I feel there are three categories of people: those who love camping, those who tolerate camping, and those who would rather shove a flaming hot s’more stick in their eyeball than voluntarily camp. I’m a life-long lover of camping and I’m doing my damndest to pass this love onto my three kids, even if camping with small children means I’m always yelling, “Don’t put that in your mouth!” My guess is that if you’re considering camping with a baby then maybe you already like doing it and, like me, you want to make it part of your family’s summer traditions. Yeah!
The first time I camped with a baby I was a very nervous Nelly, but it really wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Camping is kind of a pain in the ass and so is having a baby, so I didn’t really feel like it was that big of a deal, in the end. For the sake of this post, let’s assume you’re going car camping with your babe. That is, you’re packing up the car with supplies and driving up to your tent site. So what do you need to bring? What should you avoid? Pull up a folding chair, my friend. You’ve come to the right campfire.
GENERAL BABY CAMPING PACKING
Pack all the typical stuff you need for baby, but bring double. No, I’m not kidding. Bring extra diapers, wipes, food, and changes of clothes. I am constantly amazed by how quickly my kids get dirty and/or wet when we camp. And their appetites are voracious! (All that fresh air, right? It has the same effect on appetite for beer. I digress…)
Your baby’s life while camping will look remarkably similar to her life at home: play, sleep, and eat. So all you have to do is figure out a way to make all these things happen while in the great outdoors.
Here’s a detailed list on what you can bring (you can download it here.) You don’t have to bring it all – I just wanted to get stuff on your radar.
PLAY
Right off the bat when you pull up to your campsite you’re going to want to unload and set up your tent and get everything unpacked. And then you will immediately realize there is nowhere to put your baby down because you’re in the forest and the ground is covered in rocks and sticks oh fuck, why am I here. Your baby needs a safe place to chill.
Throwing your baby into a carrier is a great option, though I’m not sure how easily you’ll be able to set up a tent while front-carrying. If your baby is tiny you can just plop baby in his bucket car seat and put him wherever. Or, set up your Pack N’ Play and put an elastic sheet or mosquito net over the top to prevent bugs and leaves from getting into it.
Another great option that I tried when my son was crawling/pulling to stand but not yet walking was a baby gate on top of a tarp. I chucked a bunch of toys in there and he actually really enjoyed it! My husband called it “baby open-air prison” but hey, at least it provided one safe spot where I could let him crawl around without worrying he’d shove a rock in his pie hole.
When I asked people on Facebook for advice, one mom suggested putting your crawling baby in an Inflatable Baby Pool at the campsite with interlocking foam mat squares under the bottom to make it cushy. (The pool can double as a bathtub, too.)
Another reader put her son’s booster high chair seat into a collapsible wagon and pulled him around the campsite in that. Another suggestion was to bring a small separate tent and fill it with toys and treat it as the “playroom”. All these people are damn geniuses.
Good options:
- Graco Pack N’ Play
- Bug net to keep the bugs off your baby.
- Summer Infant Pop n’ Jump is a portable activity seat (collapses nicely too! – check out the GoPod we’ve mentioned below too.)
- North States Superyard to create a fancy ‘baby prison’.
- Foam Play Mats or a tarp (or both) to create a soft, clean surface under your prison.
- Summer Infant Pop ‘n Play Portable Playard is a nice alternative to the superyard prison. You can also get a sun canopy to go with it.
- an empty Inflatable Baby Pool is a cheap and cheerful way to contain your baby without taking up precious packing space.
- Jolly Jumper (with stand)
- Utility Wagon (I like MacSports because they are fairly inexpensive but any wagon with good wheels with do the trick.)
SLEEP
OK, so you’re gonna need a tent. In my opinion, the bigger the better. Before we had kids my husband and I cozied up in a two-person tent. So romantic! Well those days are gone and my family of 5 currently sleeps in a 10-person tent. I like to be able to stand up in my tent so I can change my clothes easily and I like to be able to have everyone’s beds and duffel bags in the tent with us, as well as enough space to set up a diaper changing area, so that ends up being a lot of square footage. Having a huge tent also leaves plenty of space for baby’s pack n’ play next to your air mattress.
