As a followup to the previous article on travelling with your baby, I wanted to add a few points about the all-important issue of international air travel with your baby and liquids. As you are probably all too well aware, there are now restrictions in place that say you can’t bring containers larger than 100ml with you on a plane. This, of course, poses some serious issues for parents travelling with babies as it is obviously not practical to travel with such a restriction.

Here, I want to share with our experience travelling from Australia, through Bangkok and into Europe and back again over the busy Christmas holiday period.

First, you can rest assured that the restrictions only apply to items you carry for yourself. Baby items such as water, food and medicine are excluded from the ban. This was quite clearly stated both in the little brochure that you can get at the airport and at the security checkpoint. As long as the baby is actually present with you, there should not be any problems.

Before we travelled, we were of course quite nervous and attempted to get our hands on as many 100ml containers as possible as a precaution. Luckily, most baby food jars are 100grams. We had quie a few little drink containers with us as well as larger containers for purified water. As a side note, you will want to take plenty of water with you for your baby as airplane water has typically been chemically treated and disinfected and is generally not considered optimal for baby consumption.

As mentioned in the previous article, we also took quite a few ‘just in case’ medicines with us, most of which were well over 100ml.

So, here is what happened at the various airports:

Melbourne, Australia: When we arrived at the checkpoint, we declared that a seperate bag was just for baby food and medicines. The officer nodded and informed the x-ray operator that a baby bag was coming through. Once we passed through the metal check gate, the officer at the other side asked us to show him the content of the bag, checked the labels on the still sealed bottles, saw the water bottles and passed everything through. No problem here. Very efficient & friendly.

Bangkok, Thailand: First of all, what a huge airport. The shopping level at the top is quite comprehensive. At the security checkpoint, we declared the baby bag and the officer asked us to empty everything from the bag into a number of 1 lt clear plastic zip-lock bags (which she provided). Everything went through the x-ray as before. After we passed through the metal gate, the officer at the other side inspected every single bottle and questioned us about the content. She didn’t seem as concerned about the size as about the content, especially the medicines. Sealed jars were passed over quickly. The others we inspeced closely, but once it was apparent that it was home-made food, they were passed. Again, no problem. Very thorough inspection, but all within reason. Make sure all your things are easily accessible.

Zurich: Switzerland: Very similar to the Melbourne process. The whole baby bag was passed through the x-ray and an officer inspected the content at the other end. A few questions about the content, but no problems. By now, we had quite a few containers that were larger than 100ml. We had some large baby food containers (225gram) and larger water containers.

Rome, Italy: This was probably the best experience. Rome is another huge airport with 15-20 security check lanes. The very fortunate thing is that a guard at the start directed parents with children, elderly and injured people to a seperate set of security gates. Instead of waiting with 200 people, we had 3 in front of us. What a relief. The process was very quick and painless. Bag on the x-ray and we’re done. Looks like the Italians applied some common sense and are seeing these mandated restrictions for what they really are…

So overall, travelling with a baby and liquids is likely not as big a deal as you think it may be. Granted, our experience did not include travel to the USA this time. Given that these restrictions originated there and people are still being made to take off their shoes, your experience in that country may be different.

Best of luck and joy in your travels.

If you have any feedback on other countries or experience with American air travel, please leave a comment. We plan to head to that way soon and any tips would help :)

Well it is Monday a week after Easter and I am 37 weeks along. This pregnancy has been going so well and I had been feeling so fantastic i was almost complacent about the whole thing. Then a few days before the long weekend I turned to reach for something and my back gave up on me. I have been limping ever since!! My right hip is not very happy. Chiropractic and acupunture have ensured that i remain mobile and not confined to bed or a chair which has been great.

Which i guess you could say brings me somewhat to my point :)  Chiropractic changed my life when I was a 17 yo migraine sufferer. I went from daily tears and packet after packet of pain killers to a well adjusted kid who was finally able to study again. From spinal xrays my chiro was able to tell me that my issues began most likely during childbirth, my birth that is. The plates in a newborns skull are not fused together like those of an adult, purposley to allow it to fold in on itself during its journey through the birth canal. In some cases, this closing in of the bones does not fully release. In my case when the bones had fused later in life they were not quite right and were causing me serious tension in my head - one of the factors in the nasty headaches. The other was that my neck had an abnormal curveature placing added stress. Also on the xrays wecould see that my lower back had a scoliosis - a fairly common occurence in girls - especially girls as tall as me. This curve had in turn pulled up my pelvis on one side, making one leg slightly shorter than the other and was possible the reason for my irregular cycle.

