Camping with a Baby

Camping With a Newborn

When we first found out we were expecting our bundle of joy we didn’t want to lose ourselves in parenthood. We didn’t want to stop doing all the things we loved. Having a child doesn’t mean your life ends, as many people our age would believe… Being parents, we still get to do everything we used to do but in a modified way. My husband and I ( and especially Ted ) love to go camping, so when the summer came around, when our son was only 2 months old we figured out how to bring a newborn camping. I mean I was camping at a month old… so if my parents could do it with all the ancient gear they had, then there was no way we couldn’t do it.

As a new mom, crazy, paranoid and constantly looking my baby over ( I mean I know every inch of my son like it is the back of my hand) I needed to figure out a few things.

1. How to keep those pesky bloodsuckers from feasting on my son.
2. How to keep the sun off him.
3. Where will he sleep.
4. How to keep him warm at night.
5. Keeping everything sterile.
6. Keeping him away from the campfire smoke.
7. Getting him to sleep.
8. Packing light.

The list goes on… I was very anxious and wanted to call the trip off many times, but my husband, the amazing man he is, kept reassuring me and helped figure everything out. We googled and shopped and found some pretty cool tricks.

 

So we packed up our SUV ( like it was Tetris) and we hit the road with 5 of our closest friends for a 5-day long camping trip with a 2-month-old baby ( To Warsaw Caves, Duro Dummer Ontario.) Every year we go camping at the same time but this year we ended up going a month later for obvious reasons. We were so excited. We had finally gotten the site we’ve always wanted. The biggest one at the campgrounds!

The skies are always clear and the sun is always shining when we go… there’s never a need for tarps and raincoats, but this year was different. It’ rained for 4 days straight… We got there, pitched our tents at 8 o’clock at night and then it happened. It rained the whole time.

We were cold, wet and not happy. So we decided to make the best out of this trip and were determined to make Noah’s first camping trip a success! So that morning we all banded together and MacGyver’d all the traps together over all the tents. My husband ( Dan ) always brings a million tarps when we go camping “just in case” … we normally always put one over our tent and under it, in case it rains overnight. We were prepared for the most part,

We had borrowed my brother’s and sister in law’s dining tent so that if the bugs were bad or if it rained we could all still hang out together and not be cooped up in our tents… Well… that didn’t work because my lovely sister in law, who’s crazily organized, wanted to keep all her pegs together. So when we picked up the dinning tent my brother didn’t know that she had all the poles and pegs packed away together somewhere else,so we just had the tent … with nothing to hold it up ( yes we should have probably put the tent up before we left but again with my sister in law being so organized I didn’t think we had to ).

We had sweaters and pants and lots of socks but not enough for how wet we got. So here we are in the pouring rain, trying to pitch this dining tent with nothing to hold it up…it was hilarious but also horrible. Luckily by this time, it was the following day and we had all the tarps up so Noah and I could sit under the tarps and just watch.

The rain was intermittent for 4 out of the 5 days so we could at least try and dry everything by the fire when the rain would stop. At night we would all huddle in one tent and play cards (somewhat dry and somewhat warm).

The last full day started sunny and hot and was much appreciated …we left everything for that day. We did our spelunking and swimming and all the regular fun camping activities that day. The sun didn’t last long. By the end of the morning, it was raining again and we got everything packed up just in time.

We have this tradition on our way home. We always stop for Kawartha Dairy ice cream, but of course this time we couldn’t sit out on the grass and enjoy our ice cream. So we grabbed our ice cream, sat down in the store and ate it and then we hit the road home…on our way home we decided to get some much needed and much-deserved coffee. But of course, when you want and NEED coffee you can never find a coffee shop or a Tim Hortons ( when there’s normally one on every corner ). Finally, we found some coffee 30 min out of our way and we drove home.

So how did we survive 5 days camping with a newborn?

1. 1. Keeping the skeeters off him: We didn’t want to put actual bug spray on him for all the chemicals and delicate skin. So we found out that if you use Johnson’s aloe vera cream it will keep the mosquitoes from biting… I put a lot of faith in this product because this was my biggest fear. Another product we used to keep the bugs away was mosquito netting, We used it on the car seat and the playpen … of course he still ended up with 3 bites but for a 5-day camping trip, I think that’s not so bad. Here are the links to the products we used.Jolly Jumper Stroller and Playard Net Jolly Jumper Solarsafe Net Johnsons Baby Creamy Oil, Aloe Vera & Vitamin E 8 o
   2. Keeping the sun off him wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. We had a mosquito net that goes over the top of the playpen but it was also UV protective as well. Along with the fact it rained for 4 days, there wasn’t a lot of sun. We stayed under the tarps the whole time.
   3. We had the playpen set up in the tent at night for when we put Noah down for the night with lots of warm blankets, but once we came to bed I felt more comfortable with him sleeping with us… for the warmth and security.
   4. We ended up bringing a generator and space heater to warm the tent up before we put Noah down for bed. This came in handy because it helped dry everyone’s tent out before we all went to bed ( there’s nothing worse than getting into your sleeping bag and its damp ). Noah stayed nice and toasty warm sleeping with us at night so that solved that issue * Disclaimer: I don’t recommend or encourage the use of a space heater in a tent as this is a fire hazard.*
   5. Keeping everything sterile wasn’t too hard for us since Noah was breastfed. To keep his soother sterile we boiled some water on the fire and dropped the soother in for a couple minutes.
   6. Keeping Noah away from the campfire smoke was very hard…probably the hardest thing because with all the rain we had a very smokey fire. Really all we did here was just watch the smoke carefully and move when the smoke would move. Our friends were great with moving when I had to steal their seat because of the smoke.
   7. Getting Noah to sleep wasn’t hard at all. The fresh air helped him sleep great. So there was no issue getting him to bed. Just the typical nursing him to sleep and he was out!
   8. Packing light wasn’t too hard… again because Noah was breastfed we didn’t have to worry about bottles or formula. We packed the essentials like diapers and wipes. Lots of warm clothes, playpen, blankets, socks and shoes, and a few toys. It was relatively easy since he didn’t need much.

Jolly Jumper Solarsafe Net
Jolly Jumper Stroller and Playard Net

Johnsons Baby Creamy Oil, Aloe Vera & Vitamin E 8 oz (236 ml)(pack of 2)