While we’re on the subject, does the EarDoc device really work? Seems like it would be a useful thing to bring with kids on a flight, if it works.
Broomstick, thanks for the information. I just checked our seat, and found the sticker indicating that it is approved for use on aircraft. Nobody’s looking for an exception - I’m just clarifying what the rules are. 
DO bring the baby car seat on your trip – you’ll very likely need to be in a car during your stay, and most people don’t have baby seats, or at least not the ones suitable for small infants. Whether you also take it on the plane is your call, or you can just check it like any other luggage.
What we used to do was use an umbrella stroller (a light, folding stroller) to wheel the kid thru the airport. We’d securely put the car seat in the stroller, and the baby restrained into the seat. Quit a few babies find the restriction of the seat comforting as they’re being moved in the stroller, since they’re used to it in a car. Then you just wheel this contraption through the airport. At the gate, we’d check the stroller, then lug the car seat with baby still strapped in onto the plane, then strap the car seat into the airline seat (this assumes you bought the seat).
It doesn’t sound like the baby is the one in need of sedation, bub.
The TSA has relaxed the restriction on breast milk. Link.
I’m just concerned that, this parent being male, the TSAgent may question or find suspicious the circumstances of a male traveling with an infant and breastmilk. I realize that to those of us here this makes perfect sense, but you never know how a particular security agent will act. From my years in social work areas I saw male parents encounter all sorts of stupidity and prejudice from bureaucrats, usually along the lines of “where is this child’s mother?”, as if men were inherently incompetent parents. I hope that that will not be the case here.
Or maybe I’m just really cynical this week.
No opinion on the amount you should carry for your flight – I don’t know your kid’s appetite, nor the duration of your trip – but for keeping it cold, just buy a very small cooler for 1-2 big bottles of milk. I recall we had a small one that was exactly the size of two tall baby bottles, and a small gel-pack fit in the side for cooling. It looked like a lunchbox that a kid might tote to school. I’d look for a soft-side one, so you can stuff it in another carry-on; less stuff to lug around is always good.
Ugh. Worst flight of my life was 5 years ago - our relocation from Hong Kong to Perth with our 12 month old acting as if she was mentally traumatised the entire trip. Never, ever again.
Considering that this situation occurs daily throughout the country and I have yet to read a single report of a TSA badgering a father with an infant over breastmilk*, I’d go with the latter.
*Since these silly rules were relaxed for formula and breastmilk, anyway.
I took several flights with my kid when she was between 3-12 months. I paid one fare and carried her on my lap. The airline we used had special seatbelts for exactly this situation. The belt clipped around my baby and onto my belt (making something like a figure 8 when both belts were on). They gave me the option of either the stroller of a fold-up crib as a freebie for luggage.
The kid was happily sucking on her bottle (cleared with a quick phone call before the flight) during takeoff and landings. The one time we were delayed and ran out of milk, she grizzled and I got her to suckle on my finger till her ears cleared.
Seriously, ring the airline you’ll be traveling with - they’ll give you all their requirements and options and they can tell you if you’ve missed anything - they’ll have had a lot more experience with babies on planes than anyone here. They’ll know their own specific regulations which may vary between companies.
A couple years ago I flew with my then 11 year old son to Vancouver for an Alaska cruise. I brought a signed, notarized letter from his mother stating that we were traveling with her permission. It was a little scary. Not so much TSA, but immigration people grilled my son. “Does your mom know where you are?” “Is this man your father?”
My son has a very good sense of humor. Luckily, I had stressed the importance of not screwing around.
Good on the immigration people, sound like they were doing their jobs. International parental child abduction is no joke.
Oh, I agree. But like I said, it was a bit scary.
Noise pollution causes stress. Stress has real physical consequences. It’s not “solely for convenience”.
What people frequently forget while obsessing about the babies is that not all adults like to fly either.
I accept - mentally - that this method of transport is the safest and also often the only way of getting from point A to point B. However, I am emotionally a coiled spring of tension and terror, and what I really don’t need is an infant screaming away in my ear for an hour (or more) when my adrenaline factor is already off the charts.
Seriously. It’s not that I’m a nasty person.
It’s not that I’m a child-hating bitch from hell.
It’s that I am BARELY HOLDING IT TOGETHER … and I really think that anyone who is at all familiar with the fight/flight concept can probably understand why,* at that moment, I genuinely want to kill that screaming child.*
If you’re that stressed by a noisy aviation environment YOU ingest medication - you have no right to insist other people be drugged for YOUR benefit.
If her pediatrician will give me a mild sedative, I don’t have any issue with it. Short term exposure to something like that doesn’t concern me. It’s a slippery slope though.
It sounds like you have already made your decision about the flight, but this is something that I feel very strongly about. So here is a general response:
When considering carrying a child in their lap instead of a car seat, parents should consider a few things:
- Would you put the infant in your car, being held in place only by someone’s arms?
- How much of an impact are you willing to inflict on your child?
- Is the safety of your child worth the price of a ticket?
I’ve experienced g loading due to clear air turbulence that was strong enough to make me hit my head in the cockpit, even though I was completely strapped in. Tightly. You find out how squishy flesh is in these circumstances. Turbulence is completely unpredictable, and can be quite severe. Since it is unpredictable, the chances of you having a firm grip on your child at the right moment are slim.
Like most safety discussions, the plan should be for the worst case scenario, in this case one or two seconds, and not the boring eight hours of straight and level flight.
This is a huge failure in the system of aviation regulations that are already in place. It is my belief that since airlines *think *people will chose not to fly if they have to buy the extra ticket, that the rule has never been addressed. Economics are defeating safety in this case.
