar

Studies, including this one published in Pediatrics , show for children newborn to 3 years old, sitting in the center rear seat is 43% safer than sitting on either side of the back seat.

We of all people know it’s not always feasible to put baby in the middle (heck, here in Laos, we’re lucky to even have a carseat, and can’t always use it when we want to).

Now, with Lori noticeably pregnant, it’s not realistic for her to have to climb in to get our two-year-old in and out of a center-positioned seat. For this reason, our kid’s seat is currently behind the passenger seat.

And with two kids in carseats? In most cases, I guess both kids are just going to have to be 43% less safe than their center-seated only-child counterparts (and y’all know those kids are going to lord it over their friends for the rest of their lives).

So, besides safety, why is center preferable?

Well, it’s preferable for us for a couple reasons, but mainly so that the passenger (to an extent) can tend to various needs of the screaming hellion without throwing out their back (and without putting baby on the road-side in case of getting baby in and out on a busy road).

As I mentioned earlier, it also keeps the sun off baby during the heat of the day.

14 | Keep Your Car Clean!

We generally prefer a clean car for our own sanity. But there are other reasons why keeping a clean car makes road trips more manageable.

For one, it limits the number of random (baby-unfriendly) objects laying around that baby could grab, like a shank, can of mace, or anything from a Taco Bell menu, to name a few.

Baby’s can have a surprisingly long functional reach, and it’s constantly getting longer and more functional by the day!

Two, keeping the car clean and clutter free cuts down on the number of potentially life-threatening flying projectiles (particularly if your car has a rear deck (aka rear dash, aka parcel shelf).

It’s extra important not to store anything potentially hazardous up there if you’re using a rear-facing child seat.

Mark my word, nothing will ruin your time road tripping with a baby quicker than a trip to the emergency room from hitting the brakes for the neighbor’s crazy dog.

15 | Our Favorite Toys For Road tripping with a Baby

So far, we’ve had a lot of fun talking about everything from nap time to music, to cleaning up after unspeakable things being done to your once pristine rear upholstery.

In the end, we all know that a great road trip with a baby comes down to one thing:

…and toys.

Now, a toy for this age group doesn’t have to be remotely fancy. And, you really, really don’t need a tablet or other electronic gadget.

Young infants will stare at and physically inspect just about anything for a good amount of time, so long as they aren’t hungry, poopy, or tired, and…the thing they’re playing with is A-W-E-S-O-M-E. And, of course, A-W-E-S-O-M-E is 100% in the eye of the beholder (i.e. your baby).

For a long time, Noe thought that way about his crunchy Firefly . The thing was amazing. Then, it was his crinkly books . Then, his crinkly paper. As he got older, his tastes evolved to include an appreciation of art (i.e. stickers, paper, and crayons), and even home decor (i.e. his blanky).

And when all of the above fails? That can only mean one thing… Show Me the Monkey ! The secret weapon of many a road trip with our baby.

Have you gone road tripping with a baby?

What was your experience? What did we miss? Let us know in the comments below.

2 thoughts on “15 Insanely Easy Tips for Road Tripping with a Baby”

Love these very realistic tips for travelling with a baby! Long road trips are one of my favourite times with my son, especially when he was a baby, as he would fall asleep for hours 🙂

Awesome, Esther! Yeah, we miss those days too. At least our youngest still does ?

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11 Survival Tips For A Road Trip With Baby

Are you getting ready to travel on your first road trip with baby??

We took our first road trip with our 1 month old baby all the way across Washington state to meet some friends.

Since then, we’ve gone on several road trip (in snow and sun!) with our little babe.

We’ve done the trial and error for you so you can plan your baby’s first road trip with confidence and ease!

Let’s get started!

11 Road Trip Tips With A Baby

1. pack the car the night before.

On the night before your trip, once you put your baby down to bed, it’s time to pack the car. This allows you to work distraction-free .

Packing the night before allows you to worry about the important things (baby) in the morning.

It also gives time and space for you to meticulously go through a checklist so you don’t forget a thing.

2. Make a Portable Baby Changing Station

It’s not a matter of if, but when, your baby will poop in their car seat! Stay on top of cleanup by having a portable changing station ready.

We have all our gear in a diaper caddy, right next to the car seat. This allows for quick and easy diaper changes , with everything we need at hand.

