Mother Asked to Leave First Class With Her Crying Baby: When Did We Become So Critical?
Travelling with kids, immediately I can feel my anxiety build, breath catching, tenuous, worrisome, edgy, mentality, fixed, focused, driven and determined in its primal form to merely survive, hang on by the tip of your finger nail through to the end of the flight.
Fortunate to be able to travel, I have lived this, repeatedly, long haul and short with my two little ones in tow. It’s not easy. Reading the experience of this young mum, a first time flying parent, I was honestly taken aback. Saddened and sympathetic to the stress she was already under, I shifted into total disbelief that not only staff but fellow passengers felt the need to add to this already under pressure parent.
While I have never had the luxury of travelling first class, watch this space if I was ever given the chance. Travelling in cattle class it is near to impossible to console a distraught infant in a ridiculously confined space, couple in on and off flashing lights, dings, strangers and screens and you’ve got yourselves the making of all night party and your baby is the head raver! Given the means and opportunity to travel in first class with my baby, I would, unequivocally, seize it in the desperate hope that a little more space will give them comfort and security to settle more easily. Even with this intent in mind you cannot predict how a first time travelling baby will react to this new experience and unfortunately in this case, whether she be overtired, over excited or completely overwhelmed, she was not equipped or ready to cope.
I have been there, I have had that distraught baby, I have been rocking, swinging, pacing, cooing, shushing and pleading for them to stop and to settle for 10, 20, 40 minutes on and off for hours at a time and to no avail. I have felt my tears building with theirs, my whits tethered to the end and have felt the critical, judgemental eye’s following and watching me as I struggled. Thankfully I have NEVER been asked to move or to give more than what I was already giving, but this mum has, and I feel sad. I feel sad not just for her but for us as a community that when we saw someone drowning we just jumped, splashed, and pulled her further under.
When did we become so critical? I am understanding, when I am without my children and if I ever had the means to travel first class, of course, I would be annoyed if a child was having difficulty settling next to me, but I would also be mindful, I would be understanding while watching that mother pacing and struggling she is doing everything in her power to soothe her little one, no mother wants their child distressed and no mother would actively choose to have a crying baby over a resting pacified one. She is doing her best and who are we to say she and her little one aren’t entitled to a first class seat? Compassion over criticism goes a long way and perhaps in future offering help over shame can better a situation for everyone.
Mothers make choices and decisions for the best interest of their children. They try and continue to do the best job they can, in an already emotional and pressured process, like flying, look past the annoyance, look past the noise and disturbance and look at the mother, look at the stress etching on her face, the tension pulsing through her body and the utter loss in her being, offer a hand to hold in support rather than a shove in the back. Let’s hope that in the future we can be better than this!
