What to do if Your Little Kids get Sick on Vacation

A few days ago, we were traveling for a week-long vacation. It was a long travel day – our first flight left home really early and we had a four hour layover in Orlando before a second flight to our destination. 

Everything was going really smoothly on flight one, and even during the layover! It seemed like my son was starting to get a bit tired right before we boarded the second flight but I didn’t think anything of it since it was early afternoon, we had woken up so early and it was a big day. 

He fell asleep almost immediately when we boarded the second flight, but seemed really uncomfortable while he slept – he would wake up every so often, cry and say ouch. As I was trying to comfort him back to sleep, I noticed he was really warm. I had packed Children’s Tylenol, but it was in our checked luggage and we had about 40 minutes left of our flight before landing. 

Even once we landed, we had to go through immigration and then wait for our luggage to come out before we were able to retrieve the medicine. It was much longer than we would have wanted, and quite frankly his temperature seemed to be going up even more which was pretty anxiety provoking!

Here’s what I would do differently in the future to make sure we’re prepared for something like this. Even though it’s unlikely that he’ll get sick like this on a travel day again, these are pretty simple steps to be ready if it happens. 

1. Stock my carryon with the essentials for if my son gets sick. I’ll always bring a travel size fever reducer, change of clothes for both of us, and a first aid kit with a thermometer.
   

2. Know how to quickly get to the hotel when we arrive so he can get down for a nap. Thankfully, on this trip we were very familiar with the location, but this could be stressful if we didn’t know where we were going.
   

3. Research urgent care (or even emergency numbers) in the location where I’m traveling. It’s even less likely that we’ll need this information, but definitely will feel more confident knowing it and not having to scramble in an already stressful situation.

Have your little kids ever gotten sick while on vacation? What are your tips?