health Archives | Travels With Baby

Happy, healthy holiday travels—and a few really good reminders

Shelly Rivoli — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:11:00 +0000

Earlier this week, I appeared on ABC San Francisco’s View from the Bay with some tips on how you can help protect your baby from colds and flu during travel. Here’s the segment for those who are interested! (And a few reminders follow below.)

Reminders 1 & 2: I now have TWO great giveaways in progress:

– Need a vacation? If you haven’t already entered to win the 3-night all-inclusive stay for a family of 4 (or more, with kids under 6 years!) at the Frankly D Resort & Spa in Jamaica—what the heck are you waiting for?! Click here for details.

– Flying with an infant? Also, I am giving away the new FlyeBaby Air Travel Hammock I just reviewed, so those of you who will be flying with an infant, click here for details.

Reminder 3: Passports with Purpose ends Monday!

Give a little, maybe win a little, too! There is still time to make a contribution to this year’s Passports with Purpose fundraiser—and still possibly win some really great prizes for a mere $10 tax-deductible raffle ticket (and I mean really good prizes!). Some that especially caught my attention for family travelers are included here. The participating travelbloggers have already raised enough this time around to build a school for children in rural Cambodia! If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll consider supporting this great cause that has incredibly concrete results! The fundraiser ends December 21^st, so hop to it! See the full list of prizes and make your donation at www.passportswithpurpose.com/.

Congrats to the Passports with Purpose bloggers on their phenomenal fundraising success!

And to those of you setting out on holiday travel adventures this weekend… including some of you making your first trips ever as families…

Safe journey,

Shelly Rivoli, author of the award-winning guide Travels with Baby

The Ultimate Guide for Planning Trips with Babies, Toddlers, and Preschool-Age Children

travelswithbaby.com

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"Sick Season" Tips for Travel with Babies and Young Children

Shelly Rivoli — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:57:00 +0000

After spending an hour and a half in the car with my kids yesterday, creeping through neighborhood streets behind a hospital, we finally arrived at a drive-thru flu shot clinic and the elusive H1N1 shots were ours! Well, they were my children’s at least. Talk about service–the nurse even climbed into the back of the van to keep us out of the rain. A little bizarre, but better than dragging the three kids into a waiting room filled with sick people. Plus, I will feel much better leaving the country in a week knowing that swine flu and its complications are less likely to be a problem for my baby and young children while we’re away—and after we return.

I know that many of you are gearing up for holiday and/or vacation travel in the next two months, and H1N1 is just one more concern when it comes to your child’s health while you’re away. Since it seems lately like I’ve written tips and spoken on the topic of healthy travels with children ad nauseam (pardon the expression), I’ll just point to some of my favorites here that might help you plan—and gain peace of mind—as you prepare for travel with your child during the cold and flu season.

Here are some topical sections from Travels with Baby (the book):

Chapter 3 – Tips for packing your child’s travel kit (don’t leave home without it).
Chapter 7 – Some good pre-trip tips for healthy travels, along with mentions of useful products and gear that travel easily to pack along in case of illness.
Chapter 9 – Some great (if I do say so myself) advice on getting medical help while you’re away, treating common travel ailments and illnesses, and includes “A Traveler’s Guide to Ear Infections.”

Related:

And above: A related appearance I made last winter on ABC’s The View from the Bay.

As always, you’ll find plenty more tips on Traveler’s Health and other topics on my FAQs and Popular Topics page.

And if you’re traveling with kids from 18 months to 10 years old, don’t forget! I’m giving away two “My Busy Kits” ($25 and $15 values) to help ease travel with your kids! Click here for details.

Safe journey,

Shelly Rivoli, author of the award-winning guide Travels with Baby
travelswithbaby.com

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Breastfeeding in Bangkok

Shelly Rivoli — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:03:00 +0000

This post is in honor of World Breastfeeding Awareness Month.

So as you can see, I’m not actually breastfeeding at the moment this photo was snapped, though I desperately wanted to be. It pretty clearly captures the challenge I was having this day, finding a quiet place to sit down and nurse my baby while visiting the large and majestic Royal Palace with Wat Phrakaew in Bangkok. It was hot. Really hot. There were few places to sit down, let alone places where you wouldn’t be so visible as to draw a large crowd of some of Earth’s most baby-loving people, the Thais. With a fair-skinned, strawberry blond baby, in tow, we especially stood out.

