I was THAT mum!

Well for a short time anyway...

We have flown a lot with our children. Well more than most children their age. My first son was 9 weeks old when he went on his first long haul flight of 20hrs. By the time he was 1 he had flown more than 20 times and to almost 20 countries. I can't even count up the number he has flown now. Our second child flew at the age of 6 weeks long haul and currently at 10 mnths has flown more than 10 times.

We always take lots for them to do - plenty of snacks and toys and hardly use them. Our oldest sleeps, watches kids tv, eats and plays with the toys the airline gives. Our second son eats and sleeps and plays a little. They have never played up, been upset for more than a couple of minutes or wanted to run around the aircraft. We set the rule that you sit in your seat like the car and can only get up for toilet and it has worked really well. I flew alone with both of them for Christmas this last year (20 hours or more of travel time) and all went really well.

UNTIL this time taking off we got stuck in Bkk on the tarmac with no air con and it was HOT - plus the cabin had bee pressurised - possibly his ears were hurting . He had not slept all day and was very tired. It was late evening taking off and he wanted to go to sleep - had been constantly woken up through security etc. SO I became THAT mum...with the crying baby who was really upset. NOTHING would calm him - neither of my children have ever done this before. But I kept calm and soon enough we were in the air and he was asleep with no repeat of the crying. YES I do feel sorry for those mums who have children that get upset and they are at ends of what to do. BUT there are soo many that I have seen on my travels who have nothing for their children to do, no snacks, no toys and really don't make any effort to attempt to keep their children from getting to that point. I suppose now I do have more compassion though and know that it can happen to anyone. I was congratulated by the airline staff once we were in the air at how calm I had been and held myself together in a tough situation. By the way I have never seen my son soo distressed before...

So that leads me to wonder WHY do we live so far away again.... lucky we only have to do this every 6-12 months...