Pond Jumping, Part Two

After all the prep work was said and done, the day came. My wife, my 7 month old son and I were ready to take the massive journey from our little town in England all the way to my hometown of Tiverton. Door to door, the trip is around 20 hours, so we were prepping ourselves for a rather not-fun day.

06:00 BST (01:00 EST) – Although we planned on getting up around 6:30am, my son had other ideas and was up at 6am. After grumbling and bit and waking up my wife, I walked into his room to see him thrashing around in excitement. After taking him out into the livingroom, I noticed that something was up with his face – his eye was swollen and closed. Looked closer, and it was crusted over with goo. Yup. Pinkeye. Great way to start our trip!

07:30 BST (02:30 EST) – After feeding the little one, and downing a couple cups of coffee, we set off. We had set out all of our clothes and packed the car up the night before, so it was just a matter of getting the last bottles and baby food jars packed in the diaper bag, and quadruple checking that all the passports and tickets were set. For this trip, my wife and I each had a seat, and we had our son as a lap-baby. With tickets costing more than 500 British pounds, we decided we would have to bite the bullet and hold him for the flights. Unlike on the return flight to the UK, we weren’t able to reserve a bassinet for the baby, so we crossed our fingers that we would have a flight with some empty seats to let him lay down. I didn’t put my money on it. Out of the last 20 or so flights I have been on, there’s probably been less than a dozen empty seats altogether.  

09:00 BST (04:00 EST) –We arrived at he airport 3 hours before our flight was scheduled to leave. With being so early, there were hardly any people in check-in, so we waited all of a few minutes in line before we got our boarding passes and checked our luggage. After having some small talk with the lady at the counter, I asked a question I thought I already knew the answer to – “Is there any possibility that we can be seated next to an empty seat to put our baby in?” I was floored by what she said. Not only did our row already have an empty seat on it, she would block it off so that no one else would be assigned to it. Seriously? Did she just save me 500 pounds on a seat for my baby? I think I would have kissed her if I could. She handed me some tags for the car seat and stroller, and we headed to the gate.

11:30BST (06:30 EST) – When the call was made for families with children to board the plane, the three of us made our way. A few minutes after getting to our seats, a flight attendant came over and asked us to hand over my son’s car seat (which we had placed in the blocked-off seat). She didn’t agree with the fact that although the gate staff had blocked off the seat, that my son should have a free ride. After a brief back-and-forth, she went back to the front of the plane to “speak with someone”. She returned a few minutes later, handed back the car seat without a word, turned around and walked away. I can understand it in a way, since at the end of the day, we didn’t actually pay for the seat, but it went unsold anyway, along with around 20 other seats on the plane. I looked around, and a few other families had followed our lead and asked for their child’s car seats from the gangway before the plane. I got a few smiles and winks as well.

12:00 BST (07:00 EST) – As the plane took off, my son started falling asleep. On the 7.5 hour flight to Newark, my son basically slept, ate, played, and kept to himself. It seemed that all the babies on the flight were happy and well behaved. This was one of those rare occasions where I wasn’t deafened by crying infants and toddlers for the majority of the flight. My wife napped a bit, and I spent my time people watching and reading. There was another run-in with the overly happy flight attendant from earlier in the trip, when she asked for my garbage that I had collected, then returned to scold me a few moments later when she realized that in a small plastic bag, enclosed in a zip-lock baggie, at the bottom of the grocery bag of trash was my son’s wet diaper. Oh well, lesson learned.

19:25 BST (14:25 EST) – Our plane landed safely in Newark, and after de-planeing, we headed to immigration. My son and I joined my wife in the non-citizens line, and went up to the desk to a rather friendly immigration official. We had what I consider the conversation of the trip. As a bit of background, my son has my wife’s last name, but looks just like me. The official looked at my son’s American passport, then at my wife’s British passport, then to me, then to my son. He cleared his throat, then asked, “Who is Thomas’s mother?” My wife smiled, and said “We both are”. The official gave a confused look, then said “Huh? Oh. Ooooooooooh”, grinned, stamped our passports, and sent us on our way.

00:30 BST (17:30 EST) – The flight into Boston was delayed due to a late arriving flight crew. At this point, my son had napped considerably less than he usually does, and his body thought it was just after midnight. After getting on the plane, and getting bored with the surroundings, and realizing that he was tired, he had a bit of a meltdown. No bassinet to put him in, and no third seat to store his car seat on, so we had to do our best to settle him in my wife’s lap. We are blessed that our son’s meltdowns are usually a 4 on a baby-screaming-scale of one to ten, so the folks around us didn’t seem all too bothered After ten minutes, he was asleep, and slept the entire flight from Newark to Boston.

01:30 BST (18:30 EST) – We made it! After getting off the plane in Boston, we met my parents are the baggage carousel. Nothing lost, we loaded up the car with our three suitcases, car seat, baby buggy, diaper bag, carry on suitcase, and carry on bag, and drove the hour back to their house in Tiverton. My son slept the entire way back, and woke up briefly when my parent’s two black labs excitedly barked at our arrival.