Here’s what we include in our road trip diaper station:

• Changing pad (we have this reusable one , but you can buy disposable puppy pads too)
• Diaper rash cream and travel-sized spatula
• Extra footie pajamas (for blowouts)
• Doggy poop bags (for diapers and/or soiled clothes)
• Hand sanitizer
• Burp clothes

We’ve also seen folks set up a changing station in the trunk for more room!

We just don’t have that kind of space in our car (2e pack too much!) so the backseat works just fine for us.

3. Check The Car Seat (Baby Monitor)

On long-haul trips, keeping an eye on baby is our priority.

We’ve seen the traditional mirror-view installed so you can see baby from your rearview mirror, but we have something better than that.

We purchased a carseat camera , that was super easy to install.

It gives a clear picture of baby at all times, and even works at night (unlike the traditional mirror ones.)

4. Optional: Ride in the Backseat

If you are on a roadtrip with a newborn baby , it might more comfortable for one person to sit in the back. This way, they can keep an eye on baby!

I remember when our boy was super little – I wanted to make sure he was breathing every 10 seconds!

5. Plan To Stop Every 2 Hours

It is advised to not let baby sit in a car set for longer than 2 hours at a time.

We’ve also seen information about 2 hours being the MAX amount of time baby should be in a carseat, but at that rate, we wouldn’t get anywhere!

Berty and I simply track things like naps, and feeding with the Huckleberry app , which gives us a good idea of how long he’s been sitting in his seat.

Around the 2-hour mark (or earlier if he needs something), we park the car, change his diaper, feed him, and give him plenty of wiggle time out of the car.

Tip: Research your route, and find every rest stop, small town, gas station, or pullout you can find. This way you can stop as needed!

6. Bring Pumping Supplies

My journey has been exclusively breastfeeding, but I wasn’t going to be caught unprepared if I wasn’t able to feed him that way!

To ensure he could eat, I packed my portable pump , a bottle, milk bags, and a formula container to make sure he could be fed anytime, by anyone.

7. Be Prepared For Emergencies (First Aid Kit)

Planning a road trip with a baby? You can’t forget to pack a first aid kit .

It’s one of those things that you hope you’ll never use, but be so glad you have one if you did!

We like this one by the American Red Cross . It comes in a convenient container, and easily stows away in the car.

Read More: Make your own DIY Car Emergency kit

8. Pack Entertainment for Baby

To keep baby busy between naps, Berty and I packed a small bag of his favorite toys .

We would introduce a new one every hour or so , to keep him entertained and the novelty of a new toy fresh.

For newborns, this looks like a high-contrast mat , back & white cards, and jingle-toys.

For our 4-month old, he loves rattles, soft, crinkly books , and anything with ridges for teething.

We introduce only 1 or 2 toys at a time. We also have these toy leashes that we attach to his carseat and the toy. This keeps him from flinging them out of reach!

9. Bring Extras (Pacifiers, Clothes, Blankets)

There have been SO many instances where a pacifier or burp cloth falls out of the car and drops down in a dirty parking lot.

Plan for these moments and have plenty of backups for a quick changeout.

10. Have a LAundry Bag For Messes

Following up with point #9, when items get dirty, it’s essential to have a designated place to contain the mess.

We pack these wet/dry bags that are waterproof for messy clothes and dirty items.

They are waterproof and keep smells out too, so you car doesn’t stink!

11. Bring Snacks For Them (And You!)

Depending on how old your baby is (our first adventure was an 8 hour road trip with our newborn!) they may or may not need snacks, but you will!

Pack a small cooler of fresh goodies, some granola bars, and plenty of water.\

Don’t worry about needing to pee – you’ll be stopping frequently anyway!

Baby Road Trip Packing List

Looking for an easy way to remember all your baby road trip essentials? We’ve made it easy for you!

Here is a free downloadable road with with baby packing list, for making planning just a bit easier.

FAQs For a road trip with Baby

When can i travel with a newborn by car.

Berty and I did our first road trip with a newborn when our baby was just 6 weeks old! As long as you prepare for frequent stops, you should be fine.

It is recommended not to let your newborn stay in its carseat for longer than 2 hours at a time.

Finally (and most importantly) , talk to your pediatrician about your specific baby and its needs!

What are some of your tips when planning a road trip with a baby? Tell us in the comments!

Check out the best Rameshwaram itinerary !

Baby On Board: The Ultimate Road Trip Survival Guide For Travelling Parents!