Well-meaning strangers wanted, and even needed, to see this child, from the orange-robed monks leaving the Temple of the Emerald Buddha to the janitor sweeping the back corridor. They had songs she apparently needed to hear, she had feet that apparently needed to be tickled. We had about 4 to 6 hours worth of exploring to do at the compound, and the normally simple act of feeding my baby became an exhausting quest to escape these extremely friendly people. She was 7 months old, highly distractible and, as you might guess, increasingly fussy.

As time went by and repeat attempts were made, including while leaning against a less-than-comfortable cement wall, I began to suspect I was a little too discrete in my method. As soon as she’d latch on, someone would approach us smiling and assuming that the baby was asleep, hoping to get a look at her. This was awkward. When visiting other people’s countries, I always try to be a good guest. I would no more flash the goods than wear shoes into someone’s house, or visit their temples with bare shoulders.

Still, it became clear to me that, as fascinated as these people were by the Western baby, it was not even on the radar that I might be trying to breastfeed. I took this up with a couple of ladies who worked at our hotel and wanted to talk babies, and again later when I had another mom-to-mom discussion as we traveled. They were shocked to learn that I, an American woman who could afford to travel the world, would choose to breastfeed my baby.

I am currently breastfeeding my third baby, and I know that overall breastfeeding has greatly simplified our travels with babies. Thanks to the nifty magic of white blood cells getting transferred from me to my babies through the milk, it has also provided extra protection for my children against viruses I’ve been exposed to along the way—something of a comfort for anyone who has to travel with their baby in flu season. As we have traveled in extreme heat, it’s also been reassuring to know that my milk is better and more easily absorbed by my baby than even water would be.

I have been impressed with how breastfeeding awareness and support have grown around the globe since I was breastfeeding my first baby 5 years ago. To find out more about World Breastfeeding Week, visit the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action online at www.waba.org. If you’d like to learn more about the current status of breastfeeding in some global destinations, including Kenya, South Africa, Australia, Germany, Brazil, and Canada, and what you might expect if planning travel there with your breastfed baby, check out my recent interviews with “Moms Around the World.”

Safe journey,

Shelly Rivoli, author of the award-winning guide Travels with Baby
travelswithbaby.com
Note: This post is part of Photo Friday at DeliciousBaby.com

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Rivoli Roundup: Health tips for travel with your baby

Shelly Rivoli — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:28:00 +0000

In light of the current swine flu outbreak, many of you might be reconsidering vacation plans, or postponing travel with your babies. As you weigh your plans and strategize about health considerations, you might find some of these tips helpful, especially my article just published on Tips to help protect your baby from flu during travel.

More tips for healthy travels online:

> Food and water safety tips for travel with babies and young children – Going farther afield?
> Healthy travels with babies and young children – Tips to help you prepare for a healthy trip and to manage in case of illness
> When kids get sick while traveling – And how to help prevent illness on the go
> Bring waterproof first-aid tape – What I learned (the hard way) in Mexico with my toddler
> Scorpions, ticks, and bears — oh, my! – Getting out into nature without getting in over your head
> See also: Recommended products for safety and childproofing on the go

In the book:
Remember you’ll also find much more health and safety information for travel with your child throughout his first years, including information on travel vaccinations for babies and breastfeeding mothers, managing mosquitoes, finding medical help where you need it, food and water safety, and more, in Part 3 of Travels with Baby.

Safe journey,
Shelly Rivoli, author of the award-winning guide Travels with Baby

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Going farther afield: Food and water safety for small children

Shelly Rivoli — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 05:40:00 +0000

Last week, Eric at TravelBlogs.com posed a question that caught my attention. He started an interesting debate between six travel bloggers on whether or not they would haggle over a “tourist price” they were told to pay for food from a street vendor in an “unnamed Asian country” (click here to read the full post).

While the discussion centers primarily around the privilege of being wealthy enough to travel to and through some countries in the first place, and having the advantage of earning much more before travel than many of these vendors would in several years, the discussion made me realize was how long it’s been since I’ve frequented street vendors abroad for food—one of the big changes that comes from traveling with babies and young children.

