"A Guerilla Approach to Flying with Kids"

"A Guerilla Approach to Flying with Kids"

Here's a nice article from CNN with tips for traveling by air with kids (babies and up).

I must admit, I never thought about bringing a vomit bag with me.  It's a good tip.

Practical tips for pumping on a plane!

Since I was scheduled to be on planes for long periods of time, I was fully ready to have to pump on the plane. But apparently I wasn't properly prepared because the battery pack for my pump part was lacking fresh batteries.  Oops.  But even though I didn't end up getting to pump on the plane, I still have some practical tips for you!

1.  Learn from my oversight and make sure you have fresh batteries for your pump.  And bring some back-up extra batteries.  Also, test to make sure that your pump works effectively when powered by batteries.

2.  When you get to the gate, talk to the gate agent.  Don't make any demands, and look a little pathetic (but not too needy!) and ask if there are any available seats with an empty seat next to it.  Explain (perhaps bashfully) that you'll need to pump milk on the plane for your darling child whom you had to leave at home, and that some extra privacy would be very much appreciated.  Don't get antagonistic if they say "no", but be very appreciative if they say "yes".  When I asked the gate agent, they were very nice about it and willing to reseat me to accommodate my need for a little extra privacy.

3.  Mentally prepare yourself.  Pumping on a plane is a crappy, yet necessary, part of traveling motherhood.  Just think about your beautiful child - you have to do this in order to keep your milk supply up and/or relieve your engorged breasts.  And when it's over, maybe you'll have a little "take-out" container of milk for your kid!

4.  Bring a nursing cover.  If you're pumping in your seat, the nursing cover will give you a little extra privacy.  I'm not here to engage in any debates about how expressing milk is a natural part of life and that women should be free to do so unashamed and without a cover.

5.  To avoid weirding out your neighbor, you might want to kindly explain that you'll be pumping discretely during the flight.  After all, you don't want him/her to think that the contraption with all the funny wires that you're hooking up to your body is some kind of weapon.

6.  Where to pump?  Depending on how close your seat-neighbor is, it might be most convenient to pump in your own seat.  Or, I've heard that others pump in the airplane bathroom, despite the ickiness factor.  If you decide to pump in the bathroom, just be considerate of others who are the plane who might need to use the bathroom.  Try to time your trip to pump when bathrooms are in least demand - during beverage/meal service, when a movie is playing, when the pilot first turns off the seatbelt sign, etc.  You can also ask the flight attendants if there's a convenient (and perhaps a little more private) place for you to pump, perhaps in the very back of the plane.

7.  I've found that the Medela wipes are the best bet for sanitizing pump parts on the plane.  The bathrooms are icky and the water isn't potable, so washing pump parts in the bathroom is not ideal.  My one gripe about the Medela wipes is that it's hard to get the wipes all the way to the bottom of the Medela bottle but a little creativity can help solve that issue (such as using a long pencil or pen or something to make sure that you get the wipe all the way down to the bottom of the bottle).  It's not a perfect solution, but it's the best solution that I know of.

8.  When you're done pumping, you can try to ask the flight attendant if there is any fridge/freezer space to store your milk.  Don't count on it though.  They didn't have any space to store my milk on the flights I was on.  So bring a little cooler with an ice pack if you can, especially if you'll be traveling for a long time.  Breastmilk can sit out at room temperature for 6 hours, so if you're on a very short flight, it'll be fine.

Any other practical tips?

Air travel with breast milk... a follow-up

So I'm back from my 3-day trip without the kids.  It's funny - I thought I'd be terribly depressed, missing my kids.  But it really wasn't that bad.  It helped that I was really busy the whole time I was gone and that I was also able to video chat with the family.  Also, the uninterrupted sleep at night was a huge boon.  But now that I'm home, it's nice to be back with the kiddos.

Anyway, this is a follow-up post to my previous musings about whether or not I'd be allowed to travel with bags of breastmilk while unaccompanied by children, given TSA's new guidelines that breastmilk is to be treated as medical liquids.  All I have to offer here is anecdotal evidence, so take it with a grain of salt.  The TSA may have some obscure official position concerning the whole matter.  Anyway, during my trip, I pumped milk and was fully prepared to have to dump it all at the security checkpoint, as painful as that might be.  I stored the milk in the Lansinoh bags and froze them.  In all, I probably had around 12-15 bags of milk, each with varying number of ounces.  I just put it in a cooler and then declared to the TSA guy working at the security checkpoint that I had breastmilk.  He took a quick glance at it and let it through.  I wasn't hassled and they didn't make me open the bags of milk, or taste it, or make it undergo any further screening.  Keep in mind, though, that I went through the security checkpoint at a very small airport, so other airports may differ in how thorough a screening they give bags of milk.

So, for those of you who have to travel without your child for a few days and are planning on pumping while away, have heart - you may be able to take all your milk with you back home as carry-on.  (Though, I want to stress that there may be some official TSA policy of which I am unaware, so you should probably be prepared to pump and dump if you need to...)

If anyone has any other experiences with this, please do leave a comment!