Last Updated on May 9, 2024

In this article I share from my experience some tips for road trip with a baby. You can also download a printable checklist of the must haves for road trip with newborn, infants and even toddlers. 

A weekend road trip is a great way to kick-start your travels after having a baby. But travelling with kids is challenging. Travelling with a fussy 10-month-old and their nervous elderly grandparents is another ball game.

That's what we did when we went for a road trip after a gap of 2 years. I had to make sure everything was perfect, lest we are barred from travelling again by our son's grandparents. (Typical Indian thing). And since that went so well, I did that again the next month, and plan to restart our monthly road-trips yet again. 

The post contains affiliate links for tours, hotels etc. This means if you make any purchase through the links in the post, I may get a commission without any additional cost to you.

At what age is a baby ready for travel?

Doctors advise a waiting period of 4 weeks before travelling with baby. Exceptions are made by some airlines for flying with newborn lesser than that age.

There are some cultural practices too that restrict travel for 40 days or even 6 months. But as per medical advice, it is completely safe to travel with an infant. Road trip by car is the most convenient mode of travelling with an infant.

Feeding Essentials

The number one priority on any road-trip with a baby, is the baby's health. The quality of water is a big concern wherever you go, even though we boil the water and take necessary precautions. Here's a checklist.

• Water from home

The most common causes of health problems while travelling is water. While travelling with baby it is therefore advisable to carry few liters of water for the baby. Almost all hotels have electric kettles where you can boil the water. If not, you'd have to carry that too. So, check with your hotel beforehand.

• Electric Sterilizer

Bottle sterilizer is a necessity wherever you go with your baby. it makes the process of sterilizing and keeping the bottle sterilized for hours, so convenient. Once I take that I also don't need to worry about where to carry the bottles, feeding spoons, bowls, teethers, pacifiers etc.

My Recommendation:  Phillips Avent Electric Sterilizer

Check other Sterilizers on Amazon

Check other Sterilizers on Firstcry

• Adequate bottles/ feeding cups and other feeders

Till the age of 12 months, babies mostly rely on feeding bottles for liquid food. Always take more bottles or feeding cups than needed. Same goes for bowls and spoons for babies over the age of 12 months when their diet consists of more solid food than liquid.

Buy feeding bottles

• Breast pump and storage containers

For breastfeeding babies, it's important to carry breast pump and take some stored milk while traveling. While manual pumps are easier to carry along, I personally find them too slow, and exhausting compared to the electric ones. 

My Recommendation: Medela Advanced travel-friendly set

Check out other breast pumps on Amazon

Check out other breast pumps on Firstcry

• Adequate Formula Milk

For babies who have weaned or for those who are partially breastfed. Although formula milk is easily available in most medical shops in India, but you may not get the brand that the baby is used to. And trying something new on a trip is not a risk worth taking.

• Adequate solid food mix like Cerelac / Slurpp etc.

A lot of restaurants offer baby food like khichdi, curd etc. Still, I'd prefer to carry baby cereal mix of a couple of flavors for variety instead. For my 10-month-old I exclusively relied on Cerelac wheat-apple-cherry flavor for snacks, and Cerelac rice-vegetable for lunch and dinner. For older babies one may give boiled eggs, milk, khichdi etc. from the hotel's restaurant itself.

If you prefer cooking for the baby on a trip, do carry a baby food processor with you. That way you can save a lot of time cooking and also ensure hygiene instead of relying on the cooking utensils provided in the kitchen in your Airbnb.

• Healthy Snacks

Healthy snacks like fruits, dried fruit peels (packaged), ragi biscuits are most certainly needed on a road trip. Here are my top picks for packaged items.

• Bottle-cleaning gel

While I think we can manage cleaning bottles with hot water for a couple of days when on trip, it's better to carry the usual bottle cleaning gel that you use. Pour it in a small container so that it is easy to carry while travelling.

• Silicon Bib

Just one silicon bib is enough instead of carrying multiple cotton bibs on a roadtrip.

• Feeding utensils

Just take one bowl and two spoons. You can also use bottle-spoons for feeding on-the-go.

A Case for Strollers

Going on a weekend road-trip and wondering if it's worth taking the stroller along? Indian roads are usually not suitable to stroll along with the pram, but I'll make a case for it.

I can say that carrying a stroller is useful because I didn't take it the first time. It was impossible for us to eat at the restaurant with our super-active 10-month-old who couldn't keep his hands off all the cutlery on the table. But if you have a stroller, you can buckle them there and keep them engaged with occasional chitchats and toys while eating. On our trip to the Vedic village resort our baby didn't have to miss a thing – from the long strolls to the open-air chai time, to dinners. 

