England/Scotland Itinerary Help

We spent 3 nights in York and I really felt like it was not enough. I would add your night there.

Will, I'd suggest posting this in the Scotland forum (or the England one) to get a better spread of replies. Both are busy forums with lots of regular contributors.

You'll see a lot of the Highlands driving from Edinburgh to Skye and most people want to maximise their time on Skye, but it's a longish journey so you could break the journey both there and back. Maybe somewhere like Fort William on the way to Skye?
I'd add your extra night on to the journey from Skye back to Edinburgh. It's going to be a 6 hour drive and that's without any stops for sightseeing, feeding baby (or yourselves) etc. You could stop in somewhere like Pitlochry.

Another thing to bear in mind is the type of accommodation you book. Many small B&Bs don't accept babies, so you might find your self restricted to hotels. In Edinburgh and London I would strongly recommend the Premier Inn chain. They offer family friendly rooms and are clean and comfortable while not breaking the bank. On Skye you might find things a little more restricted. There are a couple of hotels in Portree (the main village) which are not bad Cullin Hills, Portree Hotel, Marmalade hotel but they are pricy. You might also consider a 'camping pod' on Skye, which is a cabin with open plan bedroom and living room area and a shower room. This might work quite well with a baby as you'd have a small kitchen area.

Having taught “childbirth preparation” sometime ago, and having taken babies on planes several times, my first suggestion would be to minimize the flights and just use that direct flight between your airport and London both ways. Then travel by train in a loop from there.

The hardest part of flying for infants (and their parents) is the cabin pressure change on takeoff and landing. Their ears do not adjust well, and it causes pain for them. The recommended solution is to give them a bottle (or nurse them) so they swallow to help the pressure adjustment, but that is not always possible, and it doesn’t always help. It seems nearly half the flights we take these days have a crying infant as we are coming in to land, and it is so sad to hear.

Some long-haul planes are pressurized better than others—the 787 and A350 for example—so if one of those is a choice for your flight, that would be great. But if you land at Heathrow, wait for your connecting flight to Edinburgh, and then takeoff and land again, this time in an A320 or similar (not as modern in pressurization), your baby will be going through the takeoff and landing again.

So consider a loop—-From London to York, then Edinburgh and Skye, then back south to London by the more western route, via Glasgow, with an overnight or two along the way, maybe in the Lake District. Or others may have better suggestions for a good stop.

Thank you so much for the responses - there is some really good info I hadn't considered! I'll post this in the Scotland forum as well as one of you recommended. Thanks again!

Many places to go.

St. Andrews, just north of Edinburgh is nice.
Durham, north of York is worth a day.