There is nothing worse than having to do a twenty- three hour flight with two children under the age of four. Okay maybe doing a bungee jump over crocodile infested waters and the rope breaking comes a close second!
I’ve never been a huge fan of flying but a few gins and catching up on all of those movies you missed at the cinema made it bearable. I used to feel sorry for those people chasing their toddlers up the aisle and irritation at the noise coming from wailing babies. Now I am that person and those are my children who are interrupting your night snooze or even worse kicking the back of your seat.
I recently flew to the UK for Christmas, I’ve done this flight a couple of times by myself with our eldest child but it was the first time since having two children. Conveniently my husband claimed he had to work so he was following on two weeks later!
We’d chosen night flights thinking the boys would sleep but the four year old was too excited and the baby just knew something was amiss to his normal nightly routine. The entire car trip to the airport was peppered with screaming and questions about where the airplane was and when were we getting on it.
As my husband waved us goodbye, I resembled the children’s game Buckaroo with hand luggage that was overflowing with bribery snacks, toys and anti-depressants! One gust of wind and I was sure to topple over!
Then the queuing began which has to be one of the worse parts of travelling. There I was, overladen with bags, baby in the front carrier and a four year old loudly lamenting the fact that we were still not on the airplane. People began staring at us and I loudly remarked that my son was just expressing how we all felt. Luckily we had all visited the toilet otherwise it could have been a much more harrowing experience!
Eventually we reached the gate after more queuing and the boys could play on the floor. Unfortunately, the baby had just mastered the art of crawling and isn’t one for sitting still. This is the time when most responsible parents resort to the drugs, however, I thought I better refrain! Seriously, I refuse to give my children phenergen to render them unconscious, as I am both a sadist and secretly scared that it would have the opposite hyperactive inducing effect!
The pitying looks from other passengers began and I could almost hear them sigh with relief when I walked past them on the plane. Luckily we had the bassinet seats, which meant we got more legroom and nobody sitting in front of us. They are probably the best seats on the plane but the catch is you generally have to be travelling with a baby!
Both boys slept for the majority of the first flight while I inhaled a bottle of red wine and snorted my way through Bridesmaids (I may have even slapped my thigh a couple of times). There were a couple of breast feeding on the aisle incidents where the baby was in danger of serious head trauma and lots of patting the baby to sleep which went against all my sleep school training.
On arriving in Hong Kong we had to depart the aircraft with all of our hand luggage and children! Even though we would be returning to the same seats, you could not leave anything on the plane. So we all departed the aircraft to join a queue to scan our bags that we had just brought off the plane in order to get back on the plane! Such a pointless exercise and I was not going to queue for thirty minutes carrying more weight than a Biggest loser contestant. So I sat down and watched every other sucker queue up while the children played.
Back on the plane and only thirteen hours to go! My four year old was great and apart from me having to slide his headphones back on to his head every five minutes, was easily entertained by ‘on demand’ viewing. The baby was hard work, no sleeping for him or me or the people sitting directly behind us!
Toilet time was fun with the three of us squeezing in to the cubicle and on one occasion the dummy went for a swim in the toilet bowl! It had a quick wash but ended back in the toddlers’ mouth a little bit faster than it would have at home. He’s too old for a dummy anyway I reasoned in my sleep deprived brain and it was his wee anyway!
After lots of child wrangling, the occasional flirt with the stewards (baby not me), checking of the flight path every two seconds and throwing food at baby in the bassinet, it was time to land. Naturally this is when my preschooler decided to fall in to a deep sleep! Our flight ended with him being carried off the plane by three airhostesses!
Having to fly with small children is not easy but it does give you something to focus on throughout a long flight. Airports would be easier to navigate if people with children were treated more kindly. As a lady at the airport remarked: ‘I can’t believe they didn’t usher you through first, in France people travelling with children are given priority.” An unlikely occurrence in a country that has only just acknowledged paid maternity leave.
It might not have been like flying prior to children but its success can be measured by my answer to everybody's first question about any flight -
“ Bridesmaids.”
“ Bridesmaids.”
