Jake on a plane

...and a train, and a car. After leaving our house in England at 6pm local time on Tuesday, we arrived safely in New Hampshire at Kelsey's folks house at 3pm EST (around 8pm UK time) on Wednesday. This sounds like a long trip, but we broke up the journey with a hotel stay in the airport to make it less stressful for Jake and ourselves.

The short story is that it was an easy trip. Traveling with a 2 month old baby is very different to traveling with adults and there's some good and bad points to this difference:

Pros
- Everyone is that bit more friendly and will relax a little as you have a built in conversation starter
- You get priority seating even on busy trans-atlantic flights
- You board early and get to sit near the front of the plane (loads more legroom for long-legged fathers)
- the pram means that you go through the fast lane for security (although you then have the hassle of breaking it down for the machine)

Cons
- Bringing baby formula on board is hard. We had called the airline four times and were assured that we could bring pre-made formula with us through security without question. When we got to Manchester airport however, we were forced to open 50% of our formula (fortunately we had 6 packs...next we're bringing 7 to mess with their heads) and had to taste it (it is faintly sweet, for those who are interested)
- You still have to wait for the pram meaning that you're off the plane first but through immigration last
- Tiny bathrooms on a plane make for very interesting baby changing facilities
- The sky cot on Aer Lingus is actually just a cardboard crate that they stuff with pillows. It also blocks your seat, tray table and little TV...needs a bit of a redesign!

Lessons learned
Travelling with a baby was always going to be a massive learning experience. We had most things thought of and prepared, but there's still things that we'll do differently for the ride home. Firstly, we'll buy the formula in the airport once we're through security. Secondly, we'll probably try to fly from Leeds airport to cut down on the overall journey time. Thirdly, we'll pack a little less in his carry-on bag as it started to get heavy after a while. Finally, I think we may try tying the pacifiers onto our wrists or bags as a couple of them hit the floor throughout the day and we didn't want give them back to Jake.

The tough part now that we're here is to try and reset his body clock. Whilst it generally takes Kelsey and I a day or two to adjust, Jake is still operating on quasi British time. This means that he falls asleep for the night around 7 and wakes up hungry at 1. Hopefully we'll be able to keep him up a little longer each day to get him onto a more sociable timetable! In the meantime he'll just have to make do with lots of grandparental cuddles to keep him occupied.