22 HR airplane ride!!

NovemberSno

Ok so we are going over season in 3 months with LO to visit family. The plane ride will be approximately 10 hrs 5 HR layover then 7 hrs. I booked the tickets and immediately have started to panic. What will I do with LO all that time!!! Any advice from anybody?  Especially mama's who've travelled long distances? Advice on things I'll need and how to keep LO from not driving everyone crazy??? 

hanmagan

We just did this traveling from new York to new Zealand and found it went a lot better than expected.  Hopefully your long leg is when the baby should be sleeping anyhow, this made it a lot easier for us. With the noise and movement of the plane dd slept so well. We had the bassinet seats which helped a ton as well for our long leg. We actually ended up with more space than usual in economy. For the shorter flight I bought the my brest friend travel pillow which blows up, dd just slept and fed on that and stayed very calm. Best of luck! Dd also seemed to suffer no jet lag, she just switched right over.

gumby22c

I'm leaving tomorrow to fly from Germany to Ohio with DS who is 4 months. I chose to book him his own seat for the long flight so I wouldn't have to hold him for 10 hours straight. Thankfully the long flight is partially at night so I hope it doesn't mess with his sleep schedule too much. A friend recommended bringing my boppy for the long flight as well, so I'm planning to do that. I plan to wear DS in the airport in the ergo so that I don't have to drag a stroller or car seat with me. I purchased a car seat and shipped it to my parents house, so I wouldn't need to drag one on the flight since I'm traveling alone. I can report back later this weekend if I survive the journey and let you know anything I figure out to make it go smoother!

amylee5185

We took our LO from DC to Colombia when she was just under 3 months. It was two 2 1/2- 3 hour flights with a 3 hour layover in the middle. I have a boba wrap that I used but we also took an umbrella style stroller with us and gate checked it so that we could entertain her (and ourselves) on the layover by doing laps around the airport.

I also packed an extra blanket in her diaper bag so that I could lay it down on the floor and let her lay and do tummy time waiting for our flights. I used my phone to play her some music during this time too. I know it doesn't sound awesome to let her hang out on the floor but since we didn't buy her a seat we were constantly holding her and she seemed to really enjoy having a little independent time on the blanket between flights. 

Last, and this only worked on 2 of our 4 flights, I opted to try to change our seats upon check in to be in an empty row. It put us in the last row on one, which kind of sucked because the seats didn't recline, but the sacrifice was worth it IMO. That way, my fiancé and I were booked in the aisle and window seats in a 3 seat row and, assuming that no one bought or switched to that middle seat at the last minute, that meant we got a third seat to use without having to buy it. This only worked when the flights were half empty but it doesn't hurt to try and the employees checking us in made it seem like this was a request they were used to trying to accommodate. 

Sorry this was so long! Good luck and remember that even if your LO gets upset and cries on the flight don't get too stressed out about it. I was so worried people were going to be mean and rude about it and no one was at all. She got a little fussy at one point but even then all anyone could say was how cute she was. I know there are some jerks out there but we didn't run into any which makes me feel better about humanity on the whole.