I will be a big downer on this thread and warn you about illness (which I understand, can happen anywhere).
On our 1st cruise, DD was 18 months. We sat behind a family on the airplane who (now in retrospect) obviously had RSV. We flew into the cruise the night before, boarded, and DD came down with a fever on night #2. We did not pack an ear thermometer, and her temperature was peaking at 103.9 or so every 3 hours. We had to be in the medical clinic every few hours to get her fever checked. The night nurse was NOT NICE about it at all. All they had for us were the paper thermometer strips. If we wanted her actual temperature taken, we had to go down to the clinic and wake someone up to get checked.
This made for a very stressful cruise since we had to:
1. Alternate Motrin & Tylenol every 4 hours to make sure her temperature did not go above 104 during the cruise. (
DCL did not have the infant suspension, only the children's one so you have to be careful when you measure the dosage). Shower her constantly to keep her temp down.
2. Get her seen several times by the ship doc to assess whether she had meningitis or a secondary infection
3. Go to the Cocoa Beach ER immediately after the cruise, get a chest xray done to see if she came down with pneumonia.
The whole thing was a nightmare, we ended up at Celebration Hospital which ambulanced her later to DT Orlando's pediatric ward where she stayed overnight (deyhydration, breathing treatments, etc).
I completely understand that this was a freak thing that happened, but the problem is, this CAN HAPPEN.
You can imagine how we felt being "stuck" on the ship for 3 days wondering if she was coming down with something which needed immediate medical attention.
Just a thought.
We traveled (non cruise) with her at 4 months (Hawaii), 6 months (Mexico ~ what were we thinking), 1 year (Hawaii) and at 15 months (WDW). We just got real lucky (and took it for granted) during those trips that nothing like this happened.
I would consult your Ped and see what he/she thinks. At the very least, schedule your cruise for a month (at least) after your child's 1 year vaccinations (MMR, Varicella) to prevent additional problems.
I'm sharing my experience because we had considered ourselves to be pretty travel savvy (even with an infant) and we were COMPLETELY caught off-guard.
**Obviously, the biggest difference between cruise travel w/an infant versus non-cruise travel is that you are *stuck* if the infant gets sick (but not sick enough to turn the ship around). Being a parent, the waiting-to-get-off the ship part was really horrible. After our last experience, I would still cruise with a baby 1yr+, but with all vaccinations and with more preparedness (like medications, thermometers, nasal aspirator, saline solution, benadryl, notifying our Ped prior to leaving, etc).