Specal Family Vacations : Traveler’s Journal : Fear of Crying : Surviving a long flight with a young child means packing patience along with the toys

My daughter’s first overseas plane flight was from New York to Tokyo, four months before she was born.

As I lumbered down the aisle, I could feel her wriggle and squirm. This, I thought, is the only way a child should ever fly long distance--in utero, where nobody can hear it scream.

My husband and I thought any trip abroad with small children sounded difficult. But the process of getting there--crammed with a fidgety kid into a narrow cabin for hours on end--sounded like pure hell.

But just four months after Ella’s birth, a dirt-cheap fare to Paris persuaded us to give it a try. Could it be that much worse than labor?

We planned the operation like a military campaign and arrived in France victorious. The trip emboldened us for other conquests, and by the time she was 3, Ella had flown to Turkey, Hawaii, Costa Rica and Australia, the latter a 24-hour haul from our home in Philadelphia.

As I discovered on that first trip, keeping an infant occupied on a long flight is relatively easy. Ella was, for the most part, happy to stay confined in her car seat. (Like other budget-minded parents on overseas flights, we opted to pay 10% of the adult fare and keep our fingers crossed that there would be an empty space for Ella, rather than pay full price for a guaranteed seat.) She napped a lot, and her drool-coated fingers were her favorite source of amusement. And I was able to offer continuous breast-milk beverage service . . . for one leg of the trip, anyway.

I had done some semi-public nursing before the flight, but I was not really prepared to perform in the close confines of coach class. At feeding time, I constructed an elaborate tent-like structure atop my chest with airline pillows and blankets. But I still blushed as Ella suckled, and I was mortified after dozing off at night to find the captain himself parading down the aisle while my defenses were down.

On the daylight flight home, Ella drank formula. I selected Chablis.

Ella’s next big trip was to Istanbul, Turkey, two weeks before her first birthday. Once again, food was a major part of our preflight preparations. This was during Ella’s Cheerios period, and her father and I boarded the flight with puffy, cereal-filled plastic bags stuffed throughout our carry-on luggage. Each tiny circle provided not only nourishment but also a moment’s entertainment as we parceled them out one by one, often with comic fanfare.

By the return flight, our Cheerios supply was exhausted. During a layover in Germany, my husband struck upon an equally small food. He plied her with raisins.

An hour into the flight, we were suddenly reminded of the laxative powers of dried fruit. Halfway to New York, Ella had spent her entire diaper supply and had gone through all three changes of clothes allotted for the flight. When we finally landed at Kennedy Airport, she was wearing her last diaper (courtesy of a flight attendant), a T-shirt and two airline blankets. I kept an eye out for the child welfare authorities while my husband retrieved our bags.

On a flight to Costa Rica a year later, we took no chances. We brought a two-day supply of diapers on board, stuffing them into the pockets of my husband’s jacket lining and into the back pocket of his jeans. On the way home, it paid off: Our flight was five hours late leaving San Jose, and we missed our connecting flight out of Miami.

It was on the Costa Rica flight that I came to terms with the now-familiar glare of passengers who discovered us within a 20-foot radius of their seats.

“Oh great, a baby,” came a booming voice as we finally boarded the flight out of San Jose. He was one row back and across the aisle--a paunchy Canadian who had spent the five-hour delay fueling in the airport lounge.

I smiled, sat down and started to erect the mental force field around Ella that would bring me to full attention at the slightest sign of a whimper or any other misbehavior. Our neighbor from the north continued his whiskey intake, pausing only to paw the flight attendants and complain, loudly, about the United States.

As irritating as he was, the flight was quite restful for me. I’d learned that a poorly behaved adult is just as annoying as a cranky child--and that nothing Ella could do could top this guy.

Our most recent long-distance trip was to Sydney, Australia, when Ella was 2 1/2. By this time, food and diapers were far less important than preparing an adequate supply of toys, books and games.

For this flight--a total of 24 hours with layovers in Detroit and Los Angeles--we dropped any pretense of traveling light. Our on-board paraphernalia included a stroller, car seat, huge bag of food and drinks and three carry-on bags loaded with toys and books that Ella hadn’t seen before. Ella’s backpack was so heavy I had to walk behind her holding the top loop with my finger to prevent her from crumpling backward under the weight.

We’d contemplated breaking up the flight in Hawaii, but the prospective hassle of getting from the airport to a hotel and back again persuaded us to gut it out straight through to Sydney. The longest haul, a 15-hour stretch from Los Angeles, was at night, Philadelphia time--and Ella, praise be, slept through most of it.

When she wasn’t napping, Ella made friends with a 4-year-old from Perth, Australia, who was making the trip with her 2-year-old sister. I observed the siblings with a mixture of fascination and dread.

We had survived long-distance flights with one child. But two ?

What I didn’t know then was that along with all those carry-on bags, I was carrying Ella’s new sister.

This spring, three months after Sylvia’s birth, I stayed home with the girls while my husband traveled to Madagascar. Call me a wimp, but even the most intrepid mom has her limits.