.travelling with TWO.

Everyone warned me about flying with a baby. So when I flew to Melbourne with Harlyn by myself, when she was 6 months, I was super nervous! But she slept and fed the whole way and didn't cry pretty much at all! I was so happy. Hearing about all these horror stories when the baby cries the whole way and everyone stares at you with hate in their eyes. I had flown with Harly either by myself or with my Husband about 3 times and each time was fine (apart from when I was 20 weeks pregnant with Harper and throwing up on the descent). I was a little nervous about flying with both of them and with Harper being only 10 weeks old, but there was 2 of us to look after them so I didn't even think twice about it. Oh how I was so wrong.

The flight there wasn't TOO bad. Harly did whinge a little bit when I had to go to the bathroom to change Harper, so I just took her with me too. I've heard a few people tell me that a baby is worse to fly with than a toddler. Seriously, do they not realise that a toddler will want to just get out of their seat and run around the entire time? And that is exactly what my 2 year old wanted to do. Lucky Harper is bottle fed so I passed that responsibility over to Brett and I had the hard one! It was hard enough to try and get her to put her seat belt ON let alone stay seated and KEEP it on. Every time I looked over to Brett, he had his eyes shut with head lent back and Harper asleep in his arms. I asked if he wanted to switch. He did not.

We flew with Qantas so we were fed. Bad mistake. Harly just wanted to throw food and drink around and spilling everything everywhere. And on the descent, I literally had to hold her down because she could easily get out of her seat belt. She pretty much screamed that whole time.

We stupidly thought that we could catch public transport home from the airport. However, a Qantas baggage handler broke my double pram so we could only put one child in there at a time. So we went over to the taxi queue to ask if they had cabs with baby seats. The taxi line attendant told us that we wouldn't need a seat for Harly and at 2 she could just sit in the back seat. We decided not to catch a cab. Then we decided to make the long journey home which is via train, ferry AND bus with a bus change over and a walk up the hill to our house. Needless to say, we did NOT think about how much of a challenge it would be. With the pram broken and only 1 child able to sit in it, I put Harper in the baby bjorn (lucky we had it) and Harly in the pram along with Brett's luggage, and I dragged my 18 kilo bag behind me.

I think the one thing that helped us not rip each others throats out, was that we mentally prepared ourselves when we were on the train. At the airport, when I spotted the pram was broken, we were already over it and we started yelling at each other but it was like a whole new experience once we hopped off that train. We actually started making jokes about it and laughing about the worst day of our lives so far.

Just as we were nearly home and thought the worst was over, it got worse. Our stupid bus driver slammed the breaks on while Brett was holding Harper and her head hit the seat in front quite hard. I don't think I've ever heard her scream and cry like that in her little life. I was beside myself, so upset and just overwhelmed by how our day had gone that I nearly started crying myself. But I had to be strong for my kids.

We had left Tasmania at 10:20am and we flnally got home at 5:30pm. And I still had to take Harper to the hospital just to get checked over because she was still crying. That was another 3 hours. She's obviously fine but the nurses were more concerned about Harper having eczema. So then I had to get all the info about that and it's really not that big a deal but after the day I had, I actually just cried in the car on the way home. Just so overwhelmed by it all. Just one bad thing after the other and it just got to be too much!

Point of the story. DON'T fly with 2 kids. 1 is fine and under the age of 2. Just be selfish and ask people to come to you ;-)

Harly, Harper & me x