So much for all the advice about taking toys and colouring to make flights with babies and toddlers bearable, what parents really want to know is whether it is safe to medicate their children. Most of the discussion is about Phenergan – an over-the-counter medicine officially given for motion sickness, nausea, vomiting and itching and unofficially for sedating children before travel. Some parents swear by it. Others are dead against. Mainly because sometimes, in some children, rather than inducing drowsiness, the medicine is said to have a reverse effect, making them over active (AKA a total nightmare).

I think I would have put some of the tales of children going “mental” while their mothers “sob” in the lavatories” down to urban legend had a friend of mine not experienced it for herself.

On a, thankfully short, flight to the Alps, her normally boisterous two-year-old, whom she’d dosed up ahead of travel, turned into a raving monster that made life for everybody on board a total misery. Sobbing in the lavatories was only the start of it. I don’t think she stopped until she got home a week later.

Parents should also be aware that incorrect dosage could cause excessive sedation with some people reporting drowsiness in their offspring for several days. So, my advice is to consult your GP, or stick to colouring – or maybe camomile tea. Ponce-tastic (to use a Mumsnet phrase) as it might sound, my daughter used to find it very soothing on flights. We haven’t tried taking it on board since safety restrictions on liquids were introduced (she’s that much older now), but it might be worth a try.

There’s no way we won’t be sitting together – is there?

I think it’s a scandal that airlines make families pay to sit together (usually about £5 per passenger, per leg of the journey). But increasingly they do and somehow manage to make it sound like they are doing you a favour. I usually pay - resentfully - because, appealing though sitting a few rows away from my children might sound, I don't really fancy the fall out.

In the future, I will also pay for priority boarding on Ryanair. We didn’t the last time we flew to Italy; mistakenly thinking it was only available to passengers without baggage (you can pay at the airport if you have baggage) and found ourselves almost at the back of the queue.

Luckily, thanks to years of practice rushing for the last available seat on the Tube, we found seats together, but I kept wondering what would have happened if we hadn’t. Would we have had to have gone up and down the aisle asking people to move, or seat our children next to total strangers? Jane Knight, the deputy travel editor of The Times, had a similar experience, which you can read about here.

Do they have car seats abroad?

Well, yes of course they do. And most car rental companies have them for hire. So, in theory, you don’t have to lug your own. Bizarrely, I have found that the time when you really need your own car seat is when you don’t plan to hire a car, but expect to take airport transfers and taxis.

If you do decide to take your own it is a good idea to check on the airline website whether you have to pay and there are any restrictions. Ryanair, for example, does charge (funny that) as the car seat counts towards accompanying adult's baggage for which you have to pay a baggage fee per item (from £5), per one-way flight.

Should I take my own travel cot?

Some hotels can guarantee a cot; some say you can have one if there’s one available. Which is a fat lot of use. If this is the case, you’re better off taking your own although you might have to pay for it on the flight (see Ryanair above). You might want to take your own anyway. I have encountered some pretty ropey numbers – even in fancy hotels. Once, when my son had a bug, he vomited terribly in the hotel cot. I cleaned it up as best I could and asked reception to make sure it was disinfected before being used again. It was a five-star hotel but I didn’t have a lot of faith that it would be.

What do you do in the evening?

The children are in bed, but 7pm is a bit early for you. If we’re staying in a hotel, we tend to go native and take them out to supper with us. I have also, like a lot of other mothers I've read about on message boards, resorted to spending the evening reading in the bathroom or lavatory, desperately hoping the light under the door won’t disturb the children.

We have also tried waiting until they are asleep and then taking the monitor (we always travel with our own) and nipping downstairs for a drink, but I’m not sure how many people will feel happy doing that after the abduction of Madeleine McCann. It’s easier when you’re self catering of course: you can't top cheap wine and beating your husband at scrabble in my book.

Times recommends

• Britain's top 10 New Year's Day brunches
• Mozambique's lost islands
• The best things to see and do in 2010