I don’t know if it applies at the airports you’re traveling to/from, but you can rent DVD players for a trip. You pick it up in one airport, drop it off in the other one.
I’ve done multiple 12 hour international flights with changing planes and more flying followed by a drive and massive time zone changes – with twins no less.
Ok, it sucks but it ain’t so bad, especially if there are 2 adults and 1 kid.
Wear clothes yourself with a lot of pockets. I wear cargo pants. Stuff with snacks, soothers, wipes, diapers, etc. You want to have a couple of everything within quick draw range. Hubby should do the same. The quick draw is key.
Bring along anti histamine and tylenol or other fever medicine. No telling when they might decide to get sick. Parents have their own view, but some subscribe to the school of cold medicine as a sleep aid when flying.
Bring along at least two changes of clothing for the kid. Just assume (and hopefully be proven wrong) a mess out of both ends. A hooded sweatshirt is pretty versatile, and some kids like to hood up and create their own little space.
If you’ve got a laptop, preload some cartoons on it and avoid buying a DVD player. I tell you, the $15 for a Dora DVD this summer was absolutely the best money I have ever spent.
Pack a lot of entertainment variety. Crayons, books, cards, DVD, toys, favorite animal, etc.
Let ém sleep on the floor. Either a mattress on the floor or build a nest out of blankets.
Honestly, it’s not that bad and when you finally get to grandparents house it will all be worth it. Just make sure you are rested and set your self expectation that you will be a slave to every little whim and desire your daughter might have on the trip. It’s not a relaxing have a couple of drinks and read your favorite books kinda flight.
Also, with all due respect, fuck any non understanding passenger. I’ve got zero tolerance for passengers that don’t cut slack for kids and parents trying their best to cope. You’'ll probably find that most passengers are parents who have had the same experience and are tolerant, and willing to commisurate. Just do your best to not be a jerk parent and most fellow travellers understand. If they don’t, well TS.
You can probably childproof a small bedroom in a few minutes with a door knob cover and a few outlet covers. Move the breakable stuff up high. She may wander, but if you door knob cover the door - she’ll just have a much bigger space. Time at grandmas will be very different anyway - she may not be able to be put down awake at Grandmas no matter what you do. (All my mom’s grandchildren have very different sleep patterns at her house - mine are getting old enough now that they treat it as a slumber party - but none of them ever went down easy at Gradmas. Other kids get so tired they’ll collapse before you put them down).
Maybe even the child itself!
Okay, okay, I’m kidding, sort of. I don’t have a ton of useful advice to offer, except to say that that by the time you’ve imagined the worst, the trip itself will probably be less gruesome than you feared. Your kid may well sleep for part it (probably the car drive at the end), and you’ll get a respite. Other than that, tag-team – one hour on, one hour off for each parent. The nice thing about these trips is that there are at least a few built-in distractions – in-flight service, the movie, the headphones. You’ll get through it. It’ll be a struggle, but you’ll get through.
You do know about www.freecycle.org, right? My mom got a free high chair and Pack ‘n’ Play for her place from a freecycler. Fantastic resource for parents and grandparents of little 'uns. (Heck, they could even get lucky and find a freecycle Pack ‘n’ Play, then turn around and give it away again when you leave, if they don’t want to store it!)
Depending on how big the kid is, a large box can serve as an impromptu crib. Just mosey on down to a big box store (ha! pun noticed on preview) and ask them for a large box from a floor model (or check the dumpster out back for a clean, dry box.) Cut the top off, check inside for any staples, and put blankets or a sleeping bag inside.
Or, if they use baby gates for childproofing during the day, you can “build” a crib in one corner using a heavy chair or bookcase as a corner, and one gate for a side and another for an end (the walls being the other two sides). Even better, if they have a large piece of furniture, like a dresser, on one wall about 3 feet from the corner, just a single baby gate across the gap will make a safe, enclosed place to sleep.
You’ll just have to be creative and see what you have to work with when you get there.
Many years ago I babysat for a doctor and he lived many hours away from his family. He mentioned to me that on long car trips he gave his children dbl the recommended dose of Benadryl which helped them sleep for the majority of the trip.
