Baby Troubles...

I traveled for years as a normal passenger before they finally granted me my wings to fly professionally. Ever since I was a tiny baby, my parents have been hauling us children back and forth across the western part of the USA, to see family and to take various family trips. Even as a youngster, I knew there were specific behaviors that were wrong and right in a public setting (or, at least, I knew that there would be severe repercussions doled out by my parents if I failed to behave by preset standards). I thought this was pretty standard material amongst children. Boy was I wrong… We have all had the pleasure of babies screaming at 1:00 in the morning on a transoceanic flight, when all we want to do is watch the final moments of the film-of-the month or catch a few moments of sleep. Babies cry…that’s life. I can’t help chalking it up to the extreme payback for however badly we adults must have cried and whined as babies. The part that is unbearable, however, is the reactive behavior of parents, or, perhaps better put, the lack thereof. A fair amount of parents will spring into action when their children start screaming. They carry their children away from other people, in an attempt to appease the baby, or they haul out an arsenal of toys to pacify the screaming outburst. Still others are even more prepared with a bottle or boobie at the ready to plug up the noise-emitting hole, albeit creating other eventual OUTcomes later on. The concept of traveling with children is a norm for them, and they probably do it multiple times a year. Such parents have a tough job, but they are almost always ready at a moment’s notice. We’ll call this the battle-ready set. Other parents, however, are seemingly less prepared. They may have boarded the plane with a few toys and the notion that maybe their baby will cry, he might even poop, and maybe, just maybe might be hungry at some point in time during the flight. These are the parents who are stressed out when their babies start crying and screaming. They are often the parents who are traveling alone and sometimes with multiple children. This may be their first time traveling with children and depending upon how harrowing the experience, it may be the last time they travel with baby in tow. We’ll call this the battle-weary set. But, should these parents be blamed? No…afterall, life is about learning, and such parents will surely take the experience to heart and make changes so that the next experience will be better, for them and everyone else on the plane. With a little practice they may even join the ranks of the battle-ready. The parents that surprise me (and I know they shock the hell out of my colleagues and our passengers) are the parents that seem to have no connection or tie to that screaming beast sitting on their lap. It is as if they boarded the plane alone and suddenly a tiny manic leprechaun appeared on their lap. ‘How did it get there? I don’t know! Let me just ignore it and hopefully it will go away…’ The surprising thing is that parents of this subgroup, the battle-ignoramuses, really do manage to ignore the screaming and wailing that is driving the rest of us insane. Not only do such parents choose to ignore the ensuing din that their baby is causing, they seem entirely unequipped for any attempt at a counterattack. No toys, no games, no pacifiers, and no food. No food! No boobie, no bottle, nothing. ‘Um, I’m sorry, this is a 10 hour flight, and your baby can’t normally go more than two hours without a bottle, and yet, you didn’t bring any formula!? Hmm…yeah, makes sense. Oh, I see, you assumed that the airline would have that…yeah…good move!’ Or sometimes they do have some sort of baby food; but it has to be heated, in a microwave safe dish and in a microwave. One problem…we don’t have microwaves on airplanes. We never have. We have high-powered conventional ovens that will melt your plastic baby food container to a molten sludge. ‘What? You weren’t told that when you checked in?’ It’s true, airlines don’t publish this information or automatically supply it to baby owners when they purchase their tickets…at the same time, airlines also don’t tell passengers that the airplane will make a lot of noise or that they will have to sit in a specific colored seat. If a passenger wanted to know these things (perhaps they have an aversion to red or are severely affected by loud noises) they have simply to ask, and the airline is ready to provide such information. All it takes is a matter of personal responsibility, a quality many passengers (such parents included) seem to be lacking. Now I am not one to say what defines good and bad parenting. I, after all, have decided to take the barren route in life, for I am certain that I would be a terrible parent. I’m not good with children and I don’t really like them all that much. Therefore, early on, I decided that the idea of having or adopting children did not apply to me and was best left for others who were deemed: ‘responsible’. I have, however, been informed by countless parents that some of the prime examples of negligent parenting onboard flights are actually people who should probably not have reproduced in the first place. When compared with the battle-ready set, they do, indeed, seem to be ill prepared, and that doesn’t take a seasoned parent to realize. It may come as a shock to some of you, but most flight attendants really don’t like the task of babysitting your children during a flight. We may coo over your babies and smile widely at your precious bundles of joy, but that is usually where we draw the line. I, for one, don’t even like holding babies while moms or dads use the facilities. As was aforementioned, I would make a terrible parent, and I really have no parenting skills whatsoever; therefore, the fact that some parents are ready and willing to thrust their children at me, a total stranger, is not an amusing gesture or a particularly smart move. On other occasions, I have had parents direct their children to ‘go talk with the nice flight attendant.’ Hmm…no! Sometimes the move is more subtle; the parents walk their children to the back of the plane and seemingly ‘forget’ to take them back to their seats with them. Suddenly, little Jane and little Dickie have launched into a barrage of annoying questions about the plane and the flight, whilst you, the poor unassuming flight attendant, are wondering how this child came to be and where his or her owner has gotten off to. One time, I was working a flight from the Middle East, and I counted 53 children under the age of 13! 