We just left for our 3-week trailer adventure, towing our little house (emphasis on little) all the way from Ottawa to the maritimes with some fun stops along the way. One of the challenges of fitting 10 in a trailer made for 9 (on paper, reality is more like 7) is what to do with the babies. The trailer is either in eat mode or sleep mode with strictly enough room to do one thing at a time: prepare food or sleep. The outside is dirt.
Before going any further, let the record show that camping with babies is a royal nuisance and should be avoided. But if you can’t avoid it because, like me, you have other children for whom the definition of a good time goes beyond napping at regular intervals in their own bed, then you may need to find ways to compensate for the sheer lousiness of camping with infants.
(Some people camp with baby because they love camping and want to share their love of sleeping on dirt with their unappreciative infant/toddler. There is nothing I can say to help these folks.)
(As another aside, my 3 year-old just fell asleep singing “I want to go home to sleep” on the tune of Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift. So there.)
But yes, so you have to camp with infants or toddlers because you have ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER CHOICE and you are looking for tips to make your life more pleasant or at the very least less miserable. My first tip would be to get a cheap wading pool (cheap as in $15 is too much) and bring a bag of toys. The wading pools are the first things out of the trailer and the twins have a clean dry place to play. They can also be filled with one inch of water and placed in the shade at the splash pad on a hot day.
Sleeping in tents with babies can and will be a pain in the neck. And the lower back. Co-sleeping has been our saving grace. For Lucas especially, home is where the boob is. And it may sound like a drag at home but it’s a boon on the road. Here he is snuggling-up to Sarah in the queen size bed we share.
Of course, co-sleeping can be dramatic especially when you wake-up with your 3 year-old violently throwing-up on you. This morning’s shower was the best ever and it is with little sleep and some unplanned laundry that we hit the road for the second leg of our RV extravaganza!
Hey Vero 
What I always found about camping is that it creates incredible memories for the kids but for mom it’s just same thing but with none of the tools you need to make your life easier…that being said we laugh most about the disasters we’ve had – camper being destroyed during rain storm, child stepping into fire pit after being blinded by mom’s flashlight…and I know it has created very strong bonds between my children. So all in all – though it’s tough it is so worth it.
But the dirt is half the fun of camping! I’ve taken baby (singular) camping before, but it was the destination not a waypoint, and it was in bear country so we had to eat outside. You are right that sleeping is the big problem in a tent trailer, especially if baby is used to going to sleep in a crib. That’s a good tip about the pools as play centres. The best tip for baby camping is: Temporarily lower all your standards! 🙂
I would go clinically insane if I took my family on a camping trip. Why are you doing this? 😀