Well, we did it. We took our ten month old twins on a cross-country flight. I won’t lie, it was hard. Here’s a breakdown of all the most trying parts of traveling with infants, based on my previous blog entry “Cross-Country Travel with Infant Twins”.
The flight, in general:
We bought four seats hoping that our kids would sleep in their carseats, but they didn’t. More on this later. In retrospect, it probably would have been better to buy three seats. One for each of us and one for them to share with their stuff. I wouldn’t recommend only buying two seats (for each adult to hold one infant) because post-911 flights are always completely booked, so there really aren’t any empty seats for overflow. And we had a lot of stuff.
Getting onto the plane:
We decided that we didn’t want to lug the Britax Marathons onto the plane so we brought the infant car seats, knowing that Eleanor is probably just over the 29 inch height limit for the seats. It was very convenient because I had my carry-on backpack and the double Snap-n-Go stroller, and Bernard had his carry-on and the very heavy rolling duffel bag. We were able to walk all the way from long-term parking to the check-in area, and once we checked the one bag, we only had our backpacks and the kids in the stroller. At the gate, we checked in the stroller and each lifted a baby in a car seat to the seats.
Security was a bit of a challenge because the kids had to be taken out of the seats and held by us. Each seat had to go through the x-ray machine, and the stroller had to be folded up and sent through the machine as well. You can imagine the frenzy once we were past the screening section of collecting all the equipment off the conveyor belt while each holding a kid, opening the stroller, attaching the seats, strapping the kids back into their seats and collecting our own shoes and backpacks.
This Thanksgiving we’re going to Atlanta, and the kids will be 15 months and definitely in the Marathons so we’ll have to figure out what we’re doing then. Can a 15 month old sit in their own airplane seat without a car seat? That is, will we have to buy four seats again?
Here are the kids and me waiting for our flight.
Sleeping on the plane:
The kids did not want to sleep in their car seats on the plane. Just as I mentioned in the previous blog entry, our kids have difficulty sleeping anywhere but their own cribs. I tried sticking Miranda in the car seat fully awake and closing the canopy over her head so that she couldn’t see anything, but she just screamed and tried to get out of the seat. We pretty much had the kids on our laps the entire six-hour flight. They were extremely squirmy and wanted to crawl and walk around, and pick things off the floor, and of course, they couldn’t, so we had entertain them with silly faces, singing songs, giving them snacks, going for the occasional walk down the aisle, etc. Needless to say, we were both about to keel over. At one point, I was holding Miranda and really nodding off. Miranda kept watching my head bob up and down and she eventually started to fall asleep on my chest, but then she slid down to my lap so that she could be prone (her usual sleeping position), and I had to stay awake and hold her on my lap, since she doesn’t really fit there anymore.
I don’t know, I would seriously consider using Benadryl for the kids if this happens again, because entertaining two fussy infants for six hours straight had me close to tears.
Here’s a picture of Miranda and me sleeping.
Eating on the plane:
Well, I gave in and did buy the Gerber Graduates to feed them on the plane. Note to self: don’t get the meat sticks again. Miranda ate one meat stick, but it’s essentially ground meat wrapped like a hot dog, so once she bit through the casing, it totally fell apart and onto the floor, where I had to spend a good ten minutes picking flecks of meat from the aisle. They did pretty well with the Graduates carrot dices, although the fact that they are packaged in water makes it extra dangerous when you’re trying to fish out the carrot pieces while holding a baby in your lap. They also ate the peach dices as well.
The ready-to-feed formula worked out well on the plane, although we think that it’s more constipating than the powder formula. We did a poor job timing their bottle with take-off and landing. It takes a good twenty minutes to reach cruising altitude (37000 feet), and Eleanor was done with her bottle by 8000 feet because I started it too early.
Here’s Miranda eating carrot dices on the tray table.
Sleeping in the hotel:
The hotels we stayed at provided cribs which worked out pretty well, although the second hotel didn’t provide crib sheets so I’m glad we brought our own. They weren’t full-size cribs, but they were the same size as their cribs in daycare so they were able to sleep in them. We splurged to get a suite for the second hotel which was nice because we were able to put the kids in the sitting room to sleep, then we closed the door between rooms, and were able to wash all their bottles, and do all the chores, and have the TV on after they went to sleep. It was also key to close all the window shades, so that they stayed on California time, and woke up at 8:30am instead of 5:30am.
Here are the kids looking wide awake in their hotel cribs.
Clothes:
We didn’t realize that there would be a sudden cold and rainy spell in New England the weekend we were there, so we totally brought the wrong clothes for the kids. And we forgot their shoes. Sigh.
Other supplies:
Well, we used all the supplies we brought. And I would advise people to just have plenty of regular napkins and plastic bags on hand because there were a lot of spills and I didn’t want to waste wipes for stuff on the floor. Then you’ll need the plastic bags to hold all the trash that’s generated by the napkins. We also found it useful to have disposable washcloths (for wiping their faces if you don’t want to use chemical-soaked wipes), as well as disposable bibs and placemats (so they can eat finger food directly off the table). Our large Neat Sheet picnic blanket came in handy at the pre-wedding barbeque since the ground was damp. And a couple Ziploc plastic containers were useful to hold some snacks, and to rinse them in the bath.
Here are the four of us on the Neat Sheet.
