Flying with six-month-old twins? Good luck!
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By Jane Han
Just until two weeks ago, I thought taking care of two babies at home was a pretty tough job. Well, not after being stuck in an airplane 35,000 feet in the air for 16 hours.
Flying from New York to Incheon is quite a draining flight even for an adult traveling alone, so I knew I wasn’t in for a happy ride hauling two infants. But to make matters worse, two more grueling hours were added to the typical 14-hour flight due to technical problems.
Where should I start? It was such a tiring, tense and overwhelming journey for my husband and me in seats 28 D and E that I don’t even know where to begin.
Let me start with my biggest mistake — taking the night flight.
Some people say night flights are the way to go with babies, but not mine. My girls need to be in familiar surroundings and a comfortable setting to fall happily asleep. So the loud noises pretty much put them on edge even before boarding the 1 a.m. flight.
My second mistake was boarding the flight too early. The bassinet can’t be hooked up until the airplane takes off and reaches a certain altitude, so being one of first to board the confined plane only extended the pain for my six-month-old twins.
Once the plane took off, the girls were each given a bottle and pacifier to help their ears from popping. Parent friends warned me that takeoff is usually the toughest part for babies so once we were up in the air and the bassinets came out, I thought we were lucky.
Boy was I wrong.
Just as I was praising my girls, Baby A suddenly went on a vomiting rampage. It was pretty much the worst vomiting case I’ve seen with her since she was born. I won’t go too much into it, but whatever you’re imagining, multiply it by two. That should be close enough.
And just as I was scrambling to clean up after Baby A, Baby B started flipping out; perfect timing.
Now let me share a little about my girls’ cries. The two have very distinct crying sounds. Baby A has a soft and whimpering cry, while Baby B pretty much cries her lungs out.
Fortunately, Baby B usually doesn’t cry much. She’s known as the happier baby. But that night, she wasn’t happy. At one point, her crying became so intense that I began to feel every set of eyes in our economy section glaring at us.
That’s when my husband took her way back to the end of the plane. I didn’t see them for the next three hours or so. Don’t know what happened back there, don’t want to know and I never asked.
But when they returned, Baby B was sound asleep and we tucked her into her bassinet. Luckily, she was pretty much knocked out for most of the flight.
Baby A, also known as the sensitive one, seemed to be pretty much beat after her earlier drama. But for some odd reason, she had trouble sleeping. It was probably the new surrounding that triggered the curious nature in her. She just couldn’t stop and close her wandering eyes.
I attempted to put her down in her bassinet a few times, but that didn’t work as she kept trying to flip over in the tiny crib that gave no wiggling room. So she was pretty much heart to heart with me in the baby carrier.
Thank God for baby carriers. It saved my husband and me both sanity and our arms.
I barely used the carriers at home, so I was hesitant to bring them on the trip. Last thing I wanted to do was to add yet another thing to lug around. If I hadn’t, I don’t know what would’ve happened.
My advice to expecting moms: Don’t skimp on baby carriers. They’re worth every penny.
Of the 16-hour flight, my girls were in the carrier at least a good 12 hours.
Somewhere between Canada and Alaska, I asked myself why on Earth I decided to embark on such a long-haul trip with two six-months-olds. But as with most things in life, everything seems doable when it’s in the past.
So, now as I anticipate my next trip back to New York, I’m feeling a bit more confident as an experienced flyer with babies. But who knows what’ll happen next?
My girls will be a couple of weeks older, which can make the flight either easier or tougher. We’ll see about that. For now, Babies A and B are busy overcoming their jetlag. Now that’s a whole new issue this mom has to tackle.