Infants and Airplane Travel

Shorts become a hat when daddy is left in charge

First of all, for you women who look amazing when you travel (like you are off to Milan for a Vogue photo shoot) and especially if you are doing it with children – good for you but fuck you. I mean that in the nicest way possible. Secondly, no matter how cute your child is, no one is EVER glad to see them get on an air plane. Especially if it is a red-eye flight and everybody planned on falling asleep and magically waking up at their destination. It was an eight hour flight to DFW with somewhere between a two to three hour layover then two more hours to Cedar Rapids Iowa, the site of Duncan's family reunion. 

 

The Duper usually goes to bed by 7 pm, and our flight took off at 8 pm, so he was already up an hour past his bedtime. The boy is a pretty active sleeper, steamrolling all over the place and making full use of the pack and play that serves as his crib. Duper mostly wanted his mama, which meant I was pretty much charged with holding 20+ pounds of a fussy squirming displeased baby that really just wanted his familiar bed. He was definitely thinking “okay it's bedtime, where is my crib, who are all these people and what are all these weird noises?!?” While trying to soothe him into sleeping in my arms I shot a hateful glance at Duncan as he reclined his seat, closed his eyes, and slept. So that's what it's gonna be huh? I get to baby-wrangle for the next 12 hours while you sleep? Fucker. I mentally grumbled on like Yosemite Sam for a bit longer but I'll spare you any further details of name-calling. Sooner than later my son found his way to slumber on my chest, waking up crying whenever he had the urge to roll around and found himself contained. I skipped that nights sleep completely. And to be fair, he did sleep a few rotations in the Baby Bjorn on daddy's chest.

Here's what I learned about traveling with a 9 month old baby on the way there –

1. Make sure your baby is interested in eating on take off and landing so you can nurse or offer a bottle to keep their ears popped.
2. Take the window seat so baby's head or feet are in no danger of getting smacked by the drink cart or tired people trying to get to the bathroom.
3. Take disposable pads (like incontinence pads meant to protect a bed) to cover public changing tables, or whatever surface you may find yourself changing a diaper. My tour included airport terminal floors, unoccupied airplane seats, and airplane fold-down changing tables one could barely fit a teacup chihuahua on. The pads keep the yuck of the world off baby, baby poop off of the world, and make a convenient way to wrap up and dispose of the whole mess.
4. Once you are done packing take half the clothes and twice the snacks.

 

Family made our stay amazing. Cousin Jodie had a friend with twin toddlers that still had all their baby stuff. We had the use of a car with a baby seat, a pack and play for the Duper to sleep in (which is exactly what he's used to), a high chair, books and toys! If you're traveling to see family remember to have them ask their friends with kids for baby accommodations.

The way home was an opposite itinerary, Take-off at 7am. The airport in Cedar Rapids was small and five minutes away so we didn't have to be there stupid early. Woke the boy up at 5am, and he pretty much slept in my arms that two hour flight to Dallas. The 8 hour flight from Dallas back to Maui? He took a 20 minute nap. This could have been catastrophic, but Duncan had a stroke of genius booking our flight home.

The only 20 minute nap he took on the 8 hour flight home

The flight was nearly sold out, and Duncan went online to book our seats. We were on a large airliner that had two-seat window rows and a three seat row down the middle of the plane. There was an available row of three near the back of the plane. Duncan booked each of us at the aisles, and left the middle seat open. The gamble he took was that unless the flight sold completely out, no one would choose a middle seat between strangers, especially once they saw there was a baby involved. The gamble worked, Duper mercifully had his own seat! I covered it with a baby blanket, busted out snacks and a few toys, and he proceeded to have an eight hour play date with mom and dad. The people around us were good sports. He vocalized the song of his people emphatically to the gentlemen behind us, and discovered jumping on the tray table was great fun. At least for him. Near the end of the flight Duper had to be discouraged from pulling the hair of the three people seated in front of us.

So we lived through it, but I am in no hurry to leave the island again any time soon. If you really want your baby to sleep on a plane I suggest two things. Chloroform and a rag.