Flying with an infant

On Sun, 04 Apr 2004 20:58:04 -0700, Snowbird wrote:

Everyone always told us that our kid would sleep on long plane
flights. I want a refund, doesn't happens here. Maybe you'll
have better luck.

Our daughter Elizabeth went to sleep right after takeoff, would sleep
until I reduced power to land and then wake up. But, that was when she
was at 7 months of age. Now she rarely sleeps and is not easily amused at
15 months of age. The only time she's happy is when she's tearing up
paper and handing the little drawings to me, take that away and you can
hear her over the engine noise through the headsets, she's loud.

She hates anything on her head and is constantly removing her hearing
protection, be it her headset, a muff, or the ear plugs. We try to keep
it on, but she's stubborn and will not give up, so it's about 50 50 as to
how much she has them on. We've had a bit of luck with a thick hat that
covers her ears, but after a while that wears thin and off it comes. I
find keeping their headsets on to be the hardest part of flying with them,
it's a constant struggle with our daughter.

You can't leave her in the child seat because she hates being restrained,
you can't put her up front because she tries to fly the plane, and if you
unstrap her she's going places. They're fun to have around, but a second
person to attend to them is mandatory because there's no way I could fly
the plane and keep her under control easily. We go places with her and
her favorite pastime in the plane is kicking me in the head with her feet,
sometimes I can't wait until we don't need that child seat, she couldn't
hit my head if she sat lower.

All things considered, if you can stand them in a car on a trip, you can
deal with them in a plane. It's not any different, same problems and
solutions apply I find, except I'm not pulling over to change a diaper
when it occurs, kind of hard to do. But I will stop at the next airport
because who wants that smell...

I give her a sucker on takeoff to keep her ears open, and landing as well
if she's awake. She sleeps just like riding in a car, very little unless
it's time. Don't leave suckers on the glareshield, it's a bit messy when
it gets warm.