Fentanyl suppository? Fascinating, I’m intrigued.
I took my 9 month old from the East Coast to Hawaii a few months ago, more than 14 hours travel time each way. She did fine, barely a peep out of her. Breastfeeding at takeoff/landing helped, as others have noted. We’ve also gone to Puerto Rico and Chicago without problems.
By the way, if you have any large baby items that need to be checked, be sure to tell the agent their contents. It wasn’t until our fifth flight with US Airways that we learned they have a policy not to charge fees for checking portable baby cribs.
So many people are focusing on the flight. That’s not really the issue. I trust from your first post that you’re not overly focused on that anyway. And I further trust you have the good sense to ignore Flowers here.
More to the point is what NoWayJose said. Adjusting to living in a one-room apartment with an infant for a week. You can do it, just be prepared for a crimp in the way you normally do things.
Six months old. What’s your nap schedule currently? Are you fairly rigid with schedules? Do you keep it quiet at home for nap times or allow normal noise and light? Take these into account because you’ll all be in one room. And, as NWJ said, you’ll be going to bed early. If you’re a night owl, don’t forget your headphones. If you love/need the tv at night, pray there’s a front headphone jack or be prepared to spring for the wifi and make friends with Hulu.
Little things. If you use bottles at all (I don’t know if you pump or what), it’s not a bad idea to bring a little sample size of dish detergent. Just pop it in a zip top bag. You don’t really need a sponge (just use an extra wash cloth). Also, if you use a bottle warmer, you can bring it or not. Most hotels have a mini coffee brewer in the room. Run a batch of hot water through that and plunk the bottle down in the carafe for a couple of minutes.
Bring extra zip top bags.
Check your carseat, as mentioned above. Baby in your arms for flight. Bring a Pack n’ Play if you have it, or don’t if you’re cool with setting up the bed for naps/nighttime (see Jojo above). Hotels can provide cribs, but I’ve found that VERY hit and miss (almost scary at times). Furthermore, I cannot imagine using a hotel’s nanny service for my six month old for any amount of time, but that’s me.
As for the flight, three things:
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As others have said, if you can work it out so feeding is going on during ascent/descent…great. Nipple. Bottle. My boy never took to a pacifier but try it if your baby uses one. [Be prepared for well-meaning grandparent types on the flight to suggest this to you. Often.]
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You’ll never see these people again. Be polite and considerate (extra earplugs are a nice gimmick), but don’t let it stress you if your baby cries. You are furthering the human race. Anybody annoyed with that can just suck it. Yeah, I hate it when babies cry on planes too. But I also hate it when the doofus next to me snores for the whole flight and has BO. Life is loud and smelly. Deal.
Besides, learning how to get your three-year-old not to kick the seat in front of him while traveling cross-country is a far bigger deal. And harder.
- Never, under any circumstances, no matter how nice she seems, try to hand the flight attendant a dirty diaper.
-xtien
Heh. I think I just changed my opinnion on long flights with babies (again) - I’ve certainly had more bad experinces with fat drunk adults than babies - I’m sure they were all lawyers.
- Never, under any circumstances, no matter how nice she seems, try to hand the flight attendant a dirty diaper.
HEH. This sounds like the kind of advice that should continue with: “This one time when…”
Really? Xtien, you are futhering the human race? Tell me, Xtien, did you have to move your extra Nobel Prizes off the keyboard in order to type that? What makes you competent to pass your genes on to the next generation? Tell me, other than your mother, how many people approached you before you started a family and said, "Xtien, you just have to have children, my space mission isn’t going to be ready to launch until 2034, and you’re just about the only person I would trust to raise a child that would, you know, further the human race.
Further the human race? What the hell do you see in the mirror every morning that you are so in love with, you assume that the rest of us just won’t be able to carry on without more of you?
The truth is, you have kids because you wanted kids. No one else but your damn mother wanted you to have kids, and nobody but you should have to deal with your children.
For example, I don’t want kids, you know what I want? I want a yacht. Maybe I will try to take my yacht everywhere, and maybe I will become righteously indignant when someone says, “Mister, you can’t bring a boat into a movie theater.” To him I will say, “I am futhering the America’s Cup Race, you ignorant nonce!”
