Baby On Board

One thing I talk to my son Benjamin about—if it’s really considered “talking” when he’s eight months old—is how worldly he is.

“You had your first plane ride,” I tell him, “When you were only three weeks old.”

He usually shoves a teething toy, blanket, finger or whatever’s nearby in his mouth as a response.

To be clear, this plane ride wasn’t because he seemed like he’d be a good dude to vacation with. It was because Ben was born in Georgia by surrogate and my boyfriend Jim, and I live in California. As first-time parents without a clue about babies, it was a trip we had been dreading.

Luckily, Jim is the son of a cop who keeps earthquake kits in every room of the house and considers a first aid class a great time. He had spent roughly 144 hours planning this trip, brainstorming what could go wrong, and doing everything possible to make sure none of it did.

The one thing we couldn’t control, of course, was Ben’s bathroom schedule. By the time we got to the airport, the boy hadn’t pooped in two days.

But no one could say we weren’t prepared. Jim had packed a travel diaper bag with diapers for a week (in case we missed our connecting flight and got stuck in Denver, Jim explained. He didn’t clarify why he thought Denver wouldn’t have diapers). The bag also included powder and liquid formula, every variety of pacifier imaginable, wipes, baby noise-canceling headphones, several swaddles in case Ben spit up on all of them, and multiple bottles of sanitizer.

I carried the mammoth bag and the car seat base, which was so heavy I wondered if the supersonic strength you hear moms can have when their babies are trapped under a car had already kicked in. Jim, meanwhile, carried Bennie in his car seat, a swaddle draped over the seat in a way that made him seem like a Saudi prince.

Besides one baby and enough supplies for 30, we had sheaths of paperwork, including several copies of Ben’s birth certificate, a letter from the pediatrician approving him to fly, and every other official record imaginable. But no one cared about any of it—not the woman who checked us in, not the TSA attendant, and not anyone in the airport.

Instead, the TSA agent fixated on the liquid formula in my bag. He didn’t seem to care if we were making off with Ben, Raising Arizona style, or if Ben was even old enough to fly. But Formula-gate included a good five minutes of furtive conversations between a trio of TSA agents. Following a sea of stern looks, they waved us along.

As we made our way to the gate, a guy in a suit was typing furiously on his laptop. He looked focused. Bennie, however, looked like he was on the verge of crying. And then the verge turned into sobs.

I’d known for a long time this kind of thing was coming, which is why I’d spent the previous year giving parents of screaming babies looks that said, “I know your screaming child isn’t your fault.”

But whatever brownie points I’d earned from the universe did me no good at that moment. Laptop guy glared, then sighed, then glared again.

“Does he not understand that without babies, he wouldn’t even exist?” I asked Jim, loud enough for the man to hear.

“Ignore him.”

“Or he could ignore us. Or move.”

Instead, we moved to seats a few rows away, where Bennie mercifully stopped crying. As I cuddled him, a man and woman walked by with their toddler. The woman and I shared a smile; my first moment of mommy bonding with a stranger! She glanced at Bennie. “It gets harder,” she said in a sweet, conspiratorial tone.

It…gets…harder? Apparently, mommy bonding wasn’t the reassurance I’d imagined it would be.

We boarded the plane without incident, but I braced for the screech I was convinced would come during takeoff. Nothing. During the flight, Ben either sat in his car seat or in one of our laps. The flight attendants complimented us on his adorable-ness. I was convinced we had the world’s first perfect baby.

It was on our second flight that the screeching began in earnest. Then I realized it wasn’t coming from our row. It was a few rows back. The woman who’d mommy bonded with me in the airport was on our second flight! I considered strolling back to her and saying, “Does it get harder, lady, or do you just have a screechy kid?”

Then karma interrupted my condescension, as Bennie joined the song known as Every Parent’s Nightmare. Whimpering, then crying, then screeching, Mom and Dad passing him back and forth in repeated attempts at soothing. Thankfully, on one of Jim’s turns, he abruptly stopped crying, but that’s when we realized we were in the situation we’d most wanted to avoid.

I somehow convinced Jim that the one already holding Ben should be the one to change him, so they trotted off to the bathroom. I kept busy pretending they weren’t crammed into a tiny vessel in the sky dealing with the results of four feedings.

When they emerged, Jim appeared to be scarred—possibly for life. “It was diabolical,” he said, and I didn’t ask for details. I could still hear Mommy Bonding’s kid screaming.