So far, in his less than 7 months outside of the womb, Eli has been in cars, trains, and a ferry. Tomorrow he will add an airplane to that list of forms of transportation he has been in. All that will remain is a spaceship, which I imagine he will use to get to his spring break in 2030. But that’s neither here nor there. The scary thing is seeing how Eli will do on his first and second transcontinental flights.
I’m optimistic, for several reasons:
- Eli is a generally happy baby.
- Eli managed to get through an entire Mets game and fireworks show without a major incident.
- Both flights are early in the morning, when Eli is typically asleep or awake and smiley.
Still, I can’t help but imagining any of several nightmare scenarios. What if he won’t stop crying? What if he won’t stop pooping? What if he screams in this lady’s ear? (Seriously, read that story, it is all kinds of kooky.)
More likely is that Eli will get an awful lot of dirty looks when people realize he is on their flight. Personally, I have been more annoyed by adults than I have ever been by small children in my years of flying, but I am still not blind to the fact that people dread being on a long flight with a screaming baby. It will be weird for me to have someone give Eli a stink eye; up to now there have been only 2 reactions to a stranger seeing the little guy: pure delight or complete indifference. (MUCH more common is the former.) His sheer existence has never caused anyone dread, and I realize that may change in the JetBlue terminal tomorrow. But I figure if anyone frowns or glares at my son, Eli will just flash them his beautiful smile and win them over.
Wish us luck!
2 users commented in " Baby on a Plane "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackIt’s certainly a big gamble! If you’re flying JetBlue, then your intercontinental flight can’t be too bad. I’m sure people exist who are annoyed by babies on planes but my experience is that most people are delighted. Which is pretty annoying because they all want to hold your baby and sing to it etc. If your kid is a crawler now, that’s only going to make it more difficult. We’ve done it twice with Elana and she’s done well both times but it wasn’t easy. Pooping isn’t that bad but be prepared for there to be only one bathroom with the changing table and idiots who form a long line to that bathroom because they’re too lazy to walk to the back of the plane (not pleasant if you’ve got a face full of baby poop for 10-15min waiting for the bathroom). And that’s not to mention the risk of some catastrophic delays that sometimes happen at airports (snowstorm, rainstorms, etc). Excited yet? Ok so most likely it will be fine but there’s the occasional horror story
You had a face full of baby poop?
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