These were revelations to myself and my family and we all became lifetime chiropractic patients. 14 Years later i continue to be adjusted on a regular basis. Throughout pregnancy women are told to be cautious of many things. At a time in which your body is under such intense pressure to perform and keep it all together, surely we would want to do all we could to make that job easier?  Unfortunately there appears to be a lot of mystery in the greater community about chiropractic and its safety. Chiropractic is a scietifiaclly researched and completely natural method of realigning the spine, to decrease nerve interference in the body so that the messages from the brain to the rest of the body can travel freely through the nerves and allow the body to heal itself. Chiropractic facilitates healing in the body. It does not claim to do the healing, but to free  the pathways your body uses to heal itself. And so it does.

For me, as my body begins to prepare for imminent labour and birth the cocktail of hormones relaxing every ligament i have, anything can only help to a degree. Throughout the last 38 weeks, however, chiropractic has ensured that my nervous system has been firing well and that all the messages from my brain have arrived safely and clearly at their destination. A relief considering a good deal of those messages were going to the parts of my body that were busily growing another human being inside of me!!

When we got married the concern that I may have trouble falling pregnant, which had always been in the back of my mind, came to the fore. Would I be able? Could we? How would this all work? It is a nerve wracking time. It was something we had both wanted for so long. What if it wasn’t to be? I had seen so many people I know struggling to fall, miscarrying or finding out they had little to no hope. I was scared. I took a step back one day and remembered that I needed to stay positive and that life would only be what it was meant to be. 2 months after we were married, I came out of the bathroom with a little white stick, a blank expression and just kept saying, ‘there are 2 blue lines, 2 blue lines…’ very slowly, i must have been white as a ghost. We were overjoyed.

I truly credit years of chiropractic care along with acupuncture, a healthy diet, exercise and a good vitamin regime, with this amazing result. The number of times my pelvis has been dragged out of position by that curve in my spine and needed to be re aligined is incredible.  Who is to say that my reproductive organs would have understood what to do if the messages from my brain had continued to be interupted by the irritation of my mis aligned spine? All of the information that goes to our reproductive organs goes through our lower back, if there is not adequate joint movement and function to allow the information the pass through the nerves uninterupted, how can they possibly do their job?

I only wish that my mum had been told about chiropractic earlier. That all those pain killers had been unneccesary… however it is as it was meant to be. Armed with this knowlege and the strong mothering instinct all women have towards their own, I will always have my kids adjusted (not cracked and not treated - adjusted) by a chiropractor. Kids chiropractic is more gentle than you can imagine. Newborns require only the lightest pressure with a fingertip most of the time. I have seen babies fall asleep or remain asleep during an adjustment. It certainly helps them sleep afterwards :) It relaxes their bodies and removes excess nervous energy and the sleep is bliss.

I have seen children not mastering crawling - get adjusted a couple of times and it is like they took a course in it. Stomach problems, sleeping issues, reflux, colic and a host of other ‘normal’ infant issues may also be relieved by chiropractic. There is no time to early to begin chiropractic care. A chiro’s kids are likely to have been adjusted within an hour of birth. For ours it was within a week, as soon as i could get my self together to go to appointments! And so begins a beautiful journey. Chiropractic is gentle and does not ‘wear out the joints’ or ‘crack the bones and cause arthritis’ or so many other negative things i have heard. Chiropractors are well educated and trained - most constantly strive for improvement and more knowlege in their field. They tend to be advocates for natural alternatives and healthy natural lifestyle choices.  In Australia, Chiropractic is a five year degree and all areas of anatomy and physiology are studied. In fact clost to the only things studied by doctors and not by chiro’s are some aspects of pharmacology and surgery. Go to someone you have heard good things about. Your health and the health of your family deserves the best.

Another note - Chiropractic is great for back pain and headaces. It is also, and i say this with much personal experience, excellent for lethargy, colds and flus (don’t call to cancel if you have a cold, get in there and get your nervous system working so it can fight harder!!!) digestion issues, stress and a lot of other, more organic type conditions in the body. It may not work as quick as a little white pill that you can get from a doctor ar pharmacist, but when was a quick fix ever the right thing in the long run? for your health or the planet? We need to become more aware of what those pills are doing to our bodies and the fragile growing bodies of our little monkey’s. They are the future, and they are precious. Look after yourself and them.

So with any luck another adjustment or 2 and i will be in working order again - in time for labour and delivery. With my nice in line pelvis, hopefully it will be quick and complication free :)

With Love, anita

Hi Everyone.

Anita here. Welcome to the official blog of the ‘My Little Cuddle Monkey‘ website. This is my first entry into this little journal, the first of many. In this blog, we hope to share with you our hints, tips, opinions and articles on pretty much anything that concerns your baby.

We are big advocates of healthy, natural living and wil do our best to keep you informed on what is happening in the world of natural and planet-friendly baby news.