How young is too young to take a child to Roatan

I know I'm going to get different answers and I'll be talking to our doctor's about it as well. How long would you wait to take a child to Roatan? My wife is due in November and we are trying to plan a future trip. We visited Roatan on a cruise so we'd like to get back there in the future, but we certainly don't want to put our child at risk.

Interesting question.

If this is your first child you're expecting I would suggest you wait for arrival and make that judgement for yourself.

It's not about the danger of being near the ocean or in a third world country with a child. I've raised 2 kids in the Philippines and now raising 7 more in Belize. Lots of kids are raised in Roatan and all over Central America. Clean water, mosquito netting....it can be done.

It's about how you handle being a parent. Some are harder than others.

I've traveled with a 5 month old baby from the Philippines to Ohio but that was to see family. I wouldn't do that for a diving vacation at that age. Little kids SHOULD be a full time job. Hard to enjoy diving and that vacation atmosphere when you have one dragging on a teat. You'll know when the time is right.

There are many considerations, and Hank49 laid it out fairly well.

I would add that you must understand that there are essentially no medical facilities in the Bay Islands that you would recognize as such, certainly no ER (anywhere close to US Standards) for immediate care. The nearest hospital for critical care would be Houston, which is a 2.5 hr flight after you get airborne.

We started at 6 months:

Florida @ 6 months
Mexico @ 9 months
Mexico again @ 14 months
Maui @ 21 months
Turks and Caicos @ 30 months
Big island HI @ 3 years
Grand Cayman @ 3.5 years
Kauai @ 4
Barbados @ 4.5

Start early and continue often. We've had to take him to hospitals in Mexico (bad cold) and GC (accident) and the service was top notch. He also has a peanut allergy. Just make sure you know where the hospitals are and your travel insurance is up to date.

No grandparents close by? Well, I enjoy my nanny/soccer mom weekends. I don't know if I could keep the grandkids a week?

Florida @ 6 months
Mexico @ 9 months
Mexico again @ 14 months
Maui @ 21 months
Turks and Caicos @ 30 months
Big island HI @ 3 years
Grand Cayman @ 3.5 years
Kauai @ 4
Barbados @ 4.5

these places all have first world medical treatment easily available, roatan does not.

I wouldn't take a child to Roatan under the age of 6, and definitely not if they have any underlying medical conditions. Lack of hospitals is a concern. The insects (noseums and mosquitos) and such worry me tremendously with someone with a low resistence to disease. Coating a baby with DEET is just as bad as the bugs.
just my opinion, as a mother.

How young is too young to expose your child to Malaria?

I'm trying to think back to when our kids were young.....they're all over 20 now....to answer your question.

Two out of four used to run high fevers when they got ear infections, which happened fairly frequently when they were under 2. It's hard to differentiate the early symptoms of an ear infection from meningitis in a child who can't speak....so having a hospital/clinic close was a comfort for us (I believe there is a vaccine for meningitis available now). One child was (still is) allergic to insect bites, so that was always a concern. The eldest son contracted 2 or 3 "weird" illnesses when he was under 3....nothing serious as it turned out, but nice to have good medical care close by. Our eldest daughter tended to get croupy which is scary but eased considerably with a vaporizer - doesn't work too well if the power goes out though. The cold, moist air of Vancouver also helped, so sometimes a quick trip from her dry room to the outside porch was enough to ease her symptoms. Our second daughter developed chronic bronchitis when she was around 1....we handled it with asthma medication and learned to listen to her chest to detect the possibility of pneumonia, which always meant a quick trip to the clinic/hospital/doctor. She "outgrew" the condition by the time she was 4.

I guess what I'm saying is it was always reassuring to have the clinic/hospital available when the kids were little....by the time they were in school (5 years old) we'd pretty much figured out what each was prone to and could deal with the cuts, scrapes, bruises and bleeding ourselves.

So thinking back, we would have probably been reluctant to take our kids to Roatan, until they were at least school age.

Thanks for the responses. Sorry I've been too busy this weekend to respond. This is our first and of course we will probably be over cautious the first time around. I am very concerned about the lack of good medical care.

We do have family that could watch the child, but when the time comes, I'm not sure we will be able to leave the child. We'll see though, there are certainly many other places that are more appropriate (safe) for a young child that are also good vacation spots.