In my life before kids, I certainly did eat more adventurously during travel—at seventeen and eighteen I frequented food stalls in Asia, thankfully with little consequence. Yet I also somehow contracted Giardia at the end of a trip to Eastern Europe, and I certainly wouldn’t wish that on any child, let alone an adult. After a “last supper” in Athens, I suffered the worst food poisoning of my life, and from a charming restaurant in the touristic Plaka district no less. Food- and water-borne illness can happen anywhere, but the odds are much higher in certain regions, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly when you visit with small children. In fact, rule #1 in my section on Food and Water Safety in Travels with Baby is to:

Avoid foods from street vendors – as friendly and generous as they may be to your child and family, they often have little or no refrigeration available for the foods they prepare, and likely do not have a place to wash their hands with clean water and soap.
This is not to say that you can’t take a baby or toddler to exotic and even underdeveloped regions of the world. I have myself, and with thoughtful planning and smart strategies for how you’ll handle sensitive issues including food and water safety, particularly for your child, you can too.

For more tips and advice on traveling with babies and young children to remote regions, see the sections in Travels with Baby on “Going Farther Afield,” with important information on Vaccinations and Travel Shots for babies and breastfeeding mothers, Malaria Prevention for Young Children, and much more on Food and Water Safety.

You can also read a brief excerpt from the book with more tips on food and water safety in my column at Examiner.com (click here).

Safe journey,

Shelly Rivoli, author of the award-winning guide Travels with Baby
The Ultimate Guide for Planning Trips with Babies, Toddlers, and Preschool-Age Children

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What can you do if your baby or toddler gets sick during travel?

Shelly Rivoli — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 01:22:00 +0000

On Friday, I was a guest on ABC San Francisco’s The View From the Bay, where I discussed more ways you can help ensure healthy travels with babies and young children — certainly a topic of concern this season — and what you can do in case they get sick during your trip. Click here to watch the segment.

Here are some additional tips to help as you gear up for your family’s next trip.

What can you do to help before you even leave home?

Ask about an advice line or email address. If you don’t already know of one, ask your doctor’s office if there is an advice number you can call or an email address you can use for questions in case your child becomes ill while you’re traveling. Your health insurance provider might also have a number you can use to reach an advice nurse 24 hours a day. Since the service isn’t always widely advertised, it can be worth a call to your health insurance company to find out.

Create an iHealth Record (now a.k.a. Google Health). An iHealth Record stores each family member’s health information in one convenient, secure place. Prescriptions, allergies, vaccinations, blood type, and insurance information can be instantly accessed by a medical professional if and when needed anywhere in the world where internet access is available. Ask your doctor or find out more at www.iHealthRecord.org.

Pack your child’s “Travel Kit.” More than what simply goes in the diaper bag or carry-on, your child’s travel kit has basic products and items that can help your child through a wide range of difficulties that might crop up in your travels but could be hard to come by while en route, on a day trip, late at night, or in faraway destinations. Recommendations for your child’s travel kit-and a modified version that is approved for carry-on can be found in my book

Travels with Baby.

Stay healthy! Make sure everyone in your household is getting reasonable amounts of rest and drinking plenty of fluids–especially children who have had runny noses or congestion in the week or two prior to travel. Drinking extra water helps the body stay healthy and cope with the stresses of travel in many ways. If you’ll be flying or driving through mountain passes, the extra fluids will also help thin any mucus that might block the ears and make it difficult to adjust to changes in pressure.

So what happens if your child still gets sick while you’re away from home?

Don’t panic! Monitor the symptoms the same as you would at home. Encourage rest and fluids, much as you would at home. Take advantage of the helpful items you have in your child’s travel kit, and try to all put your feet up if you can.

If your child gets a high fever, a fever that persists, or you need advice on over-the-counter remedies you haven’t used for your child before, contact your doctor’s office or advice line.
If you need to find a doctor away from home, in Canada or in the U.S., you can visit the American Academy of Pediatrics online and find referrals throughout North America. Website: www.aap.org/referral.

If you’ll be traveling overseas to a remote or less developed region, consider registering with www.IAMAT.org, the organization that can help you find English-speaking and Western-trained medical help should you need it.

You’ll find many more tips and advice for healthy travels with children in Travels with Baby, including information on vaccinations and travel shots for babies and breastfeeding mothers, treating common ailments on-the-go, the carsickness survival guide, food and water safety for wee travelers, and more.

Safe journey,

Shelly Rivoli, author of the award-winning guide Travels with Baby
PUBLISHER’S DISCOUNT – Save an extra 5% off Amazon’s discounted price & qualify for FREE shipping when you buy from “Travels with Baby Books”

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