Since my son Cael is only 2 and a half years old he has already experienced 12 plane flights 3 different locations. That’s a lot of travelling for one little adventurer.
And each flight has its own horror story I tell you what this is probably a post about what not to do rather than what to do when taking your children flying.
Cael’s first ever plane flight was on a trip to New Zealand, I haven’t mentioned yet but Cael is part Kiwi. He was only about 1 years old at this point just learning to walk but still stumbling around. Our holiday did not start off with a bang more like an explosion… A poo explosion. Yes, you heard me poo, human feces and lots of it.
We were waiting in the Melbourne airport about half an hour before our plane was departing when Cael started screaming the entire airport down out of nowhere. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. He had just recently been fed, I had changed his nappy, gave him a bottle, his temperature was fine. But there was some funky ass smell coming from his be-hind even though I couldn’t see anything when I looked down his pants. So I took his nappy off in front of everyone and spread his legs and there it was one rock hard nugget!
The poor thing was constipated as fuck, he was prairie dogging! I’d be screaming to if that was me but I highly doubt anyone would have helped me. I quickly raced him to the toilet, meanwhile the speaker phone is yelling out to us to board the plane. I ran up to the flight attendant and said y’all have to wait old mates trying to do a shit. I’m in the toilet with him and the only thing I can think of doing to help him is to well basically dig it out with my fingers I know GROSS (Mum Life). He started to settle down so I thought that was it, he was fine, we boarded the plane. Plane was in the air and all was well until about half an hour in and Cael started screaming again. So I took him to those weird drop dunny toilets they have on the plan and in those 5 cm wide toilet cubicles they have a drop down changing table. You could imagine my struggle with a 1-year-old who is about the size of a baby giraffe trying to change him and scrape poo from his ass. Getting kicked and punched in the face and digging out poo was not my idea of a fun “vacay”.
So this was now the second time he had done this within half an hour, the plane flight was about 4 hours long and let me tell you what, he did this to me another 4 fucking times. At this stage I was down to my last nappy. The plane had landed in Auckland and we had just started walking up the terminal when Cael let out one huge sloppy fart! Next thing you know he is covered head to toe in shit. I’ve got him on my hip and it has soaked all through his clothes and all over me. Let me remind you this was his last nappy! We were standing in this massive line through customs both covered in shit everyone in the line were shoulder to shoulder it was crammed except for the space around us. Yeah folks were clearing out holding their noses because well it stank! You would think the bloody security guards would let us go straight to the front and I am pretty sure at this point the rest of the people in line wouldn’t have minded. BUT NO!
I can’t remember how long we were standing there for but when you have a child that’s attached to your hip covered in human feces it feels like hours. We get to the front of the line and of course the sniffer dog wants to have a look in our carry-on bags so we get pulled aside. The security guard starts taking out every single item one by one while stating the dogs have detected something in your bag. My reply “yeah its probably my sons shit it can smell”. Anyways it was just a squashed banana no biggy. Once we had made it through customs alive I started pacing up and down the whole airport looking for a store that sold nappies. No luck whatsoever! So here we are waiting outside the Auckland airport absolutely fucked and covered in shit waiting for a taxi to pick us up and take us to our hired car. Eventually we found a store that sold some nappies bought 500 of the poo soakers and continued on the rest of our holidays. Safe to say our first family holiday was off to a shit start (literally).
ADVICE FOR TAKING YOUNG CHILDREN FLYING!
- TAKE BULK NAPPIES ON THE PLANE!!
- DON’T TAKE YOUR CHILDREN IN THE FIRST PLACE
- ENJOY YOUR SHIT FREE HOLIDAY!
Such is Life with Erin Maxwell 