So a while ago, I blogged about our absolutely nightmarish flight to San Francisco -- the first leg of our 30 hour journey to Singapore. That first flight was an eye opener for us because as I mentioned in that post, my husband and I are seasoned travelers and we had taken Baby on several flights prior to this one and they had all gone swimmingly. And yet on that particular flight, something had gone wrong.
I think it's worthwhile to take a postmortem every now and then and in this particular situation, we really wanted to avoid the hellish situation again. Did I mention we had 27 hours to go? And that at some point in the future, we'd have to return to the States? And that we were planning a trip to India that would be at least 19 hours one way? So yes, a postmortem analysis was absolutely necessary so we didn't repeat the same mistakes we made on that San Francisco flight.
Here's what I came up with:
1. We were tired. We were tired even before we began the journey. Knowing we'd have to leave for the airport before 6 am to catch our flight, we still didn't go to bed before 11 pm. And if you've ever had an early morning flight, you know it's next to impossible to sleep well because you're so worried about oversleeping and missing your flight. The lack of rest ahead of the trip made us cranky and stressed out and I think Baby caught on to our nervousness. On all of our other trips, we were laid back and so was she.
2. We had lots of little bags. We are light packers in general, but when you're heading overseas with a baby for an extended period of time, your bags fill up quickly with things like formula, diapers, and food pouches. That's all fine if you have big enough bags to consolidate the stuff into, but we didn't. My husband and I are business travelers and as such, we had lots of little suitcases. It made for a difficult transportation issue as with the Baby, we just never had enough hands to transport it all and it was just distracting to manage it all.
3. You can never time a bottle on the plane. It's a myth that one can do this, but it's not possible. On our San Francisco flight, we were delayed on the tarmack and so our timing was off. Baby was well done her bottle and agitated by the time we took off. This, however, was a "mistake" we repeated a few months later when we went to India as we were delayed on the ground for nearly 2 hours and as a result, our crabby Baby got her bottle well before take off. We didn't have a back up plan in case of The Delayed Bottle-Take Off Problem and to be honest, we still don't.
4. We were in a rush to get off the plane and didn't take a moment to compose ourselves. We only had a 90 minute or so connection and so we rushed to get off the plane and didn't take the time to double-check our seats and make sure we had everything we needed. The result was we left a piece of our car seat behind and I spent most of my time running between gates trying to locate the piece (which, by the way, I didn't; we ended up ordering a replacement when we returned to the US). We now don't rush off the plane unless we really have to; we take our time and catch our breath and make sure we got everything off the plane.
There is, however, a happy ending to this story. We were so exhausted after our frantic interlude in the San Francisco airport that we settled in nicely on our flight to Tokyo and Baby actually slept a chunk of the time too! We ended up having a nice flight (and a nice time in the Tokyo airport, which has play areas, yo!) and our connecting Tokyo-Singapore flight was also uneventful. I guess when you start from absolute chaos like we did that day, there's really nowhere to go but up (pun unintended).
I think it's worthwhile to take a postmortem every now and then and in this particular situation, we really wanted to avoid the hellish situation again. Did I mention we had 27 hours to go? And that at some point in the future, we'd have to return to the States? And that we were planning a trip to India that would be at least 19 hours one way? So yes, a postmortem analysis was absolutely necessary so we didn't repeat the same mistakes we made on that San Francisco flight.
Here's what I came up with:
1. We were tired. We were tired even before we began the journey. Knowing we'd have to leave for the airport before 6 am to catch our flight, we still didn't go to bed before 11 pm. And if you've ever had an early morning flight, you know it's next to impossible to sleep well because you're so worried about oversleeping and missing your flight. The lack of rest ahead of the trip made us cranky and stressed out and I think Baby caught on to our nervousness. On all of our other trips, we were laid back and so was she.
2. We had lots of little bags. We are light packers in general, but when you're heading overseas with a baby for an extended period of time, your bags fill up quickly with things like formula, diapers, and food pouches. That's all fine if you have big enough bags to consolidate the stuff into, but we didn't. My husband and I are business travelers and as such, we had lots of little suitcases. It made for a difficult transportation issue as with the Baby, we just never had enough hands to transport it all and it was just distracting to manage it all.
3. You can never time a bottle on the plane. It's a myth that one can do this, but it's not possible. On our San Francisco flight, we were delayed on the tarmack and so our timing was off. Baby was well done her bottle and agitated by the time we took off. This, however, was a "mistake" we repeated a few months later when we went to India as we were delayed on the ground for nearly 2 hours and as a result, our crabby Baby got her bottle well before take off. We didn't have a back up plan in case of The Delayed Bottle-Take Off Problem and to be honest, we still don't.
4. We were in a rush to get off the plane and didn't take a moment to compose ourselves. We only had a 90 minute or so connection and so we rushed to get off the plane and didn't take the time to double-check our seats and make sure we had everything we needed. The result was we left a piece of our car seat behind and I spent most of my time running between gates trying to locate the piece (which, by the way, I didn't; we ended up ordering a replacement when we returned to the US). We now don't rush off the plane unless we really have to; we take our time and catch our breath and make sure we got everything off the plane.
There is, however, a happy ending to this story. We were so exhausted after our frantic interlude in the San Francisco airport that we settled in nicely on our flight to Tokyo and Baby actually slept a chunk of the time too! We ended up having a nice flight (and a nice time in the Tokyo airport, which has play areas, yo!) and our connecting Tokyo-Singapore flight was also uneventful. I guess when you start from absolute chaos like we did that day, there's really nowhere to go but up (pun unintended).
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