You claimed it was merely for convenience. It’s not. Cite where I insisted that other people be drugged?
How else are you intending to eliminate all that stressful noise pollution you referred to? Or do you plan to ban children entirely?
Babies exist. Sometimes they make noise, emit odors, and so forth. People need to chill out about it.
I believe it is incumbent upon each of us to do his/her part to make public spaces as pleasant for others as we can. I don’t think anyone was trying to say that. But if you can’t imagine what it feels like to have to fly, and to hate it, or be frightened to death of it, then perhaps you should examine whether there is something lacking in either your imagination or your empathy. Personally, I love to fly (though not particularly when I feel as though I’m in a cattle car or sardine can). My very first flight was in a 4-seater Cessna, and I felt as though I were half-way to heaven. My next greatest thrill in the air was seeing the polar ice sheet on the ocean on the way home from a trip to the UK. But I can imagine what it feels like to dread it. I’m an introvert, and participating in large social events terrorizes me.
It is beginning to feel to me as though you are addressing the rest of us from a pedestal. I was - and am being - very careful to frame my comments in the most neutral manner possible. In the first, I tried to point out both the possibilities and hazards. Yet your first post made me feel that you saw my post as an uncritical suggestion that the OP get a stash of Benadril, ASAP, when I’d done no such thing. I am a grandmother. I saw my son through the usual difficulties of infancy, etc., and shared to some extent in the trials and tribulations of my grandsons’ infancies, including the preemie status of the younger one, whose emotional development has always lagged, though he’s bright, articulate, and hard-working.
I have labored over each of these posts through many, many revisions, to attempt to ensure that my words are clear, and don’t give offense, or the impression of arrogance. The way you phrased your first post here, I felt I was being attacked. In your response to me, you seemed to be indicating that your target was someone else. However, you did not indicate that in the first post in any way I could discern. After I explained further, I made a peace offer. Your response appeared to me, at least, to be still angry, and somewhat defensive. You are not an inexperienced Doper, judging by the number of posts you’ve made. I have not, in any way, intended to attack or offend anyone. If you’ve seen anything I’ve said that way, I’m sorry you got that impression.
I think you might arouse less acrimony if you used quotes to indicate who, exactly, you’re responding to, at each point, with some of these things you’re saying. I might not have felt you were attacking me, if you had. GQ isn’t the forum for personalities, and I am trying my very best to be polite and see your POV. Based on some of what you’ve said, I think I might even have liked you, had we met first, FTF. But I am getting the impression that you see yourself in this thread as the one and only Defender of Children. My impression could be wrong; I hope it is. But if not, that isn’t fair, nor is it correct.
In crowded conditions - and airplanes these days seem to be always that way, and holidays have always made flights into airborne zoos - it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to show consideration for others. IMO, the OP is trying hard. He’s clearly a novice at traveling with a child, but he asked what he’d forgotten. We’ve been trying to help, in the best Doper tradition. It’s a good thing he’s been around “forever”, or he’d likely be too traumatized by this thread to post again for a good long while.
Nobody wants the baby to be unsafe or uncomfortable - that’s why several are emphasizing the potential dangers in holding her on his lap. But whenever he does fly, he and she won’t be the only ones on the flight that matter. The other passengers - and the airline employees as well - have some rights in the matter. He seems to be perfectly cognizant of that, and I commend it. When my son was a baby, I tried to make sure he wouldn’t disturb others before I made plans to take him anywhere - including how I’d nurse, when the occasion arose (this was >40 years ago, when doctors first began recommending breast over bottle, and many, many people found the whole idea disgusting and repulsive). As he grew, I continued to try to make sure my child didn’t disturb others unnecessarily - that’s how I was raised, and that’s how he raised his.
As I said above, I’m not in favor of any medication, whether prescription or OTC, that isn’t absolutely necessary. I haven’t gotten the impression that anyone else in this thread has suggested anything different. stargazer and maggenpye shared their valuable experiences at flying with infants. I am convinced that, barring some sort of illness, inducing a baby to suck something - especially during takeoff and landing - solves 95% of the problems. The other 5% is usually if the baby gets fussy. I hope he gets in plenty of practice at soothing her before he flies with her, so he knows just what to do; each baby is an individual, a law unto itself. What works with one may simply make another more upset.
If the baby is ill, that’s an entirely different situation, and there’s no way I’d try to travel on public transportation with a sick baby. As a precaution, I’d make sure I got transferrable or refundable tickets. It isn’t merely that a baby (any baby) is likely to share its sickness with others (which could include someone immuno-compromised, such as a cancer patient). The baby’s own immune system is undeveloped. I believe that the current wisdom is that the immune system doesn’t begin to be matured until 2 or 3 years of age - and it’s slower in some children (I do wish a pediatrician or an immunologist would speak up; I’m badly out of date, though I do read all the popular science).
When a baby is already sick, it is that much more vulnerable to catching something else from someone else on the plane (train, etc.). I could easily have nightmares about the problems of a child sick with two - or more - concurrent illnesses, especially now, when all too many parents are refusing to vaccinate. A pediatrician acquaintance (not on here) recently suffered through more than a month with pertussis (whooping cough) because a parent brought in five(!) children suffering with it. Childhood diseases we thought were history on this continent are resurgent because so many parents are harboring the erroneous impression that their kids will become autistic if they get them vaccinated. The evidence continues to mount that most of it is genetic, with the occasional case resulting from illness, not vaccination!
I spent 4 years studying in a pathogenic bacteriology lab, under an immunologist. I do know a bit about infectuous disease.