Pointing out that, because other people smell, and are loud, then it must be ok for you to be smelly and loud, well, I can’t believe that you would take it upon yourself to continue the species, seeing as you seem to have failed utterly at absorbing one of the most important lessons that all children are expected to learn, and which, in my opinion, failure to comprehend should be grounds for summary exile to Southern California, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
You can further whatever the hell you damn please, on your own time, and in your own place. Because of people and their children, I cannot buy good fireworks, I cannot ride the most dangerous rollercoasters, I cannot open pills without a hassle, I cannot drive more than fifteen miles an hour in certain parts of town. If I am barred from having so many types of fun on account of your stupid, syrup-fingered, melon-headed hellspawn, then you goddamn better learn to respect my desire for silence in movie theaters and on planes.
I leave you baby owners with this warning. There is absolutely nothing illegal about a trail of Starburst Fruit Chews leading up to the edge of a ravine, with an entire bag sitting juuust a few feet down.
Ear plugs don’t stop the sound of crying babies, so a gimmick is all they really are – but you’re still a twat if you pull them out and offer them up as some sort of half-ass solution to all the chaos you’re responsible for adding to the trip of a couple hundred other people that really don’t like your problems becoming their problems.
You are furthering the human race. Anybody annoyed with that can just suck it.
Not really a noble cause, unless you buy in to everything the Pope commands you to do. Almost anyone can make a baby, furthering the human race really isn’t the best reason to do so. Some twelve year old girls can further the human race, anybody annoyed with that is probably justified if it’s their twleve year old daughter who’s doing it.
The blanket ideal of “it’s best for everybody that I have babies! babies, MORE BABIES!!!” is really a huge crock of shit.
Yeah, I hate it when babies cry on planes too. But I also hate it when the doofus next to me snores for the whole flight and has BO. Life is loud and smelly. Deal.
Do you hold your farts or try to pass them off quietly when in mixed company or do you: position your feet, clench your fists, hunch up and let em rip? Why or why not? Something tells me that even you aren’t buying what you’re selling.
Besides, learning how to get your three-year-old not to kick the seat in front of him while traveling cross-country is a far bigger deal. And harder.
-xtien
I hear a late night the night before and Benadryl on the day of the trip helps a lot. I’m not a parent, so I’m not really concerned if medicating a child to keep them from being pests to everyone you’re forcing them on is a widely accepted solution or not. I’m just saying that it’s supposed to work pretty good.
What is the sound of one fool posting?
Who do you think will build your boat, make your movies, make your lame fireworks, build and maintain your roller coasters, invent your pills, build your cars and film your movies? It’s all done by other people’s babies who probably annoyed some vacuous prick at some point or another.
Most of us enjoy the things that other people create and enjoy their company and tend to salute parenthood to some extent or another as a sacrifice that gives more benefits to society than to parents.
Between you and Kerzain I think we have both sides of that crazy-coin covered - with flowers as a humorous over the top addition.
I think that people with kids just have to accept, that no, they don’t get to do all the stuff they did before having kids, and yes, showing consideration to other people sometimes mean staying the fuck at home.
The minute you’re considering drugging your kid to go somewhere, you should perhaps reconsider and think whether the trip is really necessary.
On the other hand kids are an overall boon to society and people with kids are still the norm, while childless adults are the odd ones out. That’s why any civilized society spreads out the cost of educating kids and whatnot and even force the childless egoists to pay their part - so expecting people to keep their offspring drugged or away from polite society at all time is also immensely stupid.
Consideration goes both ways.
The blanket ideal of “it’s best for everybody that I have babies! babies, MORE BABIES!!!” is really a huge crock of shit.
Clearly you haven’t watched Children of Men!
I’ve been watching it all morning in every thread both you and Flowers have posted in. I’d tell you to quit while you’re ahead, but it’s too late for that.
Do you defend the sanctity of your personal space everywhere you go? Do you roll down your window and ask nearby drivers to turn down their radios when you’re stuck next to them in traffic? Do you remind other passengers on the subway to set their pagers to “vibrate”? Do you shoosh people’s dogs as they pass you on the sidewalk? This is what it means to demand consideration from other people consistently.
Look, I can understand keeping loud children away from movie theaters, restaurants, and concerts, where they might ruin the entire experience for other patrons. But airline travel is not an end in itself. It’s just a means to get somewhere else, and expectations should be set accordingly.
