TimeOut

Gaz
537

• Show profile
• Show other posts

MTF - I beg to differ...

I was of the same opinion until I had my son.

He is now 9.5 months and he has been to three continents and 5 countries of which two were long hauls - Sydney - Hong Kong and Hong Kong -Rome.  His first flight was at 2 months and his last was at 7 months.

Having had my share of crying babies, we were fully prepared.  And on every flight, everyone commented what a wonderful traveller he was.

The key to this is actually understand why babies cry on planes:

1) During take off and landing, the equalising pressure creates discomfort as babies don't know how do deal with this.  The easiest thing is to give the baby a bottle so they are swallowing to "pop" the ears.  In our case, we would "boob" him on take off an landing.

2) Keeping the baby on its cycle is critical and thus picking the right flight time is part of the art.  We take PM flights, so his body clock would naturally knock him out

3) Each parent took turns to occupy him during waking moments while the other ate or sleep.  During my shift, I would walk him up and down the aisle and chat with the flight attendents. 

As for your other comments, our total carry on was 1 baby pack, 2 back packs and a Baby Bjorn. We were able to travel light because we were breast feeding so food was totally self produced.

And here is the secret tactic.  Before we took off, I would introduce my son, by name to those around us.  "This is Vincent.  He is normally a pretty good traveller and we will do our best to make sure he doesn't make too much noise during the flight.  But if he does, please be patient with us."  It made him a little person with a name and not just a baby anymore.  This is a huge ice breaker and we even had people volunteer to look carry him.

The flight from Rome to Hong Kong was the best.  We had passengers come from their seats just to play with him and to chat with us.  As for the crying, he didn't cry for long periods and if we couldn't calm him down within a few minutes, we would boob him and that did the trick.

Babies aren't the issue.  Toddlers are! Especially the terrible twos.  My strategy then will be to drug him with valium and then sneak vodka into his juice.

Gaz