If you, like me, spend too much time on the internet, you might have seen stories about people *gasp* being forced to sit next to babies and toddlers on planes.
You can also find plenty of tweets and posts from people complaining about their travels being ruined by the mere proximity of a small child.
While we can agree it's frustrating to listen to a baby cry, many of these people's main issue simply seems to be that they're reminded of the existence of babies at all.
Watch: The parents of toddlers, translated. Post continues after video.
Now, I am biased as a mother of a one-year-old, and particularly as a parent who recently travelled on two domestic flights with my baby in tow.
On the first flight, my baby wriggled and cried, screaming through the safety briefing, dropping her dummy multiple times and generally making me regret being (literally) strapped to her nine kilos of chaos. Eventually, she passed out 10 minutes before landing and was very unimpressed when I had to wake her to disembark.
Due to the particular circumstances of our flight, my husband and I got separated, and I ended up between two strangers with my baby on my lap. The woman on one side was kindly patient but also made it clear she wasn't going to make small talk and left me in peace to wrestle my child away from the in-flight menus. The man on the other side did a comedically good job of simply pretending my baby and I didn't exist. He did not make eye contact, smile or acknowledge our presence in any way. He really did a remarkable job of making me feel invisible while holding a screaming human.
Top Comments