So the last time we went on an overseas holiday my baby was simply that......a baby.
At only 4
months old it was pretty simple. I heard
all of these horror stories of flying with babies and how you need all of these
THINGS to keep them occupied etc......I’m guessing those horror stories weren’t
applicable to babies that can’t yet walk, talk or basically do anything without
adult assistance.
So the trip
went simple, get a wall cot seat......yes, they attach a cot to the wall in
front of you. This is given to you when
you ask for it and until then you just hold them and share a seatbelt. So we ask for the cot once we have taken off,
lil Mr. Has a feed, I put him in his sleeping bag and he went to sleep on us
and we transferred him. SO EASY!!!!!!
Ummmmmm,
well now we are about to attempt the big trip.
He is going to be 18 months old.
Won’t sit still, walks and runs everywhere, throws things, screams at
most things.......no wait......screams at everything and is pretty much a
little toddler who is NOT going to enjoy being confined to a small area for 3 ½
hours (first flight) and then 3 ½ hours (2nd flight). Yes, stupid I know, we got a stopover
flight. I have since been told that your
ears (if like mine don’t pop properly and I end up in pain on the way down) on
a second consecutive flight end up worse than if you were just to do one
flight. I am hoping that lil Mr. Got his
dads ears and it dosn’t bother him, otherwise Daddy is going to have HEAPS of
fun dealing with both of us in excruciating pain.
So I have
slowly been stocking up on a few new toys to bring out on the aeroplane. They probably won’t last long in keeping him
quiet buy hey, no harm in trying right?
I am also going to get SHITLOADS of snack foods J Fill em up and hope that it will add
to the quiet time. Either that or he is
going to throw them at the people around us and wait for their reaction, I
honestly hope they ignore him......THEY should hope they ignore him or he is
going to repeat and repeat because IT’S FUNNY!!!!!!
I am hoping
they will give us a cot seat on all 4 flights, I got to pick the seats but the
cot ones were taken ARGH!!! So have to
pick down the back smack bang in the middle of the plane, no window for extra
distraction......just an isle on either side of us. That will be fun :)
I know we
are going to be those people that I used to hate, honestly I used to think
WHYYYYY is that baby CRYING!!! Get it
away!!! I hate to admit that but it’s
true. I’m sure plenty of us have been on
flights (before we had children) and while taking your seat you see that there
is a child behind you, next to you or even on the same half of the bloody plane
as you and you think......”Honestly?? I
hope that kid behaves.” The worst are
when you have had such a great holiday and there has been lots of drinking with
friends. You are on the 2nd
week of your constant hangover and heading home, thinking that you will “just
sleep on the plane” hahahaha but NO there’s a baby in your half of the plane,
it screamed on take-off, landing, when someone walked past and just simply
because IT CAN!! Please don’t let us be
that family L
So I will
log off for now because I want to finish this blog AFTER the flight J
Lets see
what happened......
Honestly......it
actually went pretty well. 2 of the 4
flights we had to have baby boy on our knee as the plane was literally chokka
block. Thankfully both times the “other
person” let us have the isle.
Speaking of
the isle, I am pretty sure the air hostesses do not like children in the
isle......at all......EVER!! I mean they
were lovely, so don’t get me wrong there, but after an hour or so of them going
up and down the isle serving people drinks and food and just checking on the
people who pushed their button to ask what the white fluffy things outside are......they
actually stopped asking us to move baby boy.
I am thankfull!! They carefully
pushed him to the side each time and moved on.
This was so much easier than them having to interrupt me and also having
to loose momentum.
I now wish
that all air hostesses would just move him to the side and carry on haha. Although, the only negative thing about that
is that he nearly got run over by the huge food/drink filled trolleys a couple
of times. Now there’s where I would like
an exception to be made and for them to ask me to move him. Luckily (mother’s intuition right??) I just
kind of knew each time a trolley was coming and managed to quickly lift him out
of the isle. But having to lift him
every time someone just wants to walk past, not so cool. So to everyone out there!!!!!! If you are on a plane and there is a child in
the isle, just move them gently to the side and keep moving. I thank all of the people who did this!! I still had to lift baby boy most of the time
but some people understood, especially after an hour or so when I just started
pulling his head towards me and kindly saying “just push him out of the way”. Too harsh? I don’t think so, the 100+ times I
had to pick him up anyway, my lower back hailed me for that comment J
So as you
can see the isle was a saviour for us.
ALSO the other 2 flights when he got a seat of his own!! Yes....his....own....seat!!! We had 3 seats between us (this will happen
soon anyway as we will have to pay for his ticket in full) and it was amazing. J
Another saviour was food.
I packed so
much food, crap food I must admit, but it was food that kept him happy, content
and stopped his hears from hurting on the way down 4 times. We had baby muesli bars, snack packs of fruit
stuff that was rolled in sugar (why did they roll them in sugar?), arrowroot
biscuits (his fave....for now until he meets other branded biscuits) and other
random things that I can’t remember right now.
My third and
final saviour was 2 small bags of play things.
This was so that I could bring just one bag out at a time. So after he got bored with the initial bag I
could bring the next one out and put the other one away. They were on continual rotate which kept him
very happy. Bag one had little books,
micro machine cars, snuffalupagus (one of his fave toys) and another big car
toy. The other bag was actually a giant
pencil case with crayons, pencils, paper and a drawing book. This kept him happy. We tried the TV with earphones but he didn’t
really care, still a bit young at this stage as he’s not really much of a TV
kid during the day (just at night when Mummy is tired). Toys, food, drawing and the isle.
These 4
things kept us sane, I won’t lie though as he did have a couple of
meltdowns. I don’t blame him!! All up he was made, through no choice of his
own, to stay in a confined area with minimal toys, space, movement AND with
heaps of people that he didn’t know walking past, staring, smiling, trying to
make him smile. 14 HOURS!!! He did bloody well.
As you can
see I havn’t actually blogged much but that will be changing soon. Thanks for sticking around to all of you, and
thanks for reading my stuff.
