- Its life. Try not to stress. If you stress the baby will stress, and it will snowball to others around you.
- as stated in previous replies, get a bassinet if the baby can fit in it.
- bring toys, books to read to the kid. There should be on demand cartoons on the seat in front of you for the baby to look at if he/she likes that sort of thing.
- Dont worry about what the other passengers think. They are in their own little world just as you are. Be polite and smile. They will understand if there is some fussing going on.
- when my wife and I flew with our first we would reserve our seats online with an empy seat between us. In almost all cases that seat remained empty and we had an extra seat for the baby to lay down on when in flight if she was too big for the bassinet. If the seat gets taken just switch with that person and he/she can have the better isle seat and you and your wife will be together. They always switch. always.
- Immigration wont separate your family. I’ve done this dozens of times and had no problem with the whole family going through as a family.
- Enjoy the flight as much as possible. order your meals in advance.
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A few random points…
Bassinet on China airlines was too small for our son at 6 months. It is “Taiwan” size. Besides it smelt like those spray on kitchen cleaners, and my son hated it.
Go to the back galley when they start acting out, it is noisier, and the people you are disturbing are all the flight attendants. They don’t seem to do a whole lot up there outside of meal times. This worked a dream for me, I was able to nurse our son to sleep up there a few times.
Pack lots of napkins/toilet paper in your carry on. When we first discovered my daughter’s explosive travel sickness, the flight attendants on the Taiwanese carrier gave us a wad of wet wipes to clean up the vomit. Better to BYO something to clean up spills, as most of the flight attendants are, well, basically children.
You will get a few grumpy stares, but at the end of the day, people have either been through it and understand, or are have not yet been through it, and the degree of how pissed they get is then it is just up to how self centered and immature they are. So who cares about the latter group of people hey.
Oh one more thing, people are especially careless with the overhead lockers. Last flight we took someone jumped up as we pulled in to the Taoyuan terminal and opened the locker, fussed around and, something of his came dropping out, narrowly missing the aisle seat. Always have the kid(s) away from the aisle when you can.
Best of luck.
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Just wanted to give an update after a successful travel to and back from the US with a 3-month old.
The ~15 hour flights were relatively smooth (as suggested by posters above) due to the baby’s age. We planned the baby’s feeding time for during takeoff and descent, as to ensure the baby is swallowing during changes in air pressure. We were lucky that the baby wasn’t in a pooping mood during our two flights.
On our flight back to Taoyuan, the baby woke up earlier than expected, and so was fussy throughout the descent. He drank the prepared formula super fast, and we tried unsuccessfully to pace his drinking. Our “pacing” him led to him crying even louder.
We chose to fly EVA because we knew the service would be top notch, and that the flight attendants would be attentive towards the needs of a baby (according to internet testimonials). Their service was indeed very good. Whenever we asked for them to fill up the bottle with hot water (and an additional cup of ice water), they were courteous and fast.
Hopefully sharing our recent experience will help anyone looking at this post in the future.
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