New Mom in the Wild Gets on a Plane
Reflections on my first flight with my baby at five months old, flailing down the airplane aisle in the aftermath of a devastating exploding diaper.
Once you’ve conquered flying with an infant, you can become anyone you want to be in this life.
Before I became pregnant with my daughter, wanderlust had me in a chokehold.
I didn’t carry much; perhaps a small suitcase, sometimes a mere backpack, an empty water bottle, a boarding pass to anywhere. My arms were open and empty, ready to embrace every new city like an old friend, ready to embrace strangers in dim taverns that would become new friends over lagers and jumbo soft pretzels.
I’m a mom now, so my arms are very full, but my suitcase is empty and my desire to go anywhere except the couch, bed, or floor expired with my apparently expirable Delta flight credits in 2024.
I find myself now wrapped in a cocoon blanket in my living room, the thought of traversing through an airport taunting me like a pesky dust bunny on The Big Comfy Couch beneath my fuzzy sock-laden feet.
I don’t want to pack myself between salty onlookers like sardines in a can. I don’t want to be seen in public because I don’t want to put on my pants. I don’t want to stand in lines, listen to others chewing, listen to audible whining about airport miscellany while other adult humans watch YouTube videos without headphones.
The lusting of the wander has been replaced by the contentment of my comfy home and my cozy husband and our tiny human. And I think this is because I wanderlusted so much that I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of rooting where I am, like I’ve lost the desire to chase, find, discover right this very minute of every minute.
Motherhood has simultaneously stopped time and propelled time through a moonshot.
Everything I love? It’s all right here, right now.
This past Thanksgiving, my husband and I embarked on our first flight with our then five-month old baby. As she was stuck in a horizontal life with only the ability to transport herself as a clumsy roly poly, we believed this would be the perfect time to introduce her to the big metal object that flies through the sky.
New mom and dad in the wild, we were ready for a weekend of gratitude and turkey and green beans in sunny California. We remembered to bring the correct stroller base that attaches to the car seat, pack the diaper back, and grab the nap-on-the-plane square pillow. We remembered to bring an extra change of baby clothes, portable changing mats, and heaps of baby wipe packs.
On our departing flight, we became experts at flying with a baby. We fed her at the gate seamlessly. She slept through our three hour flight like a cherub that I wanted to parade around the plane like, “LOOK HOW CUTE AND PERFECT THIS BABY IS!”
Oh, we grew so cocky.
On our flight home, The Quiet Tiny turned into a Screaming Demon.
She refused to eat. She would not nap in my arms and she would not nap in my husband’s arms. She stayed awake, flailing through our three hour homebound flight like a gremlin who refused to be contained by an airborne tube.
Horizontal babies can wreak great havoc in a mini airplane row, book-ended by a stranger who certainly now does not want to have children.
I stood up, I sat down. I stood up, I sat down. My husband paced the aisle, shushing and rocking her wriggling baby body. I panicked! Nothing was working! When are people going to start being mean?! Am I going to bite someone’s head off if they do?! Why isn’t this flight like the first one?! What HAPPENED?!
And then all at once, peace, at long last. Quiet stillness, brought on by none only than the sound of an enormous toot climax that instantaneously warmed my hands.
Ah yes, of course, the classic blowout at 30,000 feet.
My husband offered to change her for me, but I was already covered in poop, so I opted to embark on The Great Baby Changing Challenge myself — and I was racing the clock.
Move, Sir Flight Attendant! Move, bathroom line! I am DRIPPING. I am a BIOHAZARD. I am a NEW MOM IN THE WILD PLEASE DON’T BE MEAN TO ME.
Once inside the fluorescent cubicle, I began our dirty work. I laid the Harbinger of Chaos onto the pull-out station that she was almost too big for, so her feet dangled off and she screamed with the force of a thousand suns.
I located the diaper receptacle just underneath it. I stripped off Taylor Swift’s faces, the reputation and Speak Now eras now smeared in stinky brown goo. I did something bad, my baby cooed.
I whipped off my daughter’s onesie, pulled out another like a magician bringing forth a white rabbit, slinging all of my objects around the floating potty pod, so unlike The Before when I would carefully and delicately wipe every surface on my childfree adventures.
This was no time for wanderlust. This was only time for survival.
I became a fearless exterminator — no germ, not even in the airplane bathroom, could deter my ultimate mission. I was but a mother, transforming into something more powerful and unbothered and armored.
I was becoming a mother who was pooped on in the sky by her screaming infant.
I flung the exploded diaper onto the puppy pads that I suddenly remembered were stashed at the bottom of the diaper bag, bundled the dirty onesie in another, dropped the waste down the trash chute, bagged the soiled clothes, shoved all the things back into Hermione’s magic bag, and managed to wipe all the surfaces I touched with a lavender-scented wipe.
My daughter was red in the face, tears rolling down her chubby cheeks, but she was clean. She was dry. She was emptied and thus, she MUST sleep.
I emerged from the accordion door with the confidence of Timothée Chalamet at the SAG awards. I was now one of the greats — a new mom in the wild changing her poopy baby in a bathroom smaller than a European shower. Bag slung behind my back, baby girl on my hip, I was empowered and she was calm as I strutted back to my seat.
I can do anything. Be anyone. Go anywhere.
“How hard could this be? I’m a mom.”
I could build a new home from scratch. Paint the next Mona Lisa. Compose a symphony.
💌
Xo,
Violet Carol
Thank You for Reading 🩵
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This was pure brilliance. I love you more now that I know you too watched The Big Comfy Couch and are a Taylor Swift fan. I’m sorry you got pooed on, but you are in an exclusive club now.
Taking notes because I’m flying to Morocco next week with a seven-month-old. Hoping the boob saves the day, but as your account has proven there’s no stopping an explosive nappy.😅