Extra Baggage- Should You Pack a Carseat?

Question- Do we need to travel with car seats? It becomes so tedious.... what is required? 

Lakshmi’s Learning- I will address this question based on “international travel” versus domestic US. The short answer to this question is... it depends on baby’s age (e.g. 9 month old versus 3 year old), country rules, and your comfort as parents. 

Please note that 1) some countries do not mandate car seats (does not mean that is good, but requirements do vary around the world) OR 2) they only require car seats for residents (e.g. you don’t need car seat in taxi). 

My recommendation is: we traveled internationally with our car seat before our first daughter was 1 year old (our first child = extra cautious). After that- we would read the local country laws and decide (we never traveled with car seats again- just would decide how to handle as needed locally).

IF the country requires car seats, we either rent them with car OR they have car seat rental companies that deliver to where you are staying (e.g. this is quite cool- like food delivery). When we do long tours like today (total time = 12 hours), we ask the tour company to provide car seats following country law (in this case Australia) and have done this in other places as well (see video- desert safari in Dubai with 4 month old and 1.5 year old, tour company provided).

Hence- you don’t need to lug around your car seats- do some research first, explore options, and determine what you are comfortable with.