I have a 2-year-old and a 4-month-old, both boys. Naturally, I don’t get very much sleep. My saving grace, however, is the help I get from my parents and extended family. It takes a village, right? They take the kids and I get to take a nap…every three months or so. It’s so infrequent because I live across the country from my family. If I had known how important these people would be to my sanity during my child-rearing years, I wouldn’t have moved. Things being the way they are, however, my kids already have frequent flier miles.

At first I didn’t think I would travel with them. It’s hard on a baby and even harder on a toddler to be stuck in one spot for 10 seconds, much less a 5-hour flight. But my homesickness won out, and the first time I traveled with my first baby, Kyle, he was four months old. I was so nervous about the trip that I researched it on the internet, talked to everyone I could, and even rehearsed my getup. Seriously — I did a dry run of my luggage and carry-on situation about three days before the trip, to make sure my body could handle it. The best arrangement was: baby in an infant seat in a Snap-n-Go, backpack as diaper bag, and make sure there was an extra shirt in there for Mom in case of errant poo.

Remember when your baby was four months old? That’s when he learned how to screech with delight, right? My baby was on an airplane when he learned. Once he heard himself shriek once, he continued entertaining himself this way for almost the entire flight from Los Angeles to Hartford. Our fellow passengers gave us strained smiles, and I could tell what they were thinking, because I have thought it myself: “Oh, man. Of course I got the seats next to the shrieking 4-month-old. Why doesn’t that woman shut her kid up?!”

As a veteran flier, I had adopted a great strategy for dealing with loud fellow-passengers, whatever their ages. So for those of you who will be flying soon and wish to escape the cacophony of the child traveler, I have one word for you: earplugs. Worked every time.

Boarding an airplane can make anybody anxious, but it is especially vexing for parents. You have all kinds of carry-on baggage and gate-check items, plus you have to remember the kid. I find it helpful to do a count of all the things I take on the plane and make sure they are attached to me when I get off.

On that first flight with my baby, I had special traveling companions: my aunt and her partner, who often serve as my Fairy Godmothers of Travel because I was and remain terrified of flying alone with the kids. We did not initially have seats together, but we thought what the heck, people will trade with us, right? I mean, who wants to sit next to a baby on an airplane?

Right?

Wrong! I was unlucky enough to encounter the one person in the world who really, really, really wanted to sit in seat 24C. He would not trade with my aunt so she could sit next to me no matter how I asked him. I was just about to offer him cash when the flight attendant came back to check on us. She noticed that my aunt was not there and said “Oh dear. Why aren’t you sitting together?”

At that point all of the other boarding passengers around us stopped to turn and stare. I seized the opportunity.

“BECAUSE THIS MAN WOULDN’T TRADE WITH ME AND MY BABY!” I answered. Then I smiled sweetly at him. The people around us pointed and whispered. Needless to say, he moved.

I know that adults who fly sans children get all hot and bothered at us parents and accuse us of thinking we should be given special treatment and why don’t we just leave the kids at home or drive, already? To them I say: someday this will be you. And if you have already been through it, then suck it up, yo, because it’s my turn.

I have also undertaken the Long Road Trip. We all flew back east again last month: Mommy, Daddy, Kyle, and Brady. Now that there were two kids involved, including a nursing infant, we thought it was the perfect time to take a 5-hour minivan drive from Connecticut to Maine. (I won’t even touch on the minivan right now. I drive a Mom Car, not a minivan, but my parents insisted on renting one for my trip. The “I’ll never drive a minivan” pledge that I made in my early twenties has a completely different look to it now that I am looking from the side of having had kids. This was nothing like the road trips of my youth, full of high energy, loud music, and a cooler stocked with frosty beverages and lots of chocolate. No, this trip required kid-friendly snacks, an annoying CD of toddler tunes, (“Old MacDonald Had a Farm on repeat?” Yes, please! books, toys, puzzles, and the ubiquitous supply of diapers and wipes.

We had to make a pit stop when it was time to feed Brady, the baby. I know there are some women who can hover over the infant in his car seat, dangling her breast so that the babe can nurse in transit, but I am not one of those women. Think of the nipple damage if the driver suddenly brakes! Alternately, one can probably use a bottle of pumped milk, but that would require a woman with foresight, and I am also not that woman. So we pulled off the highway and found a charming AM/PM store and gas station with a small grassy area next to it and some picnic tables. Perfect! I settled down at a picnic table under a tree and proceeded to nurse Brady while Daddy and Gramma took Kyle into the store for a treat. It was then that I realized that this quaint shady spot was also the perfect place to walk your dog and smoke a cigarette and then not clean up the poop as you toss your cigarette butt on the ground. I’m no stranger to the smell of poop, but dog. poop is another thing entirely, and add the smell of smoke and I’m gone. I wound up in the minivan (more points for the minivan! in the parking lot for that feeding.