Air travel with breast milk... but sans kids

I have an upcoming trip planned alone.  Without the kids.  So on one hand, that means I'll probably be able to sleep through the night for the first time in months.  But on the other hand, I have anxiety not only over leaving my kids for a few days, but about the whole pumping on the airplane thing and carrying breast milk with me through security.  According to the "new" TSA regulations, nursing mothers can carry breast milk with them through the security checkpoint in quantities greater than 3.4 oz, provided that it is declared prior to screening.  Breast milk is supposed to be treated like liquid medications.  However, I'll be gone for 3 days, and I'd really hate to pump and dump, and I'd also hate to pay the $25 fee to check in baggage, just for the sake of saving the milk.  So I'm wondering, does TSA have any restrictions on how many oz of milk can be brought through the security checkpoint?  If I were, say, to attempt to carry 15 bags of milk with me, would they turn me away?  Make me throw out the milk?  Call me a security threat?  Anybody have any firsthand experience with us?  Perhaps I'll do the responsible thing and email TSA to see what they have to say.  Or perhaps I'll just try to bring the 15 bags of milk with me anyway, and if they tell me that I have to throw it away, then I'll live with it...

Keeping the kid(s) occupied

So when you're in for a long car ride or plane ride, how do you keep your kids occupied?  Of course, there's the ever-popular DVD player, but are there any other creative (or not-so-creative) options out there?  We haven't purchased a portable DVD player yet.  We're hoping to never have to resort to that option.  It's partly out of principle, but mostly out of practicality.  I mean, if the DVD player doesn't entertain the kid, what option do you have after that?  At least for our family, the DVD player is the nuclear option - there's no going back, and if it fails, I'm not sure there are any options left for keeping the kid entertained.  So we've been utilizing low-tech solutions so far, starting small so that we can work our way up to the nuclear option if absolutely necessary.  For those of you with kids with eczema - it's like starting with the lowest steroid cream (hydrocortisone) to see if that can get rid of those itchy red bumps, and then working your way up to the stronger steroid creams.

Anyway.  One thing that our son really likes is the Aquadoodle Travel Doodle.  I found it at Target on clearance in the summer, and my son loves it.  It's simple, compact, and there's no mess.  It can keep him occupied for quite a while.  Also found at Target on clearance were Travel Tangoes.  I haven't yet introduced them to my son yet, since he's still a little young for them, but I'm hoping they'll keep him occupied and silent when he's a little older.  He also loves books, so we make sure to go to the library to get him new books to read (though if you're worried about losing these library books, you can always bring books you have at home already or purchase books at a garage sale or book sale and keep them hidden until you plan to be sequestered in a cramped space with a young child.  We've also tried getting books on CD from the library.  The kid wasn't too interested in them - I think he was a bit too young and certainly couldn't follow along in the book, since he can't read yet.

Another tip is novelty.  To make sure that a toy will keep my child's interest for at least a small amount of time, I make sure to keep some toys as only travel toys.  He doesn't get to play with the Aquadoodle at home, thus ensuring that it will be a new fun toy for him to play with whenever he gets to play with it.  I've also tried wrapping up some of his more regular toys - the whole process of unwrapping the toy not only takes time, but also seems to make the familiar toy more interesting.  Get new books from the library.  Or when you see something on clearance at the store (even the dollar store) and have an upcoming trip planned, don't give it to the kid right away, but save it for the trip.

What are your tips for keeping a kid occupied during travel?

Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal about the increasing difficulties for parents flying with children.

Luckily, my selected seats have never been reassigned by the airlines, though I'm pretty obsessive about checking my seat assignments periodically before my departure date to make sure that they haven't been changed.  And when I fly Southwest, I also set an alarm for 24 hours before the departure time to make sure to check in as soon as possible so that I can board the plane earlier.

One particular bone to pick with the article - it mentions that one reason why airlines are less baby-friendly is the lack of microwaves to warm up bottles (though it notes that flight attendants can still warm up bottles with hot water). Who warms up bottles with a microwave? That's a very big no-no. Which reminds me, don't assume that the flight attendant knows how to warm up your bottle. If you ask a flight attendant to warm up a bottle for you, clearly specify that the bottle should come to room temperature, no hotter. I had a flight attendant once warm up a bottle to a scalding temperature.

Cell phone SIM Cards - Hong Kong

While in Hong Kong, I knew that my husband and I would be split up for at least part of the time, since I was there for a conference. Cell phones were very helpful to us - not only when we were apart, but also so we could contact our local friends, etc. We consulted our friends in Hong Kong and were told not to buy SIM cards in the States (for example, through online retailers that specialized in international SIM cards) but rather to wait until we got to Hong Kong. So, we brought our unlocked phones that take SIM cards (we have T-Mobile here in the States) to Hong Kong. The SIM cards we found were incredibly cheap in Hong Kong, especially since we weren't planning on making many calls anyway, and all of our cars originated in Hong Kong and were to phones in Hong Kong. We went to 7-11 (and in fact, I think most if not all convenience stores carry them) and bought a SIM card for around 68 HKD (approximately US$10)! I don't remember how many minutes were included (maybe 50???), but there were plenty for our modest cell phone usage during our stay in Hong Kong, even though we were charged for both in-coming and out-going calls. With this basic phone card, we could technically call international numbers - but the per minute rate was pretty expensive. If you're planning on making calls mainly to international numbers from Hong Kong, you can purchase a basic IDD card. I think the price for the IDD phone card was 98HKD.

The lesson here? If you're looking to get a SIM card for your phone, do so in Hong Kong. They're readily available and very inexpensive. Just go to a 7-11 or some convenience store.

If I can find our phone card and the information I came with, I'll be sure to upload some pictures.