Even feeding the baby in a stroller is much easier than without it. Anyone would agree over that. If the hotel does not provide a high-chair for the kids, you're really going to miss the stroller while feeding solid food.

Check out the best baby strollers here .

Diaper Changing Essentials

You should carry all the diaper changing essentials in the carry-on bag or organise them in the backseat organiser of your car. Pack more than sufficient number of diapers in the suitcase. Here's a checklist for diaper change.

• Sufficient Diapers – I prefer the pant-style diapers for travel, over the taped ones, as the former prevents leakage to a large extent. However, changing tape-in diapers at night is easier, so you may prefer to carry the taped diapers in your suitcase for nights.
• Diaper changing pad  – pack a spare or two as well.
• Diaper disposal bags . This is extremely important so that you don't throw away the diapers anywhere. Just put it in the disposal bags and keep them in the car until you stop at an appropriate place for disposing it. These disposal bags lock the odor so that it won't be uncomfortable for anyone.
• Alcohol-free baby wipes
• Diaper Cream to be applied liberally before diapering everytime.

Bathing & Hygiene Essentials

Here's a checklist of bath and hygiene products to carry for the trip, lest you forget. For adults can always use the toiletries provided in the hotel, but babies should not. 

You can buy a baby product travel kit from your favorite baby brands or pour a small amount in the travel containers.

• baby wash and shampoo
• baby lotion
• Sunscreen lotion
• baby hairbrush
• Inflatable bathtub (Optional)

Buy a set of portable bottles with a pouch for carrying the baby toiletries.

Medicines & First-aid

Here is a checklist of the usual medicines that you need to carry on a road-trip. If the baby is on a special medication, don't forget to carry them.

• Mosquito gel
• Colic drops
• Sumol drops
• Vitamin drops
• Diarrhea medicines for precaution
• any special medication that your baby is on 

Clothes and napping accessories

What clothes to pack for the baby? Ofcourse you'll have some in your mind for taking cute pictures and all. But never compromise on comfort while travelling. Here are a few things I'd take.

Tip: Organise these in packing cubes which makes it very easy to sort things out and separate the soiled ones from the new.

• Lots of onesies
• Sleeping bag
• bed protector sheets

A Case for Car -seat

In the west, car-seat is compulsory for traveling with babies. Thankfully in India it is not. I have not heard great success stories about road-trips with a baby strapped to the car-seat. It may be a good idea for babies less than 8-months old, who are not so active and don't want to move around a lot. Others won't want to be strapped to the seat for more than fifteen minutes. I don't know how that's going to work! But if you can manage, it's apparently safer (as per the advertisements go). Or with multiple trips you may get them more accustomed to this setting. 

I have still refrained from using one on our road-trips as it just does not work for my kid.

Back-seat Organizer

A car backseat organizer is an amazingly useful accessory while travelling. The number of things you have to juggle with on-the-go while traveling with kids increase multi-fold compared to when you're travelling as a couple. Back-seat organiser makes life easier. The down-side is that these are within the baby's reach, so beware of the stuff you keep here.

Printable Checklist

And here's the bonus printable checklist for you to download! This is a packing list for road trip with babies.

And here's a checklist for things you need to check with the hotel for better preparation for your road-trip. I have also included suggestions for things to keep in your carry-on diaper bag and/or the car's backseat.

So these were the best tips I could give to new parents from my experience. I hope you found it useful. Cheers to travelling with the tiny tots. If you have questions, tips or any thoughts to share, please feel free to comment. And don't forget to share the post if you liked it.

Living in Bangalore? You can get some great ideas for long drives from Bangalore here .

Also Read: Roadtrip from Bangalore to Kolkata in 3 days!

Liked the post? Please share with your friends and family, and plan the trip now. Or you can save this guide to plan later.

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I am sure you did not get barred from traveling with your baby again. Hahaha! You went full prepared man.

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Road Trip with a Baby | 6 Easy Tips for Success

B abies can make great traveling companions. Unlike road trips with toddlers who seem to require constant entertainment, taking a road trip with a baby isn’t as stressful as one might think. Up until they are about a year old, babies require at least 14 hours of sleep a day. So, that gives you plenty of time to drive while they sleep, making a road trip with an infant a breeze!

