Never Break Your Own Rules When Travelling with Children

After I just finished writing a post about travelling with children, we took a trip ourselves. Some of you may have seen my Facebook post late last week about not heeding my own travel tips…well here is what happened.

We were heading to Sydney for a quick visit to see family. I packed quite quickly and without much thought since we were only going for the weekend.

When it came time to get dressed, I pulled out my trusty, patterned, quick dry pants (read more about them here) and then decided I just couldn’t face wearing them yet again so chucked on a pair of jeans. I considered putting them in my carry-on as my spare outfit (Tip Number 2) but figured I hadn’t required a change of clothes since the coke spillage of 2013 so would just risk it. I mean how bad could it be? It was only a 4 hour flight…

Fail number 2 was neglecting to pack my snaplock bag of wipes, plastic shopping bags etc. (Tip Number 1) Moo has been toilet trained for a while now and I just packed her a change of clothes like I do for Squirt without all the extras.

About 2 hours into the flight Squirt and Moo were getting restless. We were sitting in 2 separate rows – hubby and Moo in front and Squirt behind with me. The kids decided to swap seats and I could see Moo was clearly getting tired. She wriggled around a bit, lay down, grizzled, wriggled some more so I picked her up to give her a cuddle and help her settle. She wasn’t a fan of this and that’s when the trouble started.

Moo has a disconcerting trick of crying until she passes out. If you don’t know what I mean, I have a video of it from when she was a lot younger that we took for the doctor to see.

WARNING: it may be a little distressing to watch

Yup. Scary. But she’s been checked and cleared by the doctor so now we just try to make sure she doesn’t fall over when she passes out.

So when I cuddled her and suggested she have a sleep, she started to cry. As the breath hold went on longer and longer and she started turning bluer and bluer, for the first time since she started this, she seemed to be aware of what was happening. She was clawing at her throat trying to get air and I was trying to help her to stop crying and to breathe – to no avail. She eventually lost consciousness and started to breath again – and immediately lost control of her bladder. All over me.

I was quite upset and frantically tapping hubby on the shoulder for help. He didn’t seem to understand what I was saying but fortunately the other passengers jumped up and someone grabbed a crew member.

They helped us to the galley, offered oxygen (Moo was having none of it), drinks, chocolate and comforting words. Hubby grabbed Moo’s spare clothes and took care of her and I was left, in wee soaked jeans, lamenting my cockiness at not packing spare clothes for myself. If you recall, I also hadn’t packed any plastic bags, so later found Moo’s wee soaked clothes had been popped directly in the front of her carry-on!

A bucket load of alcohol wipes from the crew later and a significant period of time sitting on chux wipes and scarfing handfuls of M&Ms, I returned to my seat for the remainder of the flight.

We landed without further incident by which time I was dry, if a little smelly and my parents met us at the airport to help juggle luggage (Tip Number 9!).

Unfortunately we had organised to go out for dinner straight from the airport – so I enjoyed another couple of hours in the offending pair of jeans. Thank goodness it was an outside venue!!!

Later that night I sent a compliments email to the airline praising the crew for their quick actions, support and kindness. People are often quick to complain so I like to make a point of thanking people when they make a difference.

So if you’re travelling with children, I highly advise you to prepare for the worst but expect the best so you can relax and enjoy 🙂