If you have a tiny, non-mobile baby and you don’t feel lugging a huge pack n’ play on your trip, you can get one of these handy collapsible travel bassinets. (I used one of these on a camping trip with my 2 month-old and found it great for easily scooping baby up for nighttime feedings.) A baby box is another great option because you can pack all your baby’s stuff in it then use it as a safe sleep option on your trip.
Obviously you can’t regulate the temperature in your tent so come prepared with baby’s warm PJs and socks, even for summer nights. If you know it’s gonna be really chilly you can get one of these cool sleeping bag sleep sacks.
One of my all time favorite tricks is taking a portable sound machine. It downs out noisy neighbors and adds a familiar sound from home.
Note: Keep in mind that air mattresses are not considered safe by the AAP because they pose a suffocation risk from your baby rolling into an underinflated fold, or slipping between the mattress and something else (tent, another mattress, a bag of clothes, etc.) so shoot for a safer scenario if possible. Here’s a helpful post called Safe Sleep for Babies: Good, Better, Best that gives you some ideas.
Good options:
- Large tent so your can stand up and fit all your baby gear.
- Munchkin Travel Bassinet
- Smitten Baby Box – it’s lightweight and you can pack it full of stuff.
- Sleeping bag sleep sacks – Halo and ergoPouch are also good brands.
- Travel sound machine (this one also has Bluetooth so you can play music too.)
EAT
If your baby is still on an all-liquid diet then your packing needs in this department are pretty straightforward: bring your boobs and/or bring a lot of formula and clean water. When I say ‘a lot’ I mean bring more than your baby typically eats so that just in case you drop some or happens you have plenty of extra.
Cleaning bottles becomes a bit tricky in the woods. Check ahead of time if your campground has bathrooms with running water – many campground bathrooms have a special outdoor sink designated just for washing dishes. You can bring your own wash bin, soap, and sponge to wash out your bottles and then even boil them on your camp stove to sterilize, if that’s your thang. Another option is to use disposable drop-ins while camping, but you’ll still need to clean the nipples.
If babe is sitting up and eating solids, I suggest bringing a vinyl table cloth and a high chair seat thing that clamps onto your campsite’s picnic table or bring a travel high chair like this one.
Also, bring a camp chair that is comfortable for feedings. You don’t want to be stuck sitting bolt upright at the picnic table when it’s time to relax and feed baby.
Good options:
- This outdoor rocking chair is ballin’.
- Camping stove
- Disposable bottle liners
- clip on high chair (if you want something for a picnic table.)
- Travel high chair (if you want something table height.)
- Booster chair (if you want something compact and mobile.)
- GoPod is a nice hybrid because it can double as an activity center.
OTHER STUFF FOR CAMPING WITH A BABY
- Your baby carrier for hikes. I’ve used and loved my Kelty backpack for years.
- Pack some of your gear in a big, plastic Rubbermaid bin and then use it as a makeshift baby tub (campground frequently only have showers in their bathroom facilities)
- A few readers suggested infant Carhartt overalls because the knees can take a beating for babies crawling around over rough ground. It’s also easy to layer them on over another outfit and then peel them off again.
- Playshoes rain pants came highly recommended for keeping kiddos dry.
- Bug spray and sunscreen (you can check out our post on sun safety too.)
- Plastic-free baby wipes (for sticky baby hands and for you after diaper changes)
- Canopy for over your picnic table, in case it rains
Really, I promise, camping can be so super fun! Even if your baby is up at 5am, crawling around and eating sticks off the campground road. Ahem.
Great post. I’m also curious about getting to bed on time (7ish) and preventing early crack-of-dawn wake ups with the lovely summer light! Please share ideas or tips for a 15 month old who sleeps really well with his black-out curtains at home, but not when he can see everything in the tent!
What the heck kind of car do you have that you can fit that list plus sleeping bags, tent, coolers, grill, camp stove bags of food for yourself, duffel bag of clothes, toiletries for yourself, etc. That list is the reason we are waiting until ours is closer to 2 years old and can sleep and eat without being corralled in some contraption.
We always bring a wagon with us, it’s mulitpurpose! Durring the day we use it as a wagon, but at night that’s where the toddler sleeps. We put a comforter on the bottom, and then he climbs right in and falls asleep! That way, if we want to stroll down to our family’s campsite, we can bring him along! And then when we’re ready for bed, we just toll the wagon into the tent.