But if you are planning your first road trip with a newborn or infant, there are a few things to plan for a pack to make your long car journey with a baby easier and less stressful.

This travel guide to a successful road trip with your little one includes what to expect, tips, and a road trip with a baby packing list. 

Our road trip with a baby experience 

When our daughter was just a few weeks old, we took our first long car journey with our baby. It was a nine hour drive across Texas to visit family. 

Of course, we were worried about how our sweet newborn would handle such a long drive. Turns out she did great! After that, we took her on many more road trips, all of which were fairly easy.

From 2-3 hour drives to multi-state adventures, we have taken lots of road trips with a baby, and have learned a thing or two from each journey.

Tips for taking a road trip with an infant

So how do you have a successful road trip with a baby?

Keep in mind there will be times when your baby gets fussy, irritable, or simply needs a break from the car seat. Roll with it, have patience, and stop if needed. But these simple tips will help make your road trip with a baby more enjoyable for everyone.

Travel during sleeping hours 

It might mean driving at night, or at the very least leaving home right before nap time, but planning your travel during your baby’s sleeping hours is going to buy you a few hours of uninterrupted time of peace and serenity in the front seat.

Our daughter luckily seemed to nap longer in the car, so leaving home right at nap time typically gave us a good 3 hours before we had to take a break.

Download or stream baby videos

Say what you will about screen time for babies, and go ahead and judge us, but baby videos help get through long car journeys with a baby without full on meltdowns. 

For us, our baby would get fussy during car rides if she wasn’t asleep. So, either my husband or I would end up sitting in the backseat to entertain her.

We found that downloadable baby videos kept her attention and calmed her down. She typically didn’t watch TV at home. In fact, we limited TV at home until she was almost 2 years old. But we always allowed screen time on road trips, even when we were road tripping during the infant stage. 

We always chose videos that were educational. And, keep in mind, if you are traveling in an area where the cell reception is spotty, it may be in your best interest to download a few videos for the road.

Plan for frequent stops 

Babies have to breastfeed or take a bottle about every two hours when they are awake, so plan to stop every few hours for necessary diaper changes and your baby’s meal time. Even if your baby isn’t hungry or in need of a diaper change, it’s a good idea to stop every couple of hours to simply get your little one out of the car seat and take a 20 minute break.

If our GPS told us a trip would take 6 hours, we typically factored in an extra couple of hours to account for stops. 

We always plan to stop somewhere for a meal during the drive and we stay awhile, so our little one isn’t strapped into a car seat for 6-8 hours straight.

Pack accordingly

Anytime you travel with a baby you can anticipate packing more than if you are traveling alone or even with an older child. Even if you just bring the travel essentials for your baby , it is still a lot of stuff! 

You’ll want to be sure to pack everything you’ll need for the amount of time you’ll be gone. But be sure when packing and loading your car that the things you may need most during the road trip with your baby are easily accessible.

Extra clothes should be easy to reach within your luggage in case there is a spit up or blow out situation. Other items you might need for quick stops, like your baby carrier for travel , should also be readily available. 

When we would go on road trips with our infant, we preferred to use a baby carrier instead of a stroller when we were getting out of the car to either check out a roadside attraction or run inside a convenience store. 

Have someone ride in the backseat with the baby

How would you like to ride backwards, staring at the seat for 6 hours straight? No fun, right?

As long as you aren’t alone on a road trip with a baby, it will definitely make things easier if someone rides in the backseat to play the role of entertainer.

When our baby would wake up from her (hopefully) extra long nap in the car, I would usually climb in the back and read her books, play with her, or feed her a food pouch while my husband drove. That would usually buy us a couple more hours to get to our destination.

You can also give your little one an infant massage while you sit with them. This helps babies to relax and soothes the aches that even babies get from long car rides.

Invest in a baby mirror

Babies and toddlers are required to ride rear facing in the U.S. until the age of 2. So, if you plan on a long car journey with an infant or toddler, an inexpensive baby mirror that straps to the backseat will definitely help ease your mind during the drive.

You’ll be able to keep your eye on your baby from the front seat, and your baby will have the added enjoyment of looking at himself or herself in the mirror. (Babies are little narcissists. They love mirrors!)

How to feed your baby on road trips

It may be tempting when your baby is crying or hungry to take them out of the car seat while the car is moving “just for a minute” to feed or change your little one, but it really isn’t worth the risk.

It’s not only extremely dangerous, but it’s also illegal. Instead, here is a little advice on how to feed your little one on road trips.

