As I mentioned previously we did something new and different on our trip back from Georgia….
We traveled on an evening flight. In fact, our flight left at around 10:00 PM ET.
In previous trips, we’d travel on morning flights. In fact, the earlier the better really. Our last flight was so early we practically had to leave for the airport the day before. And it’s worked well for us. Depending on which airport we leave from and when and who is available, we have relatives in both Chicago and Milwaukee on whose couches we can crash. For the vast majority of the flights, our daughter has been reasonably mellow really. Granted each flight seems to have one or two moments that are a little tense, but we calm her pretty quickly. The last few times she’d even taken to sleeping in her carseat. And that’s just awesome.
Theoretically, the evening flight should be even better. Especially a late evening flight. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations beforehand and by my logic, my daughter should have been passed out for the entire flight. There was a decent probability that I would have to lift her and the carseat out of the airplane seat together.
And it wasn’t just a theoretical model, either. I was given to understand that my sister and her family, including my young niece, often flew out in the evenings due to the constraints of jobs, daycare, etc. It’d worked well for them in the past, as well as our morning flights had for us.
In practice….no, not so much.
Once my daughter is roused from a deep sleep, she reverts relatively quickly to a pleasant, open persona. She’s happy to see you. She wants to engage. But if it’s early enough, she’s also pretty pliable.
On the other side of sleep, however, she gets a bit…surly. She hits. No, scratch that. She’s a whirlwind of tiny fists and outraged screaming.
What’s worse is that she wouldn’t let me sleep. Any time I came close to a snooze, she’d reach out her hand and shake me back awake.
So my daughter wouldn’t sleep, my wife couldn’t sleep (pregnancy makes it hard to breathe and relax in certain positions), and I wasn’t allowed to sleep.
This went on for the bulk of the two hour flight. I think she finally fell asleep about 35 -40 minutes out from Milwaukee.
Then we had to get her out of the carseat, get all our stuff together, get our bags, find our bus, and reload all of our bags into our car, including reattching our car seat. My daughter took none of this with good grace. Of course, it was nearly eleven central by that point, so I shouldn’t be too hard on her.
I think that the best moment of the evening was the one when we finally arrived home and my wife was able to do the elusive carseat to bed transfer.
In any case, when the opportunity arises to travel again, I think we’ll aim for the early morning flights over the late night excursions.
