Best 8 Baby Products For Traveling

Traveling with a baby can be overwhelming to say the least, especially if it’s your first time. I’m sharing with you the best 8 baby products for traveling (in my opinion) that made our recent traveling experience much smoother than it would have been without these items.

I hope it’s helpful to some of you who may have upcoming travel plans with your own baby. Or maybe someone you know is traveling with a baby soon and you’d like to share this with them!

Note: Some links in this post are affiliate links and I receive a small compensation when you purchase product via these links. Even though I may be compensated, all opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting my blog!

First, A Tip

One of the things I stressed about most was WHEN to travel. Our baby is six months old and we made the trip from Nashville to west Texas where my family lives (a 16-hour drive).

I came up with so many different options in my head about when the best time to leave was to help us get furthest down the road in that first stretch of the drive.

Should we drive overnight and let him sleep in his car seat all night? Should we get up and leave after his very first feeding?

Ultimately we decided to spend our morning finishing loading up the car and letting the baby get a GOOD morning nap in his crib before we traveled. Every baby is different so I think you have to decide what you feel is best for your baby where the timing is concerned. Sorry there’s no easy formula. But you are the best judge of how your baby operates best so whatever decision you make will be the right one, even if it doesn’t go perfectly!

I asked friends for any tips they had for traveling with a baby and the most important tip I think I received (from multiple people) was to throw your expectations out the window. That is sooo difficult for a person who likes to have a plan and who prefers things to go according to that plan. But it was the absolute BEST thing for our trip to just make myself go with the flow and be willing to do whatever needed to be done to keep the baby happy on the long drive.

If we needed to stop, no big deal because we had no expectations for when we would arrive and were able to also tell our families the same thing. That way there was no pressure on us to get there faster than we were able to. We just arrived when we arrived.

Now on to the best 8 baby products we packed that I believe helped our trip go as smooth as it did.

For Getting Good Sleep

I would guess that the number one concern for a mama when you are taking your baby on a road trip and staying in unfamiliar places is how your baby is going to SLEEP (or the fear of them NOT sleeping is more like it.)

It was a huge concern for this mama and I planned and pondered for weeks in advance how I was going to make my best effort to help our baby get his best sleep while we traveled. And in order to do that I wanted to try to recreate his sleeping environment at home as closely as possible.

That brings me to the first baby product I felt was essential to traveling with a baby. This BabyBjorn travel crib was a gift to us and it was the perfect bed for our baby during our travels. It is SUPER easy to set up and take down so it’s perfect for when you are staying in multiple places like we were on this trip. We made overnight stops to visit various family members and even needed to stop and get a hotel room a couple times to give the baby a break.

I like that there is a mattress in this crib and that it is low to the ground so it’s not moving around when he moves during the night. Highly, highly recommend if you plan to travel much.

The next baby product that was essential to a good night’s sleep for our baby during our travels is this SlumberPod. My original plan was to pack painter’s tape and foil to darken all the windows in every room where we stayed. Then I stumbled upon this amazing product and purchased it right away after reading all the reviews from mamas who had used it.

It’s basically a tent but it’s designed with darkening fabric, air ventilation, and even a pocket for your video monitor. So we were basically able to take our baby’s nursery (sleeping environment) with us!

The first night we stayed in a hotel I told my husband that even if that was the only time we ever used that thing it was WORTH the money we spent on it! We were able to put the baby to bed around his normal bed time so he could get a good night’s sleep while we left the lights on in the room. I got some work done on my laptop and the hubs brought us Whataburger for dinner (because when in Texas…), all while the baby was sound asleep inside his dark comfy SlumberPod.

It fits over most travel cribs and pack n plays. (This is also a great item to have at home if you have to room share with your baby for an extended period of time.)

We took our video monitor with us and because the SlumberPod has a pocket for it we didn’t need to find a way to mount it every place we went.

This monitor happens to be one of the monitors that the inventors of SlumberPod say works well inside the vinyl pocket (meaning you can still see a clear picture of your baby because the camera doesn’t try to auto-focus on the vinyl as opposed to looking through it.) It worked great and I could rest easy while he was sleeping and enjoy visiting with my family because I could see him when I wanted to take a peek.

At home we use this Hatch baby rest sound machine and it’s great. But it was REALLY great to take on our trip. You can program all your baby’s nap times and bed time in the sound machine via an app on your phone so it automatically comes on at those times.

It was nice to be able to take that with us and plug it in and know it already had his nap times “memorized” so if we wanted to lay him down for a nap it was already on for us. (I really love the convenience of this feature at home too.)

The sound machine slips easily underneath the bottom of the SlumberPod next to the travel crib so the baby has a nice cozy environment right down to his familiar sound machine from home.

We took the baby’s stroller and honestly did not pull it out one single time (and that thing took up A LOT of space!) BUT this baby carrier? We used this every day multiple times a day.

It was so helpful for naps on the go when we were house hopping or just didn’t want to lay him down in his crib and have the family miss seeing him since we were there for such a short time. I would just wear him for his nap and still get to spend all that time visiting with the family.

For Play

These foam floor tiles were really helpful to have and are easy to pack. We just threw them in a garbage bag to keep them all together and they fit nicely just about anywhere we could find for them to go.

So easy and super quick to just whip them out and put them together for a safe, comfy play area on any surface (even though most of the time he was being snuggled by someone in the family).

This. Toy. You. Need. It. Period. Sweet friends gifted this to us and I included it in our favorite baby products blog several weeks ago (you can see that blog HERE.)

And this thing was even more handy for our trip. For one thing it’s been his favorite toy since he was just a few weeks old. He still loves this rattle.

But also, when you’re driving down the interstate in the dark and the baby can’t see any of the toys you’re trying to entertain him with, the Noggin Stick wins BIG TIME. It lights up red, blue, and green, which is great fun even in the day time. But at night it is EVERYTHING.

For Organized Packing

This isn’t related to keeping the baby happy during travel, but it’s good for mom’s sanity. 🙂 I discovered these packing cubes through another blogger and they made our suitcase so much neater than it would have been.

I was able to put my clothes in a few of them, my husband’s clothes were in a few, and all the baby’s clothes fit into one of them. It helped to keep our one suitcase from all merging into a big pile of laundry we had to sort through every day. If I needed something for the baby to wear I just grabbed his packing cube from the suitcase.

I ordered two sets and it was more than enough for all of us (one set wasn’t quite enough).

Got Tips?

I hope you find this list of our best 8 baby products for traveling helpful!

I would love to hear from you to know what has worked for you when you travel with a baby. I’m sure it changes depending upon their age and we will likely be doing this again in our future so I’m all ears for your suggestions! Drop a comment below!