53! However, there didn’t appear to be a sufficient number of siring parents on the plane, and none of them stepped forward to claim their progeny until just before landing. The kids actually did laps around the aisles and terrorized our galleys for the entire 12 hours of the flight. I felt like an elementary school playground attendant or one of those birthday party clowns. It’s a good thing that the toilet paper roll in the bathroom is affixed to the wall; I might have become a modern version of the Egyptian mummies. Parents, please take note: I am a flight attendant, not a child attendant. It’s not in my repertoire. I am sure most passengers have had the unpleasant experience of finding gum sandwiched in the seat back pocket or a sticky, gooey mess lining their tray table. Perhaps you have even gotten the pleasure of wiping up some unmentionable residue in your seat with the backside of your pants. From the crumbs of spilled cheerios to the cheese sauce that has been ground into the carpet; the leftover evidence of children from previous flights is rather disgusting. Cabin cleaners do a preliminary once-over of the airplane’s cabin in the interim between arriving and departing flights, but this perfunctory cleaning is often not thorough enough to remove the nefarious remains from preceding passengers. More often than not, the real cleaning comes upon yours truly, often in very unpleasant circumstances. I have cleaned all manners of things out of seat back pockets and from atop tray tables. Spilled soda and juice, gum, dried-up-caked-on food particles, crayon markings, vomit, even fecal matter…eww! It’s true that children aren’t the only culprits; many adults are just as disgusting and messy, but children are often the guilty parties. Or are they? Perhaps, this goes back to the little matter of parental responsibility. I would like to think that if my child spilled something, I would have the decency to clean it up or at least tell someone. It seems that a good number of parents, however, prefer to ignore the unfortunate accident or better yet, pretend it didn’t even happen. Thus, the poor person who sits upon that seat or uses that tray table on the next flight gets to ‘discover’ their clever ruse. Lucky them! In order to avoid such an unfortunate inevitability, I often opt to avoid the tray table when possible, and I never stick anything in the seat pocket; after all, not all surprises are good! Okay, poopy diapers are inevitable when it comes to babies, and finding a spot to change those diapers on the plane is not always an easy task. Some planes are equipped with lavatories that have handy, fold down tables that make diaper changes easier. It would be wonderful if all planes came standard with this feature. It would also be nice if parents would utilize this commodity when it was available and not create interesting and innovative places to change their babies. Granted the tray table or on the empty seat next to you may seem like a good place to change them, but milk-fed babies don’t often make solid turds, and sometimes little remnants escape and…yeah. I, for one, don’t like the idea of eating off a tray table that has recently seen a poopy diaper or a baby’s bare ass. Even more disgusting is when a parent uses the galley counter as a changing table; we prepare food and drinks on these counters—your food, to be exact! There is also the notion that the surface upon which you are changing your baby may not exactly be the cleanest. That toilet seat, that tray table, and certainly that carpet-lined aisle are probably teeming with germs that you probably don’t want attached to your baby; after all, most of these planes are older than dirt and have not received a deep cleaning in, oh, about 200 years! I am happy to accommodate parents with a paper cart liner or a blanket to aid the diaper changing process, but no, I don’t want to change your baby for you. Oh believe me, people have tried! One flight attendant even informed me of a time when a passenger approached a male flight attendant with a poopy baby and instructed him to change the baby. Change it, he did. The passenger wasn’t too pleased when the flight attendant presented him with another baby—how’s that for changing the baby! Good thinking, I must say. Other flight attendants have experienced the pleasure of ‘discovering’ a left-behind poop-filled diaper. Oh yes, we often find them in unexpected places—bathroom counters, galley stowage spaces, seat pockets. One time, a kindly passenger even left me a poopy diaper in my jumpseat…wasn’t that a pleasant experience to encounter when sitting down for landing! I don’t know what makes people believe it is okay to hand a poop-filled diaper to a flight attendant—I don’t want to touch it! Plus, do you really want me to serve you a Coke after you have handed me your child’s poopy remains?! A plane-full of passengers was once denied a beverage service after a man placed a poop-filled diaper in the ice drawer of a flight attendant’s cart. I mean, really…yes, it has a liner in it like a garbage can, but why would we carry a poop dispensary on our beverage cart?! Coke, diet coke or chocolate milk anyone? Not all children on the plane are under the direct supervision of an accompanying adult. Often children are traveling by themselves—the infamous: unaccompanied minors. Despite the fact that these children are traveling solo and are not under the constant surveillance of a parent or guardian, most unaccompanied minors are among the best behaved individuals on the plane. They usually sit quietly, are respectful of others, clean up after themselves, and act as model citizens, or at least model airplane passengers. Take note traveling children: these are your model brethren. Behave like them and you may too get a second cookie or a chocolate bar from first class. Some unaccompanied minors or UMs, as we airline folk call them do, however, try to push the envelope a tad. Yes, you may look old for your age, but I am still not going to let you get off this plane by yourself, nor will you be drinking a martini…how about some apple juice? One UM on a flight even asked me for a sleeping pill so she could rest easily…yeah, sorry, kid, I wasn’t born yesterday. Even more surprising is when she mentioned that her mother lets her have them all the time. Need I say more?! I loved to travel by myself when I was younger, but some kids really should not be traveling alone. Left up to their own devices these kids are capable of anything. It doesn’t happen often, but there have been instances of UMs who have seemingly gone missing mid flight. Musical airplane seats or hide-a-go-seek in the lavatory is not a game we flight attendants like to play. I seem to remember a recent movie about UMs stuck in the airport and the ensuing mayhem they caused…I can believe it. So, to summarize, whereas everyone deserves the right to fly on an airplane, perhaps we need to establish and enforce guidelines for the carriage of children. Until then, parents take note: toys are cool, poopy diapers are not. Screaming children are okay (not all tantrums can be avoided) but make sure you have a plan to divide and conquer. And when the going gets rough, just remember: flight attendants are here to attend to your needs on the flight, not your children. Don’t even think about pushing that red call button!