We loved tent camping but ended up getting a small pop-up camper because we knew we’d get out more often with an enclosed sleeping space (and an AC unit…we live in the south). We got it when my oldest was not quite 1, and now we sleep 5 of us in there. It is TINY but we only use it for sleeping, and storage – nice to have a place to keep tons of spare diapers, a bin of the usual cooking stuff, etc.
Definitely recommend white noise for sleeping, and agree with another comment that if you can keep baby from seeing you, somehow, they often do better. Otherwise they’re all “Moms here! Let’s play! Let’s eat! Let’s scream!”
Light in the morning can get everyone up early, but again, if they can’t see you, a lot of times they’ll roll back over.
I also bring a nursing pillow along and just use it as my pillow to sleep with to keep clutter down.
We ALWAYS pack additional Towels and Clothing. You are right in saying pack double of everything. We found towels can be used for several other things other than drying baby off.
As I am still feeding, we make use of a solar lantern put on its softest setting. I keep it on at night in the tent. The light is strong enough not to blind everyone but offers a soft enough glow so that I can change nappies and feed comfortably.
Love this little baby zip line.
I think this is glamping. Am I right?
Yes, maybe. But, so? Better than not camping at all!
Maybe. Some might say all car camping is glamping. But who cares?! Better to camp any way you want than not camp, I think. I loved taking my babes on family camping trips and they loved it, too! Especially living in Tennessee, which has the best State Parks in the USA!
I’ve really been wondering whether I could camp with a 9 month old, and you’ve actually just really made me want to do it! Surely it’s worth it if for no other reason than the photo opportunities – some of the ones you’ve posted here are fantastic. All I need is guaranteed good weather. I don’t know if i could cope with days of heavy rain…
Love all the tips here. I’ve bought plastic toys at a yard sale for the kids to get dirty and wanted to pass them along to another family however my kids became too attached 🙄 I noticed you used the term co-sleeping when referencing baby in bed with you. The entire thing, baby anywhere in the tent, is co-sleeping. Baby in bed it’s actually called bedsharing. Also, while I’m not surprised someone commented the dangers of bedsharing on an air mattress, I’m surprised no one brought up how dangerous it is for that baby to sleep in the basket with all the blankets. That’s a suffocation hazard 🙁
One thing that worked for us, if you use a playpen, use a fitted sheet around the outside mesh on the side baby will potentially see you. We found that “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” helped her sleep, she is not suffocating because there is no chance of it falling in and it’s not all the way around.
“Circle of neglect” is perfect haha. What a fantastic and thorough list. Thanks for sharing!
Looks like your baby was having a great time. We don’t camp often but it will be great dad-son experience when he is ready and I’ll read this article again. Thanks for sharing.
Best advice I read somewhere and used is for small babies that aren’t rolling around at night yet – take along your diaper changing pad (the one on your diaper changing station) and have them sleep on that!
It was a perfect size cushioned mattress for her to sleep on – no airflow under it if it gets cold (like a pack n play might have).
I put it above my head so I could turn my head and check on her at night but she wasn’t near any blankets for sleeping piece of mind.
It also doubles as its true purpose – a changing pad.
Great list! Why compromise when you have a car with huge trunk LOL
Interesting post. Pack n Play and baby deedee sleeping bags are must haves in my checklist. Huge fan.
In my opinion, this is more glamping than camping lol ?
We actually just went camping this weekend but stayed in a cabin. Brought Pack n Play and thought we’d be okay for sleeping. Nope. Baby did NOT want anything to do with sleep while we were in that cabin. Almost acted scared of just being there. I’ve heard that some do trial tent runs close by home to see how it goes. We’ll probably try to do the tent camping next year, when baby is about 18 mo. I feel like these tips might help us for that time!
I have finally convinced my husband that I am not crazy for wanting to take our 6 month old camping this summer. This post came at the perfect time.
Love the tiny tent playroom for the kids! My sister had a tent with very large clear screens and could zip her son in to nap or play last summer. My DD (4) is now tall and smart enough to be able to unzip, but could be awesome for the 14 month old…
Great blog post 🙂
I am in the "middle" section of campers, but would love to give it a whirl with my toddler. My worry is she will wake up at the crack of dawn because of the light… any ideas / tips?
Lots of great tips here. I definitely wouldn’t recommend bedsharing on an inflatable mattress though. Not safe at all if it deflates while you are sleeping… and we all know the likelihood of it deflating lol.