Baby On Board

Before I had a child, I would feel tremendously sorry for parents who have to calm down their crying baby in the airplane, especially during taking off and landing due to the change of pressure. I would think all parents will face that at a certain point in time, all parents including me. With a crying, cranky baby in a long or short haul flight will not only drive parent/s insane, it will definitely annoy your most-of-the-time not friendly seat neighbor.

Now, are we parents with babies/toddlers are indirectly forbidden to ever think about going anywhere via an airplane solely for the comfort of others on board or for our own insanity?

Answer: NO!

There are many remedies out there for parents who are travelling with the young ones. Someone that I knew suggested giving cough medicine for kids (not for babies of course) just so they’ll be too drowsy to run around the plane like it’s a playground.

As for me, Maya is only one and I do not know how she’ll be like in the future but for the three times flying with her, Alhamdulillah, she hasn’t thrown a tantrum.

My ultimate tip is breastfeed during taking off and landing. If you don’t breastfeed, feed her bottle or a pacifier; anything really that requires sucking! It surely worked for me and hopefully it’ll too for other mommies out there.

I find travelling with the younger Maya (4-6 months) is much more relaxing than travelling with her when she’s older (10 months). For obvious reason, older babies do not know how to sit still when they’re awake; they just NEVER stop.

When we went to Terengganu and Istanbul, Maya was not on solids yet; so whenever she was hungry, all I had to do is give her my boobies. When we had our surprise visit to US, she was already taking solids; we brought only two baby food in a jar from Malaysia for the plane ride. We shopped for baby food at Walmart to stock up for our entire stay there and we brought few back to Germany and KL. Faliq and I brought baby food on the plane thinking “Maya can’t eat aircraft food” because we didn’t know until later when we were flying from Frankfurt to KL; the flight attendant asked us if we would like baby food for Maya. We were quite jakun saying “Oh, you guys ada baby food?” and she said “Yes, we always have”. Well of course we didn’t know about it when no one told us. So to all parents out there, if you don’t know, now you know =D

Maya and I, InsyaAllah, will be going back to FL early August for Aza’s graduation (Aza’s going to be a graduate; I’M SO PROUD OF HER!). It’ll be a very looooooong flight just the two us. Oh Allah, please help me out! I get panic attack now just thinking about it. Maya is quite mobile now *gulp*  Help? :/


Jetsetter Wannabe Mommy

Farah~