Breastfeeding

If you are exclusively breastfeeding, you’ll likely want to pull over when your baby gets hungry to feed your little one. This is the safest thing to do for both you and your baby. 

Another option would be to bring your breast pump and pump while you are riding in the car. Then you can bottle feed your baby your expressed breastmilk. This is an efficient way to feed your baby on a road trip without having to stop to breastfeed.

Bottle Feeding

Bottle feeding is an easy way to feed your baby on the go when taking a long car journey with an infant. If bottle feeding breastmilk or premade liquid formula, we recommend keeping the milk in a cooler so it stays fresh.  

When it is time to feed your little one be sure to have someone sit in the backseat with them to hold the bottle rather than propping it up. This ensures your baby doesn’t choke, drop the bottle, or spill the milk in the car.

If you are taking a road trip with a newborn who is still exclusively nursing or taking formula, you won’t need to worry about baby food yet. However, once your child starts solids, baby food pouches can be great for road trips or air travel with a baby . 

They are a bit more expensive than the jars or plastic containers of baby food, but they are organic, come in lots of interesting flavors and varieties, and are much easier to deal with while on a road trip with a baby. You can find them at basically any grocery store or online.

We love these three brands: Happy Baby , Sprout Organic s , and Plum Organics , which you can find on Amazon for much less than you’ll typically pay in a store!

(FYI, if traveling by air, the TSA liquids rule of 3 ounces or less doesn’t apply to baby food . ) Also, don’t forget snacks! Puffs and Cheerios obviously work great.

What to pack for a road trip with a baby

As previously mentioned, packing requires more planning for any type of trip with a baby. But there are a few things you’ll want to have readily available on a road trip with a baby.

Aside from a car seat, which is an obvious necessity, you’ll want to have these other items within arms length.

You’ll go through so many of these! Whether you’re wiping down your baby’s face after eating, wiping down toys that they’ve tossed on the floor, or wiping down sticky baby hands, you will want and need baby wipes on any road trip. 

Years have passed since our daughter was a baby, and we still keep baby wipes in the car and frequently use them. 

Extra Clothes

Our baby had a tendency to spit up after she ate, so we often had to change her clothes at least once during a road trip.

Even if your baby doesn’t spit up frequently, babies drool, and that drool often ends up around the collar of their shirt. So, to keep your kiddo comfortable, you’ll want to be sure to change their outfit when it gets wet. 

Charging Pack or Batteries

If you plan to download baby videos for older babies, you’ll want to be sure to bring a portable charging pack to keep it charged during the car ride.

The same goes for any batteries, if you bring any toys that require them. Keeping your baby entertained is the key to a successful road trip.

Car Seat Toys

Aside from a tablet, you will also want to bring some engaging toys for your baby. If you are anticipating a long road trip with a baby, you may want to buy a few new toys that your baby has not seen or played with yet. The new toys will likely keep their attention longer. 

We personally loved these toys that dangled from the car seat and had different textures and bright colors that our daughter loved.

Portable changing mat or receiving blanket

When it comes to changing diapers on a road trip with a baby or toddler, you won’t always have a changing table available. And even if one is available, they aren’t always the cleanest. So, be prepared for diaper changes in the car. 

It might mean pulling over on the side of the road and changing your baby in the back seat. If doing so, you’ll want to have a portable changing pad or a blanket to cover the seat just in case things get messier than expected. 

Wet bag and disposable trash bag

You’ll want a wet bag for any soiled items that you’ll want to wash at your destination. This would include clothes, blankets and cloth diapers. 

You’ll also want a small trash bag for any dirty disposable items, like baby wipes, disposable diapers, and empty food pouches. 

Pacifiers 

If your baby takes a pacifier, you will want to stock up on his or her favorite ones before a road trip.

For one, pacifiers will get lost, so you will want a spare, and a spare for the spare. Secondly, they will get dirty. Your baby will drop it, toss it, and it is easier to give them a clean one rather than constantly cleaning the same pacifier. 

Our daughter personally loved the Wubbanub pacifiers , which have little soothie animals attached to them. The extra weight of the soothie helps them stay put longer.

Of course you’ll want to bring all the things you would typically bring in a carry-on bag for a baby , like diapers, infant medication, and burp cloths. But the biggest tip for a successful road trip with an infant or toddler is to pack patience and plan for itinerary changes.