Now, I’m not recommending that, just sharing what that doctor did.
Many doctors recommend this, and I’m not absolutely opposed to the idea.
BUT, if you want to do it, try it before the trip to see your kid’s reaction. A few kids have an opposite reaction to Benadryl, and get amazingly hyped up and crazy. You do **not **want to subject the other passengers to that!
In one of my “oh my God I’m a lousy parent!!!” moments, one of my kids managed to drink half a bottle of benedryl. I called poison control - expecting to go do a stomach pump and he said “don’t worry - you should have a very peaceful night - if you want to watch some really violent TV or something - now is the time.”
NOT that I’m recommending drugging your kids either - as tempted as I’ve been since that point, I wouldn’t do it - and if I were going to mention it, I would mention that some kids have the opposite reaction to benedryl and spend their time bouncing off walls - you’d want to pretest.
Don’t go overboard with trying to get the kid to sleep on the trip especially during the day. A nap or two can be heaven sent but if he/she gets too much sleep, the regular sleep schedule (the kids’ and yours) will be really thrown off, setting you up for hard first day or so at your destination.
Well it is egg-nog season, after all! Maybe that would be even better, since the child is bound to love the sweet nog-taste!
Definately pre-test. Some kids like my oldest twin reactions change. Eg, was sleep inducing and now produces hyperactivity. Now you and your fellow passengers certainly don’t want a benadryl induced monster on the flight, so pre-test in the daytime if you’re going to try this.
I would call the airline you are flying on and see if they allow you to check in a small collapsable playpen. I work for an airline and we allow something like that (reasonable size of course) as “free allowance” checked luggage wise same as a stroller and car seat.
Thanks everyone!
No freecycle in their little podunk town. My MIL seems to think we should drag the playpen with us, but I’d rather she sleep on the floor than drag that across the country.
I’m irritated. We’ll be waking the baby up about 6 hours before she would normally wake up so that we’ll make the flight they selected for us. Fine. Then we fly for a couple hours, then a tight connection in Toronto and then a longer flight. I think it’s ridiculous that they refuse to spend the night in Calgary so that our baby won’t be restrained for an additional 5 hours on the same day. The reasoning is supposedly that our trip is so short (a week!) that they don’t want to waste any of it. I fail to see how they get any less time with her if we postpone the last leg. Yes, she won’t see her great grandmother until the next day, but I am positive the baby will not be good company anyway. It’s just too much to expect a 16 month old child to handle all the sleep disturbances and changes and be a happy, playful kid. But, they are inlaws and my hubby seems to think there won’t be any problems, so I guess there’s nothing I can do. Grrr. Please excuse my venting - just needed to bitch before I explode.
I was thinking about the new liquid restrictions. Apparently, I can bring regular milk with me when travelling with a child under 2. I’m wondering if maybe I could freeze unopened 500 cartons of milk and take them with me (and in the process, cool some of her more perishable food). It looks like I can’t take an ice pack because of the restrictions, but maybe this could be a workaround. I figure the worst case scenario would be security refusing to let us take it, and we’d be out 94 cents or something. I will do a test run first to make sure the carton has enough room for expansion and doesn’t fall apart, of course.
I really wish they hadn’t rejected the idea of coming here instead. I hope the baby has a good time at least.
Do the venting, here, then try to roll with the punches.
I have noticed (through long observations of many relatives and a few friends over many years) that the folks who approach even the worst situations as just one more event in their life suffer much less stress than those who fixate on the inconvenience they are about to experience. I am NOT claiming that everything is going to be fine. I am simply noting that viewing such experiences as adventures* rather than traumas makes them easier to endure. My folks hauled four kids around for three weeks each summer for ten years (A vacation is spending three weeks in a station wagon with those you thought you loved), starting when my youngest brother was 18 months, and only gave it up when the kids got old enough to have summer jobs they could not leave. You are looking at around 36 hours of travel plus sleep disruption and you might find that the rest of the week is wonderful if you aren’t still upset about it, later.
