Twenty-two hours on a plane is an agony at the best of times. When you’re also bringing along an unfeasibly huge amount of luggage dueto a house move, a toddler and an additional passenger in utero, things get considerably morecomplicated.
Weep with a desperation borne of deep exhaustion when you make it through to the other side. It’s a great preparation for birth- Helen Raine
It started with check-in; our baggage was, of course, horribly overweight. We tried proffering the supposedly cute toddler while we negotiated a discount and even played the ‘oh my pregnant wife needs a lot of stuff for the new baby’ card. But the tired toddler was tear-stained and snotty and the pregnant wife’s smile was a little stiff at 5 a.m.; we got nowhere. This meant an €80 charge for each bag and worse, a long queue to pay it. Time was starting to get tight.
And there was still the hand luggage to carry. We had checked-in the pushchair because it was secretly stashed with dozens of heavy items including a tripod and a travel cot.
The check-in agent raised an eyebrow when she put the baggage tag on the bulging frame, but she was clearly too worn out with the preceding baggage issues to do anything other than check it in for free.
There was just one snag with this cunning plan; we now had to carry the toddler. That was out of the question for me. Well into the third trimester, I was not supposed to be lifting anything heavier than a handbag. So my husband loaded the toddler onto one arm and various bursting bags onto the other. I waddled along with the rest.
Security was hell. Everyone’s shoes had to come off and then go back on. Getting sandals back on a thrashing two-year-old’s feet is hard at the best of times. When your possessions are blocking the security belt and you can’t bend over due to your enormous belly, the difficulties reach an entirely new level.
Of course, the child food jars and milk bottles set all the alarm bells ringing. This meant opening and tasting them. Already feeling nauseous, my pregnant self was then left with the foul taste of baby milk and organic mush in my mouth; the opened bottles predictably spilled all over the bag the instant they were put back in.
All plans of a calm arrival at the gate for early boarding had now vanished; the toddler, the husband, the bump and I staggered on-board well after everyone else, sweating profusely, on the verge of divorce and discovering to our horror that we had been seated separately. Even the toddler was on his own.
Several awkward seat changes later and we were airborne, with the toddler and me in two seats and the husband probably counting his blessings further back down the plane. Unfortunately for him, the bump made it impossible for the now quite truculent toddler to sit on my knee, so within about an hour, and after many apologies for disturbing our neighbours, toddler and daddy were installed together and the bump and I had a few hours to relax by ourselves.
Except of course, that is impossible when flying pregnant. The baby lurches about under your ribs, the flight socks seem designed to amputate the leg just under the knee and you need to go to the loo every five minutes. This pretty much negated any chance of sleep for me, or the unfortunate person in the aisle seat who had to keep getting up to avoid being crushed by the stately progress of my belly.
Nonetheless, the first part of the flight passed off more or less without incident and when we landed at New York for the first plane change of three, we still had a supply of unused sticker books and a relatively calm mother, father, child and foetus.
Things went downhill from there really. New York was an action replay of Heathrow, only this time the guards had bigger guns and tempers were more frayed.
And as a ravenous pregnant woman, I was about to hit the low point of the trip, discovering that American Airlines do not serve food on their domestic routes.
The best we’d get for the next eight hours would be a hyper sweet fruit juice and a packet of crackers. We were left with a can of kids’ alphabetti spaghetti, one wilting sandwich from Heathrow and worse, no distraction of meal service to kill an hour or so in the air.
Furthermore, on the first part of the trip, Toddler Armageddon had been averted with the seatback video. This time, the only thing on the back of the seat was a grubby safety sheet.
To avoid him causing mayhem in the aisle, we brought out the big guns; the Lego car that my mother had given him. This turned out to have 1,000 tiny parts which immediately disappeared down the side of the seat, inducing wails of dismay. It was impossible to lean over the bump far enough to retrieve them, which meant my fellow passengers had to go scrabbling about under our seats regularly if they wanted any peace.
By the time we got onto plane three in Los Angeles, via an emergency stop at a fast food place, my pregnant brain was starting to shut down all rational thought and sleep was taking over.
The toddler, however, had other ideas. His father and I took turns to nod off over a Thomas the Tank Engine book, being prodded awake with indignant cries of, “Read it mummy!” every couple of minutes.
Time passed, but only very slowly. Through a fog of exhaustion, we reached our final destination. The toddler chose this moment to fall into a profound slumber.
This meant that once we’d blearily checked into the hotel and finally managed to get horizontal, he was fully refreshed and trying, at full volume, to locate his Winnie the Pooh megablocks among the chaos of our luggage.
We used the last carton of milk as a sedative and a full round of every nursery rhyme either of us could dredge from memory to finally persuade him that it was midnight and that mummy, daddy and the bump really needed to sleep.
I wish I had some salient advice to pass on to those pregnant women who want to attempt to circumnavigate the globe in the later stages of pregnancy, beyond just saying “don’t” and “double don’t if you travel companion is under five years of age.”
I can offer no words of wisdom though. Yes, the bulkhead will give you more legroom, but you’re going to be giving birth shortly so you really don’t want to be reminded of how annoying crying babies can be by sitting next to one in a bassinet.
You can try ensuring that the family sits together, but then no one gets any peace; at least when you’re seated apart, you and the bump can slope off for an hour to feel cramped and uncomfortable unmolested by a scrambling child who views your burgeoning bump as something akin to a crash landing pad.
Or, of course, you could splash out for a seat in business class, but if you’ve got that kind of cash, you’ll probably be taking a nanny so I’ve no sympathy.
The best advice I received from a friend went something like this: “It is going to be hell. Accept it. Embrace it. Weep with a desperation borne of deep exhaustion when you make it through to the other side. And then forget it. It’s a great preparation for birth.”