u/No-Reception8268

Hello! FTM here, very grateful to have found this community to help me through my breastfeeding journey. We are traveling soon, our first flight with our LO who will be 4 months old, and I'm trying to figure out a solid pumping and feeding plan for our vacation. Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated.

Background: LO will be 4 months old when we travel. Currently LO feeds up to 8x/day, total ~25-30 oz/day, and is combo fed (breastmilk during the day, formula overnight). I pump 6x/day, every 4-5 hours.

Travel Plans: We are traveling from Southern California to Hawaii

• Estimated transit time one-way: ~8.5 hours (20 mins to airport, 1 hour airport wait, ~6 hour flight, ~1 hour from airport to hotel)
• Total stay: 5 nights

On the plane/in transit:

• Pumping:
  • Likely to pump 2-3x total
  • Pump with Eufy, store milk in Ceres Chill
  • Use pump wipes to clean Eufy between pumps, store parts in cooler (Yeti Hooper 8)
• Feeding:
  • Likely to feed 4-5x total (counting takeoff and landing)
  • Pack ready-to-feed formula for these feeds, keep sealed at room temp
  • Pack 5-6 bottles for these feeds
  • Store any half opened formula bottles in cooler

Daily feeds:

• Bottles
  • Bring 8 (?) bottles to minimize washing
• Pumping:
  • Pump with Spectra when in hotel room, store in milk storage bags
  • Pump with Eufy when on the go, store in Ceres then transfer when back at hotel
  • Store bags in hotel fridge (need to confirm fridge availability/temp); backup - store in cooler and refill ice
• Feeding:
  • Place pickup order for ready-to-feed formula at local Target
  • Feed pumped breastmilk during the day
  • Prep bottles using pumped breastmilk
  • Bring prepped bottles in Yeti when we leave the hotel, heat with Papabalic bottle warmer (bring portable charger to help keep it charged), bring pump wipes (?) to wipe down bottle warmer between feeds

Bottle washing:

• Probably where I have the most questions. We went on a staycation and I hand washed our Pigeon bottles with a Momcozy travel bottle washing kit and Dapple soap. This went badly, the bottles had a lot of milk fat leftover on them and took forever to air dry on the small drying rack.
• How should I change this setup? Should I instead soak all bottle parts in a basin or ziploc, scrub w/brush, rinse, and dry on a mat? Should I use a regular bottle brush with bristles instead of the silicone brushes in the Momcozy kit? Would love any product recommendations here.

Questions:

• Should I bring any frozen breastmilk on this trip just in case? I have a freezer stash and I'm wondering if I should bring any backup in case my pump volume decreases for any reason.
• Did I miss anything? Anything I should confirm with the hotel/flight?

Thanks!

Would love to hear suggestions for great November destinations/hotels for traveling with our 6 month old infant! We’re based in LA and open to traveling either domestic or international - but we are ideally looking for a hotel or destination that is easy to navigate and has enough activities/amenities/restaurants for us to enjoy without going too far.

Pre-baby we were adventurous travelers - we love doing activities like snorkeling, biking, and hiking, then returning to our hotel to relax. When he gets a little older we plan to return to this kind of traveling, but for now we’re looking for destinations that will allow us to relax with him while still having some activities on site that we can take turns enjoying if we have to.

We have a chubby+ budget for this trip if that helps guide the recommendations. Thanks!