(This advice, of course, is both obnoxiously unsolicited and worth every penny you have paid for it.)
I’d offer more practical advice, but I was only seven when my parents started schlepping kids on long trips and my son was already three when we were able to “enjoy” our first plane ride.
- “We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures.
Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!
I can’t think what anybody sees in them.”
tomndebb, I had to laugh when I read your post, because my parents took the 4 of us on a 2-week car trip every year, too! Every year, my mom told us that we were NEVER going on another one, because we were so bad, all we do is fight, blah blah blah. But every year, she cheerfully loaded us back in the car to try it again! I think you may be right that attitude counts for a lot. And, we all remember those trips with fondness, so it must not have been TOO bad.
The thing I’m amazed about is how my mom did it! There is a picture of us in Florida, my sister looks to be about 6 months old, and the oldest of us was 7. How on earth did they get all of us from Chicago to Florida in a sedan?! No car seats in those days! I’ll bet my mom held my baby sister in the front seat for most of the trip! :eek: These days, you’d probably get arrested for doing that!!!
Good times.
Then again, it’s a lot easier to entertain and console a six month old who ISN’T in a car seat. Not that I would do it, mind you, but The Baby would much rather be in someone’s arms, have warm snuggly nursing or bottle time on demand, be passed around to other passengers for a (familiar) new face and a new position, etc. than be strapped into a rigid car seat for hours on end.
Definitely doing my venting here. I don’t want the baby to sense that I’m stressed, and I’m not confrontational in the least. She’s lucky to have both sets of grandparents and a great grandmother, and if they are irritating once in a while, so be it. This won’t happen often.
I’m not a great traveler myself - I love to visit new places but don’t do well in transit. I just want her to be as comfortable as possible, and hope to avoid upsetting other passengers. In her usual life, she’s extremely easygoing - I’m just not sure what to expect on a plane, waiting in line at security, etc.
Is anyone familiar with terminal three at Pearson International in Toronto? That’s where our tight connection will be and I’m hoping it’s not enormous. The last time I had a tight connection was in Chicago and of course, we missed our flight. On the way back, we have oodles of time so it’s not an issue (we’ll just be trying to entertain her).
You are right, of course! There were SO many times when I wanted to take my baby out of the car seat and hold her, but of course you can’t do that. I was thinking of 2 issues with it…one, it must have been pretty tiring for my mom to basically hold her the entire way, as my dad did the driving, and we were all too young to help. And, she always sat in the front seat, so if there had been an accident, my sister probably would have been done for!
That seriously makes it more difficult and you have my sincere sympathy. Growing up as I did (even before the Great Trek to California that got our family into the habit of trips, we used to make the 8+ hour pre-freeway journey from suburban Detroit to Indianapolis on Friday night and then back Sunday three or more times each year), I grew up thinking travel was just part of life. (In fact, I wooed Deb while she lived West of Ann Arbor and I lived East of Cleveland by driving up and back several weekends a month.)
The closest I can come to practical advice for travelers who dislike travel is to realize that travel always involves frustration, so plan for that. Bad weather, mechanical failure, illness, and unexpected expenses are always going to interfere with travel plans, so the best way to deal with them is to assume you will encounter them and try not to get too upset when they occur. (How’s that for great advice?)
Take a long book or craft project (whatever the airlines still allow) for yourself and a couple of cloth books and small but entertaining toys for the child. Include shoes so that the child can run down a concourse if you are stuck on a layover. (Obviously, during the rush of un/boarding this is contraindicated, but over any long period, there are always a couple of hallways that are fairly empty for a few minutes.) If the kid wants to crawl or swing on the waiting room seats or stare out the window, as long as she is not actively kicking other passengers or screaming, let her. Any few grumpy scowlers should be ignored.
Good luck.
(Regarding running in hallways: if your child is not frightened of strangers, walking a few trips up and down the airplane aisles to the lavatory (with your hand firmly grasping the hood of her sweatshirt*) is not a crime.
- I think that a harness and leash is a good idea, although I know there are folks who get upset at the notion of a leash.)