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Northern California Babies
MsPurple24
member
PM me for our family/baby blog
Haley Beth ~ March 3rd, 2011
Flying with infant: the good, bad, and ugly
MsPurple24
member
OK, to follow up on our conversation from last week, we are now back from our trip to WI and 4 flights with a 2.5 month old. I'll be blogging about our trip for the next few days, so I'm sure there will be more detail there.
On the way to WI, our first flight was from San Jose to Phoenix. Baby slept perfectly- I didn't even breastfeed on the way up or down, I just let her sleep. The pressure didn't seem to bother her. From Phoenix to Milwaukee, the same happened, but I breastfed on the way up. This baby only nurses for about 15 minutes and it takes about 30 minutes for an ascent or descent, but again- no problems with pressure.
Giant white noise machine? Yes! I now love and appreciate the insanely loud noise in the cabin of an airplane, because it kept H asleep. AND.... for the flight home, it kept people from hearing her scream. Because oh, she screamed on the flight home. Unfortunately, baby still hates her car seat, and since she was screaming for the whole drive from my parents' house to Milwaukee, she couldn't recover when we got to the airport and she screamed her overtired little head off both in the airport and halfway back to California. But if your baby is young enough (and 2.5 months apparently is young enough), the screams are still at a low enough volume that the airplane noise drowns it out. Only the people close to us could hear her, none of them complained, and The Husband spent much of the flight in the back of the plane with the Ergo, so it was really just the flight attendants who were even aware that she was in total meltdown.
Tips that I loved (thanks largely to sewhappy, who has been prepping me for months):
-Bring a Boppy if you can. It gives baby something to rest on while she's in your lap, especially if she's small. And it's obviously helpful for BFing. I was really glad to have it.
-Bring the stroller and car seat to the airport and gate check them. Like I said, she hates her car seat, but we knew we would need it in WI even if we weren't using it on the plane. So I carried her in the Ergo and he pushed the stroller with all of our carry-on stuff in it (diaper bag, boppy, food we bought in the airport, husband's backpack). Worked perfectly.
-If you're with your husband and there's a third seat with a stranger, try to get the middle and aisle seats, not the window. I thought I would want the window for privacy during BFing, but I am so glad we were on the outside. We were up and down so much with the baby, especially when she was screaming... or we needed water, or we needed to change her, or I needed to go into the bathroom and cry (uh, yeah).
-If you're on Southwest and seating yourself, ask if there will be any empty seats on the plane so you can snag that 3rd seat in the row. If there aren't (as was the case for us), just look as miserable as possible and keep your baby in plain view so all the businessmen will pass you by and a nice older lady who raised 6 kids will be the one to take pity on the new parents and sit with you. Worked for us and she was a gem.
-I think EmmieB was the one who recommended an overnight diaper and footie pajamas. Both are very good ideas! We were using disposables, but I was really surprised at the absence of opportunities to change her diaper. Thank goodness those Huggies can hold a heavy load of pee... and we were fortunate in that she didn't poop during travel (otherwise I would have had to improvise, obviously).
-But the footie pajamas- yes. I didn't do that, and I wish I had. We don't typically have an issue with lost socks, but when you're traveling, you're passing baby back and forth, propping her up, wrangling her while she thrashes in her rage... the socks were coming off constantly.
-Finally, ask for a "baby's first flight" certificate! This may be the scrapbooker in me, but I'm so glad someone told me to ask for one. It's super cute, and the flight attendants all wanted to sign it for us!
PM me for our family/baby blog
Haley Beth ~ March 3rd, 2011
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