Final thoughts on baby road trips

Safety is the most important thing to consider when planning a long car journey with an infant or toddler.

So, before any road trip, or better yet, before your little one is born, we recommend taking your car seat to a fire station or any other location where there are licensed car seat technicians who can make sure it is properly installed. Chances are, it is not . 

This free service will give you a little extra peace of mind that your baby will be safely secured in a properly installed car seat the entire length of the journey.

Traveling with toddlers or older kids? Check out these tips to keep them entertained in the car!

Have a comment or question about taking a road trip with a baby? We’d love to hear from you. Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Like it? Pin this road trip with a baby guide to save it for later!

Tips & Tools

Is it safe for my baby to travel in a car seat for hours at a time.

Dina DiMaggio, MD, FAAP

If you need to travel with young infant, a road trip may seem like a good option. After all, packed planes can expose babies to more germs.

If you're considering a longer car ride with your baby, here are some tips to help keep them safe and comfortable.

Check the car safety seat

If you plan to hit the road, it is important to make sure that your infant's car seat is properly installed. Be sure to read the instructions that came with the seat. The car seat needs to be rear-facing and installed at the correct angle.

Following the manufacturer's instructions for installation angle helps prevent your baby's head from slumping down in the seat. You want to avoid a chin-to-chest position that blocks their airway. Also, be sure the five-point harness system is correctly adjusted and pulled snug to your baby at all times while riding in the car.

While on the move, babies can sleep in a properly installed car seat in the car. Car seats are designed not only to protect a baby in a crash, but are also tested to keep babies in safe sleep positions if they doze off.

Still, car seats are not ideal for very extended periods when the baby is not being closely watched while sleeping. And they should not be considered a safe place to sleep for the baby outside of the car.

Ride in the backseat with your baby

It is always best to have an adult or responsible older child in the backseat with your baby to easily take care of their needs during the trip. This can help your baby stay on a schedule as much as possible. It allows you to feed them at their usual times (if bottle feeding), play with them, keep an eye out for issues such as car sickness and know when to stop for a diaper change. Being right by their side to sing, read or even massage them, will help avoid tears and make for a smoother journey.

Take regular breaks

It is important for you and your baby to get out of the car every few hours and take a stretch to avoid restlessness. Try to take a break every 2 to 3 hours for a day trip and every 4 to 6 hours at night to change diapers or soiled clothes, or to feed your baby. Never attempt to breastfeed in a moving car.

Before hitting the road, be prepared and know where gas stations and rest stops are on the way. In case you decide you need a longer break, it's a good idea to know where baby friendly hotels are located. If you aren't sure there will be a safe sleep space at your destination, bring a bassinet or portable play yard with you, since it's not safe for your baby to sleep in the car seat once you arrive.

Have essentials close by

Pack a diaper bag or cooler for the back seat to have handy essentials at your fingertips. This may include:

extra diapers, wipes, diaper cream, changing pad, clothes, garbage bags to dispose of diapers, and hand sanitizer

formula or breast milk kept on ice or in a cooling bag, and bibs

pacifiers, a favorite soothing toy, books, and a device to play music for entertainment

a thermometer

Have snacks and water readily available for yourself, too! If you need to stop for a coffee to go, remember not to leave your baby unattended in the car even briefly. Children can suffer heat stroke very quickly in hot cars.

Consider traveling when it best fits your infant's schedule

If you are traveling for a few hours, consider an early morning trip when your baby may still be sleeping, or during longer nap times. For longer trips, consider driving at night when your baby is normally asleep for the night.

Plan on things not going according to plan

Traveling with an infant can be stressful. It's important to take little bumps in stride and not get too stressed out when things don't go exactly according to plan. Focus on the positives: traveling in a car allows you to take as many stops as needed and to follow your own schedule.

Talk with your pediatrician if you have any questions about traveling with your infant.

More Information

• Ask the Pediatrician: When can children get the COVID-19 vaccine?
• Car Seats: Information for Families
• Preventing Child Deaths in Hot Cars
• Road Trip Play Ideas for Backseat Fun

​Dina DiMaggio, MD, FAAP, is a board-certified pediatrician at Pediatric Associates of NYC and at NYU Langone Health. She is the co-author of ​ The Pediatrician's Guide to Feeding Babies and Toddlers , a comprehensive manual written by a team of medical, nutrition, and culinary experts. She also serves as an AAP spokesperson. Follow her on Instagram @Pediatriciansguide .​