Gadgets for family travel

To start off with, one big tip: if you're taking your own steriliser, monitors etc, make sure you also take travel plugs!

Babytec Travel Steriliser (£21)

Feeding time
If you're still solely breastfeeding, you're in luck. The safe supply of essential food is going straight to your baby without the need to find clean water and a plug for your steriliser.
If you are feeding with expressed milk, you will need to take your steriliser with you and you need to make sure you have somewhere to keep your milk chilled or frozen.
On the go, you can use various options. Many retailers stock a range of cold water sterilisers. These can be useful but often pretty large. Make sure it's one where the items don't need to be rinsed in boiled water afterwards. The Milton Cold Water Steriliser is a good option for around £20.
Lindam make steriliser bags you can use in a microwave - useful in apartments and nowadays, a lot of service station-style stopping off points on your travels. For about £5 you get three bags which can be re-used 20 times each and take just a few minutes to sterilise your bottles.
You can buy a car bottle and food warmer which plugs into your car's cigarette lighter socket, to warm milk or food when you're out and about. This will cost about £8, from Babytec, who also make a travel steriliser which still requires electricity, but is designed to fold into itself when not in use so its' beautifully compact.

Safety
If you're thinking of taking your safety monitor away with you, check it's one you can use abroad. (Some don't work in the US, for example.) It might be good to take one that operates on batteries rather than having to fill your suitcase with too many leads and wires.
For more about monitors, go to the ThinkBaby Buyer's Guide to Baby Monitors.

If your baby is already crawling or toddling, you might want to take safety barriers with you if there are likely to be steep stairs or an area you want to keep them away from. Baby Dan do an excellent range of safety items including locks for cupboards at home, and many safety barriers. Their portable (foldable) bed rail (£26) is a useful bumper if your child is sleeping in a bed rather than a cot and you don't want them to roll out during their sleep. Lindam do a travel safety barrier which is easier to fit on doorways without damaging walls, and that is easy to fold down into a travel bag (£28).

If you are thinking about covering electricity sockets around the place you are staying, remember your ones from home won't suit if you are abroad and look for them locally instead. In big supermarkets they should be available and won't be very expensive.

First Years Sit and Fold Booster Seat(£29.99)

High chairs and car travel
High chairs don't have to be huge!
If you're not sure if there's a high chair where you're going, you can either take a fold-down booster seat or a foldable high chair from home. (Another option is to feed your child in their pushchair if you want to travel super-light.)
There are quite a few neat little boosters which are made from fabric or plastic, which strap to a normal dining chair to bring your child up to the height of the table. The First Years do an On The Go booster seat as a light and compact option which fits to a regular chair and has full safety restraint fittings. It's also available in a Winnie The Pooh design and has a carry handle, rrp £29.99.

Again, catalogues like Jojo have some nifty things for car journeys. Seat Belt Buckle protectors can stop naughty toddlers from undoing their seatbelts. (Very handy if you have a regular Houdini in the back seat, like we do!) These cost about £5.
And something else you often forget about until it's too late: how to protect your seats on those first trips away after your child has been trained out of nappies! Jojo sell a training mat that will fit your child's car seat better than a towel will, for £9.
(Another tip on that front - when in the UK, A-roads have lots of lay-bys for emergency potty breaks whereas you may well be 20 miles from a service station when you really need one!) And for such events, you can buy the 'Travel John Jr' disposable urinals - strong plastic bags which turn liquid into a gel that is safely disposable.

Your little one might not be at the 'are we there yet?' stage for now, but keeping him or her occupied can be a trial.
There are quite a few nice backseat amusement stations on the market. These include the Lamaze Back Seat Fun Centre (£14.99), which hangs over the back of a front car seat to provide visual stimulation for infants over three months. Complete with mirror and dangling fun characters.

And of course, there's always two-hour car journeys where you sing Old MacDonald from start to finish, moving from every farmyard animal you can think of onto llamas, tropical fish and dinosaurs...