I’ll always remember that road trip as the occasion when Kyle learned how to talk for five hours straight without stopping to breathe. You know how people always tell you “once they learn to talk, they never shut up?” Those people must have driven from Connecticut to Maine with a 2-year-old, too. Kyle kept up a running commentary of the scenery, of the toys in the car, of the random things that go through a 2-year-old’s head. “Ocean, ocean, ocean, Mommy. See? The ocean! Ocean. Ocean. Ocean. Hey, look! E-X-I-T. That spells ‘stop!’ Stop. Stop. Stop…” and so on.

Kyle continued this nonstop talking for the next 2 weeks, honing and perfecting his skill so that by the time we flew back to Los Angeles, he was good and ready. This time I had a crying infant and a chatty toddler to fly with, and boy was I excited. I kept my head down as the people around us took their seats but I could feel them looking us over and wondering how bad the ride ahead would be.

In reality it wasn’t that bad. The baby was fine if he nursed constantly, which required me to have a boob hanging out most of the time, however modest I tried to be. And Kyle was well behaved as long as he was occupied. He had to get up and pace the aisle a few times, which was an adventure in itself. He’s a pretty social kid, so he stopped at every row to say hello to the people sitting there, and inevitably there would be that guy again, the one who has the steely resolve to ignore even the most adorable child as he sticks his face in yours and says in that sweet little voice, “Hiiii!” But someone like that is no match for Kyle, who will say “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy…” a thousand times in a row to get my attention. He stood there on that airplane next to that guy until he looked up and at least made eye contact.

In general, as I said, it wasn’t that bad…for me. For the people around us, however, I think it was pretty bad. They couldn’t look directly at us for fear of getting a glimpse of The Boob. They couldn’t really talk to each other or concentrate on the movie because Kyle’s endless stream of bizarre toddler talk was loud enough to penetrate the loudest ear bud. At one point he announced “Hey! I’m pooping! Right now!” And then I smelled it. Pretty soon our fellow passengers were well-acquainted with the smell of poop.

I can’t imagine what I would have done if this airplane didn’t have a changing table in the restroom, although the flight attendant suggested using the floor in the aisle. No thanks. I’d rather just not feed my children for a few days beforehand so that there would be nothing for them to excrete. Luckily, there was a little fold-down changing plank in the head, so changing 4-month-old Brady was fairly simple. Good thing, since I did so four times on that flight. Kyle was a different story, because he’s three feet tall, and those restrooms are only 2 inches wider than the average adult. (Um, no he’s not potty trained yet. Need I say more? I had to lay him on his back and stick his legs up in the air so that his body formed an “L.” It was like a twisted version of sticking all those clowns in the little tiny car at the circus. I emerged from the bathroom without poo smeared all over me or Kyle or the bathroom, for that matter. It was a great success.

There was at least one other person on the plane who had had to travel with her children. I know because as we were walking, sagging and exhausted, through the airport, a woman from our flight watched us walk by and called out “Those are the best kids I’ve ever seen on a plane.” I turned to see whom she was talking to. Oh! It was us!

Traveling with kids doesn’t end when you get home. There are severe side effects, depending on whom you were visiting. If it’s family, watch out. All those days of being held or played with, twenty-four-seven? Now your kid is used to it, and when you want to put him down for 2 seconds, the Great Wailing of the Ages will begin.

Even worse than that, however, is how travel screws up a child’s sleeping schedule. I brought Kyle to the east coast another time when he was 8 to 9 months old, and the return was hell. By that time he was taking good naps and sleeping through the night, and then I had to mess it up by skipping over three time zones and back. The night we got home, Kyle refused to sleep. Not at 1 in the morning, not at 9 in the morning, not all day the next day. Guess who really needed to sleep? Mommy. In desperation, I finally packed him into the car and drove aimlessly around town until I saw him sleeping in his car seat. I frantically pulled into the nearest parking lot and promptly went to sleep myself. When I woke up, I saw people walking by, peering curiously into the car, most likely wondering why the Whole Foods parking lot had become “nap area.”

Now that we have two kids, the sleep disruption was much worse upon our return. The night ended up with the entire family in one bed. When we woke up in the morning after fitful bouts of sleep, I had toddler feet stuck in my kidneys, an infant in my hair, and a husband sprawled across the bottom of the bed. We looked like a skit from Sesame Street where the people make the shape of the letter Z.

Now that I have flown and driven with not just one but two kids, I feel like I deserve a medal. Here’s my advice to you if you have to do this too:

1. Have a cocktail on the flight, even if you don’t drink. Especially if you don’t drink. It’ll have much more of an effect.
2. Put all the essential diaper changing tools in a Ziploc and stick it in the seat pocket in front of you — that way it will be accessible when projectile bodily fluids need to be wiped up in a pinch.
3. Book a day at the spa a few days after you return. You’ll have suffered through the travel and a few sleepless days, and you’ll need a massage and some peace and quiet.
4. Tell the relatives to come visit you next time.

– Kim Tracy Prince

Kim is the loving mother of a very energetic toddler and newborn baby boy. She has worked on the hit show, “Bringing Home Baby.” Have a comment for our very blunt Mama? kim@themommytimes.com Check out Kim’s blog: www.houseofprince.blogspot.com