The airline cabin is increasingly becoming another informal public space, and the airlines themselves promote this perspective. And like the subway, freeway, and sidewalk, it’s not really a place where you can reasonably expect a meditative atmosphere.
That’s not because children are privileged. It’s because you aren’t.
Chinese people.
Also, you mentioned movies twice. Is that because we both love movies?
There’s a period where new parents with baby #1 are still hanging out with the same friends & trying to do the same stuff they did pre-baby. I call these folks “the walking dead,” because they are like that guy in the movies that just got shot but is still talking & walking, then he suddenly realizes that he’s mortally wounded & drops dead. Their lives are fundamentally altered, but the impact of that has not yet sunk in, and they continue to carry on their lives as if it were pre-baby but with some squirmy luggage.
Give them a little more time, and soon of their own volition you will find them mostly in Chuck E Cheese and Gymboree, buying Ikea furniture they won’t mind being covered in stickers, and glaring the hardest of all at screaming babies when they have paid for a sitter to get away for a bit.
Well, yes. If some halfwit has their boombox set to kill, I DO ask them to turn it down a bit if I’m trapped next to them. You know what? They usually comply. And I mock and disrupt people who talk too loud on their cel phone, and they either move away or quiet down. And I absolutely tell people to control their goddamn dogs.
Look, I can understand keeping loud children away from movie theaters, restaurants, and concerts, where they might ruin the entire experience for other patrons. But airline travel is not an end in itself. It’s just a means to get somewhere else, and expectations should be set accordingly.
The airline cabin is increasingly becoming another informal public space, and the airlines themselves promote this perspective. And like the subway, freeway, and sidewalk, it’s not really a place where you can reasonably expect a meditative atmosphere.
That’s not because children are privileged. It’s because you aren’t.
And most people developed this dislike of children because of the large majority of people that have either become immune to their brood’s screeching or just flat out don’t give a shit if it acts up. Everyone admires and appreciates an attentive and awesome parent. Everyone dreads the halfwit with a wailing shit-demon with no clue how to control it.
Bottom line, if you don’t have an awesome super behaved baby, stay the hell at home unless you HAVE to be in public.
Most people do not have a dislike of children. And most people do not expect their daily routine to be uninterrupted by noise.
Bottom line, if you don’t have an awesome super behaved baby, stay the hell at home unless you HAVE to be in public.
Alternately, if you cannot tolerate screaming children under any circumstance, stay the hell at home unless you HAVE to be in public.
Yes, because people who aren’t willing to deal with other people’s children at every waking moment are the problem. Brilliant.
I didn’t say “if you cannot tolerate screaming children at every waking moment.” I said “if you cannot tolerate screaming children under any circumstance.” Because at that point, the problem is you.
Being trapped in a plane for hours with a screaming child isn’t the same experience as putting up with the tantrum during your 10 minute wait in line at the local grocery store. There are different levels of tolerance one should be expected to exert when ‘out in public’.
It’s like bringing along a fussy/screaming child to a romantic restaurant – not cool.
I agree that there are places where a quiet atmosphere is expected, like restaurants, theaters, and concerts. These are places where only “awesome super behaved” children should go.
There are other places where perfect quiet would be nice, but not expected. This includes daytime flights and grocery stores. You’re right that if you know a child is going to scream for the whole flight, then you should reconsider a long flight. On the other hand, most normal-but-not-super behaved babies tend to cry for 5-15 minutes during takeoff and landing. If passengers can’t deal with that, then they are the problem.
Personally I find the flight attendants hawking credit cards and the endless advertisements on the video monitors to be a lot more irritating than hearing a baby cry for half an hour. But I’m not gonna get all bent out of shape over either one.
Tolerate is a bad word choice on my part too btw. Yes, babies have every right to be on a plane as anyone else, and everyone should be expected to ‘tolerate’ this, but I don’t think it’s realistic to expect everybody else to be happy about it. They’re unhappiness is still justified without it making them a jerk.
Personally I find the flight attendants hawking credit cards and the endless advertisements on the video monitors to be a lot more irritating than hearing a baby cry for half an hour. But I’m not gonna get all bent out of shape over either one.
I agree about the advertisements.
Why, back in the day I used to be able to read a book in peace and quiet, with only the hum of the plane and the stench of my neighbors cigarette to keep me company.