As I mentioned in my last post both my Hubby and I are from England. We both absolutely love it there, we still call it home... its just not the home we reside in. Sydney is now our home. Australia has been home to me for a number of years, I immigrated here with my parents when I was 15. A choice I not always thanked them for, but one which ultimately came to appreciate and has made me who I am today. Mr C moved here when he was 24 for a gap year. (Un)Luckily for him he met me and the rest is history I guess you could say!
We recently got home from a 5 week adventure to the sunny UK to take little Miss E back to our homeland, introduce her to her English family and to have a bit of a break ourselves. Living in Sydney is amazing, we both absolutely love it, but you see the problem is neither one of us have any of our extended family here, and its hard! Really hard! No one there to take the baby for a walk when you're so tired you can barely keep your eyes open, to drop in some nappies because you haven't managed to get out of your tracksuit and mum bun for a few days, or to just chatter with when baby talk is all you have had for weeks on end. So England was a trip we were both really looking forward to-- a very expensive babysitting opportunity you could say!!
We flew Qantas from Sydney to Heathrow and then got a connecting to flight with British Airways to Manchester. 30 + hours of travelling with a then 7 month old! In hindsight I'm not entirely sure what we were thinking travelling the whole flight without a break....... I had managed to write list after list of preparation but I hadn't quite thought about what that would mean to my little Miss E.
Qantas were pretty good. We knew we had wanted to do this flight 3 years ago - my Grandmother was turning 90 and I wanted to be there to celebrate it with her- so we had for 3 years been saving points. We had managed to save enough points to pay for 1 return flight business class!!! Neither one of us had ever been anything other than Economy - we wanted to treat ourselves- and a treat it was!!!
Now business class is amazing, but heres my personal opinion - do it before kids - just so you can appreciate it that little bit more!!
The things we loved about it:
1. The seat - - seriously I'm not sure how i have managed to do all my previous long distance flights without it.... or how I'm going to do the ones in the future back in the upright seat.
2. The bassinett - now Miss E who is just shy of 9 kilos - which means she safely fits 6-9 month old clothing and should of easily fitted the basinett did NOT like sleeping in it. She was too long. It had this seat belt thing that went over the top which was amazing if you have little bubbas because they can stay in the basinett during turbulence. In Miss E's case this got in the way of her usual nightly dance of tossing and turning. I actually woke up to find her hands through the top of it looking like a little jailbird. I have to say... i felt a huge pang of guilt. Needless to say, she spent the rest of the outward and return flight asleep with either mummy or daddy. It DID however supply us with a brilliant space for her to play to her audience. Sat bolt upright, toys scattered in front, she promptly smiled, waved and 'Ga Ga' ed at pretty much everyone who went past her. SO in the end we did get a bit of a break
3. Fast track- Well... I loved that it got our suitcases through and us through passport control quicker... but it basically did absolutely ziltch for the security aisle. Having a baby in an airport basically meant that fast track really isnt for you... with your bags upon bags of baby food, bottles, formula ( i did still breastfeed Miss E on the way out but we lost the supply due to time zones... but thats for another post), toys, nappies, baby carrier... the list was endless. We did make it through and I have to say I was in awe of the mummies and daddies doing it with more than one baby ....
The things we didn't so much love:
1. The nappy changing facilities - in the airport you tend to get your standard table in the disabled toilet, but on the plane.... thats a whole other story... its basically a board that comes down from over the toilet... which Miss E only just about fitted on. It works I guess and I'm not entirely sure what could be done to make it better, but having to circumnavigate a small space which in my germophobic world was full of yuckies did nothing to help my anxieties. (I should say though I found an amazing mothers room at Dubai airport - was like a little hotel suit- maybe all the other airports should try to emulate this - it was lush!!
2. The Galley seats - Ok, so whoever decided that the best place to put babies trying to sleep was next to the galley where the air staff try to do their work maybe should of gone back to design school. The banging, chiming, chatting of the staff trying, as appropriately, to go around their work did absolutely nothing to help Miss E sleep and by default us sleep. I dont know, I guess maybe I should of said something when 8 hours into the 14 hour flight from Syd to Dubai all I could hear was a conversation about spray tans.... but then I thought, where else are they supposed to speak. So I just sat with my squirming little girl and tried, though failing miserably, to entertain her.
I've decided this blog post is going to on and on... So i'm going to leave that bit there and save the next bit for another post.
Have you travelled with a baby? Do you have any tips? I think my next blog will be what we took that we needed, and what we took that we absolutely didn't need... Now I have to go and wake my darling Miss E, who is still fighting her jetlag!
Now business class is amazing, but heres my personal opinion - do it before kids - just so you can appreciate it that little bit more!!
The things we loved about it:
1. The seat - - seriously I'm not sure how i have managed to do all my previous long distance flights without it.... or how I'm going to do the ones in the future back in the upright seat.
2. The bassinett - now Miss E who is just shy of 9 kilos - which means she safely fits 6-9 month old clothing and should of easily fitted the basinett did NOT like sleeping in it. She was too long. It had this seat belt thing that went over the top which was amazing if you have little bubbas because they can stay in the basinett during turbulence. In Miss E's case this got in the way of her usual nightly dance of tossing and turning. I actually woke up to find her hands through the top of it looking like a little jailbird. I have to say... i felt a huge pang of guilt. Needless to say, she spent the rest of the outward and return flight asleep with either mummy or daddy. It DID however supply us with a brilliant space for her to play to her audience. Sat bolt upright, toys scattered in front, she promptly smiled, waved and 'Ga Ga' ed at pretty much everyone who went past her. SO in the end we did get a bit of a break
3. Fast track- Well... I loved that it got our suitcases through and us through passport control quicker... but it basically did absolutely ziltch for the security aisle. Having a baby in an airport basically meant that fast track really isnt for you... with your bags upon bags of baby food, bottles, formula ( i did still breastfeed Miss E on the way out but we lost the supply due to time zones... but thats for another post), toys, nappies, baby carrier... the list was endless. We did make it through and I have to say I was in awe of the mummies and daddies doing it with more than one baby ....
The things we didn't so much love:
1. The nappy changing facilities - in the airport you tend to get your standard table in the disabled toilet, but on the plane.... thats a whole other story... its basically a board that comes down from over the toilet... which Miss E only just about fitted on. It works I guess and I'm not entirely sure what could be done to make it better, but having to circumnavigate a small space which in my germophobic world was full of yuckies did nothing to help my anxieties. (I should say though I found an amazing mothers room at Dubai airport - was like a little hotel suit- maybe all the other airports should try to emulate this - it was lush!!
2. The Galley seats - Ok, so whoever decided that the best place to put babies trying to sleep was next to the galley where the air staff try to do their work maybe should of gone back to design school. The banging, chiming, chatting of the staff trying, as appropriately, to go around their work did absolutely nothing to help Miss E sleep and by default us sleep. I dont know, I guess maybe I should of said something when 8 hours into the 14 hour flight from Syd to Dubai all I could hear was a conversation about spray tans.... but then I thought, where else are they supposed to speak. So I just sat with my squirming little girl and tried, though failing miserably, to entertain her.
I've decided this blog post is going to on and on... So i'm going to leave that bit there and save the next bit for another post.
Have you travelled with a baby? Do you have any tips? I think my next blog will be what we took that we needed, and what we took that we absolutely didn't need... Now I have to go and wake my darling Miss E, who is still fighting her jetlag!
Ta Ta
Abi xx
