Book Review: Baby Travel Tips

Rick Hartwig has tapped into a deep-rooted anxiety among parents who often cite the stress of flying with young children as the one of the main reasons they don’t travel or don’t travel internationally.  Long flights, jet lag, and flight cancellations are bad enough. But our fellow passengers seem increasingly vocal about their annoyance by the mere presence of a child on their flight (How dare those babies fly to see Grandma!).

Add to this recent news headlines highlighting how airlines arereducing the family-friendliness of our skies by eliminating the courtesy of early boarding for families, not guaranteeing families be seated together, and even going so far as to restrict children from first class. It’s understandable why flying with babies or toddlers—or any child, really—creates such anxiety. 

The book is easy to read and the check-lists are helpful, as were the chapters on the practical details of dealing with car rentals and rental car seats, choosing the best seats on board a plane, and how to deal with flight cancellations or being stranded at the airport.  There were some sections that I didn't think were particularly specific to travel with children or travel on a plane, like the section of Taking Care of Your Home While You're Away.  There were other sections that I would like to see beefed up, like health care while traveling, especially health care overseas. However I realize this is a book about traveling on a plane, and not a book about travel with children in general.

The book is filled with solid, common-sense advice. To respond to other reviewers comments, some of this information does exist elsewhere online and in other formats, but Hartwig has at least done parents the great service of assembling all the transportation travel tips and tricks under one roof.

Anyone who’s ever envisioned a nightmare scenario traveling by plane with their infant or toddler will likely find it very reassuring. Feeling confident about what to expect when flying with small kids is perhaps the biggest part of reducing parent apprehension, and this book definitely will help with that. 

It's only $.99 to download on Kindle (Kindle or Kindle Cloud), a fair price to pay for good advice.