Traveling To America By Myself With a 9 Month Old

Months leading up to our departure, I was dreading this trip. Most Americans, I think, feel the same way I do. But I know many moms in my mom's group who travel to other countries with their bubs and don't seem to give it a second thought. They don't all do it by themselves, but it's much more of a common thing to do here, I guess because so many have family in other countries. And that's why I sacrificed my sanity, spending 2 weeks away from my husband, and I'm glad we did it. However, if I had known that the return trip would be a million times harder than the flights out, I may have had second thoughts.

Let me begin by saying that the trip there could not have been easier unless we had had a bassinet seat. I got to the ticket counter in Sydney and they offered me 3 bulkhead seats but no bassinet. Ugh. How to have a 14 hour flight and a baby sleeping on me? How do you use the bathroom? Will she even sleep? How do I eat my meals? Fill out customs forms? All of these thoughts rapidly ran through my head. But I sucked it up, got on the plane, and by a miracle was given a "floor bassinet," which was really a duffel bag with some cardboard supporting the sides. See below.

She barely fit in there but somehow was comfortable enough to sleep. God bless her. Then we got to SFO and happened upon a baby playroom. Jackpot! Avery is crawling and needed an outlet to release all that baby crawling energy and this was perfect. Long story short, this was a dream travel day. Of course I should mention a few things I noticed as an expat. United Airlines is much less accommodating to single moms or moms/families in general than other Australian based ones. Quantas and Jetstar both were wonderful. I had heard from friends that the stewards and stewardesses were trained to help mothers, holding the baby while you use the bathroom, washing bottles, etc. This was not the case on United. It was a much more annoyed/flippant attitude. I asked one if they had anything I could wash bottles with besides the hand soap in the bathroom and was quickly and flatly told no. The people, however, who are parents or grandparents and traveling alongside you can be godsends. I don't know what I would have done on the return flights without these angels who helped me out.

And to that, I won't go into a lot of detail because it's something I'm trying to block from my memory, but basically within two weeks, my baby became 100% more active, refusing to even let me change her diaper, and add to that severe jetlag, and you have a miserable 24 hours. Charlotte to San Francisco included a few hours of screaming and middle seat friend who didn't want to move to another middle seat (someone behind us kindly offered!), so when she wasn't screaming, Avery was trying to grab his computer, book, arm hair, and then wasn't able to nap because he had his reading light on. The second flight she slept for five hours and the other 10 weren't so bad thanks to a surrogate dad sitting next to us who was a new father himself and was great helping me out.