We Survived Our First Flight!

I had been dreading this past weekend for about a month now. Not because of the trip itself...in fact, I was very excited to go to Virginia and visit nona and pop pop and have them meet their first great grandchild. It was the getting there part that was looming over me like a dark cloud. I remember when we booked our trip a month ago I instantly got butterflies in my stomach. How in the world was I going to take our 3 month old on a plane and ensure that he would not scream and cry the ENTIRE flight. I immediatley wanted to take back all the bad things I had whispered under my breath about unruly kids on planes. Surely Karma was going to rear its ugly head and it would be terrible.

So, jump to last Sunday and imagine my anxiety level when I realized that Liam (on top of everything else) had a head cold. Now, not only were we scheduled to fly in 5 DAYS, but my son had his first cold ever and it was a head cold of all things. Well, I did what any nervous mother would do and first called the doctor and then proceeded to quarantine myself (I had caught it as well) and Liam for 5 days. We did absolutely nothing, went absolutely nowhere and went absolutely crazy out of our minds (well I did at least). Luckily by Thursday we were both feeling almost back to normal and ready to tackle the 747. Josh and I sat down on Thursday evening and went over our "game plan" to make sure we were both on the same page and knew how Friday was going to go down (gone were the days of flying being a time when you could relax and read a book and enjoy some peace and quiet for 2 hours).

Our strategy looked something like this:

1. Arrive at gate 1 hour before takeoff and feed Liam a "snack" (gotta keep that belly full if we have any shot at staying happy)

2. Board flight early, get situated and pray for a cat nap

3. Upon takeoff nurse Liam (help with ears and full belly-see note above)

4. Put Liam in sling and pray that the noise and snugness of the sling make him fall back asleep

Low and behold it worked. Everything went off without a hitch. Liam was a champion. He snacked, cat napped, ate, slept. I'm still in disbelief that we had not one moment of crying. When we landed the woman in front of us even looked back at our sleeping sling baby and said "he was so good. I did not even hear a peep out of him". Ahhh, that was music to my ears :)