To wonder how the feck to entertain a 1 year old on an 8 hour flight???

[SuzanneSays]

Any good ideas? DH seems to think she will sleep a lot...

Uhmm, it is for a holiday and also to see dear friends with babies a similar age.

Everyone else who is not too concerned about my poor baby, thanks for advice.

My plan is to bring tons of snacks and food, books, toys she has forgotten about as well as some old favourites, walk her up and down( if we are allowed, hadn't occurred to me they might not let us?) and then let DH show her his Ipad when all else fails! Oh, and boob to calm her down/ get her to sleep.

She is on our laps- can't see it being like when we are at home as we barely sit down at home...

Don't turn down offers of help from others on the plane. If I'm sitting near someone with small children I'll always offer to help. I can't sleep on planes and I'll happily do laps of the aisles etc...

Ring the airline and request a bassinet if you haven't already. At 1 your dd may well be too big to sleep in it but if there is one available then it's a godsend to keep stuff in and you get the extra legroom which allows her to faff around with toys on the floor. Dd spent a goodly amount of the 13 hour day flight home from Malaysia when she was 15 months sitting in it and waving regally to adoring groups of Malay nannas.
Don't rely on the airline food, dd would never eat it, we always took fruit/biscuits/sandwiches on board.
Do you have a day flight or a red eye? My advice would differ…..

Oh and dd never cried on flights, she has always loved them (still does!).

I flew to NZ back in June when DS was 20 months. He slept for a lot of the journey on the first leg and a bit in the second leg. But other than that, it was tablet with cartoons, sweets, small toys for him to play with, notebooks to draw etc. He was a bit of a nightmare on our connecting flight from Auckland but I can't blame him so was I

Don't worry about screen time etc, do whatever the fuck you have to do to get there and back in one piece

My 13 month old didn't cry once in 9 hours. Didn't sleep, but didn't cry!

I'm an expat so this is a common discussion. OP ignore the 'why fly' comments. It's a flight, not torture!

Which airline? This is quite important as dictates the service and entertainment.

I always take a bag with new treats and toys in, purely for the flight. Lots of snacks. Fly in the day as my DD has never slept on a flight, and we've flown a lot. Think of it hour by hour and it passes more easily.

Will you be alone? If with my DH we each do an hour on, an hour off, at least that way we get to eat etc.

Oh and angel how small your life and world must be to have flown long haul only once in your life! I can't imagine such a blinkered existence.

I think that's a bit unfair. Lots of people have never had the opportunity to fly long haul at all.

I once read The Gruffalo and Hop on Pop alternatively for 23 hours (with a blissful 4 hour sleep in the middle) - was only think that kept him quiet

Sooty, she's saying she has chosen to fly long haul only once, due to a crying child.

Different to never having the opportunity.

Play Spot The Cat's Bum Face when the people around see your baby getting on the plane.

Should kill a few minutes.

Play the same game whenever she cries.

Poor kids. Can't think of anything worse.

Think harder.

OP, I've done 24 hour flights once a year since DS was 6 months. And he's not a big sleeper on planes.

It's been absolutely fine. Others have given great advice - I'd only add post-it notes, preferably novelty shaped ones. They can get stuck everywhere, drawn on and are easy to tidy up.

Also consider toddler headphones, and practise with them beforehand - much better than the plane version.

Also - ziploc bags are a godsend. One for nappy changes so you're not lugging a whole bag, one for each complete change of clothes so you're not digging through cabin baggage in a hurry, one for each type of toy, etc.

Who are you flying with?

Long haul flights cruel? Get a grip. I live in a reasonably remote bit of Canada, where the next place with a population of more than 3000 cows is a 5 hour drive away. People here don't talk distances, they talk hours. We'll regularly drive for 9/10 hours to visit the Rockies. Same mindset, just a different mode of transport.

Hi Moose love. I was having a conversation about pilot communities for our training yesterday. I was informed that the three we chose were great because "it's not even a 6 hour drive between them". They meant between each of them, so nigh on 12 hours to cover all of them. I did mutter, "only in bloody Canada".

DD has done about 20 flights in her almost 5 years. I must be a horrible abuser. She loves flying now. I still hate it.

You will be ok . I've done a 12 hour flight with a 12 month old on my own and she was on my lap . She slept for quite a while in the sky cot as it was overnight .

This was in pre iPad / smart phone days . We read a lot of books < sigh>

Take a clean top for yourself as well as baby in case she wipes food / snot all over you .

I flew lots of long haul flights with my DC usually without my DH. Two or three return flights a year with babies and toddlers

I let them have unlimited screen time and snacks that they wouldn't usually have.

I didn't let them out of their seats hardly at all. I found if you do then it just makes them agitated and want to keep getting up. It's only 9 hours so I'd only u strap her while you go to the bathroom. Trust me on this one - actually, I know all kids are different and it might not work for you.
I also didn't overwhelm them with toys and games. I kept everything very low key and a bit boring for them. I felt it helped them relax and zone out a bit for the flight. Playing lots of fun new games and having lots of exciting new toys just hyped them up.
You can make it up to them when you get to your destination.
Fuzzy felt was a great toy as it isn't noisy and it doesn't roll away if you drop it.

The longest flight I was on with DD (14 months at the time) was about 3.5 hours. But before we got on, we let her run around and tired her out so she would take a nap on the flight. Snacks were a must. Toys weren't helpful. Having her favorite comfort items helped. Mostly she just wanted to play with the window shade, so I let her.

Are you flying alone? If you're flying with someone, pass her back and forth so the new person keeps her interest for a bit. We flew together as a group and she was passed between 4 people which kept her entertained.

The only time she cried is when she needed a nap.

Anyone who cannot think of anything worse that a parent could do to a child than take them on a plane, where they will be warm, fed, safe and loved, and probably getting more attention than they would at home, needs to broaden their horizons.

Op, I did it by thinking of my mother, who took a 2 and 4 year old on a 14 hour land rover journey down bumpy dirt tracks. Screens had not been invented and the 4 yo (me) was sick out of the window all the way there. It made flying with an 18 month old seem like a doddle!

Seriously though, it was never as bad as I was expecting. We always did day flights as our dc are terrible sleepers. Lots of reading, stickers, eating, screens and most of all walking up and down the aisle (no one ever tred to stop us). Very little crying.

I know of a family on a Transatlantic flight whose 20 mo asked to try the mother's wine. She obliged and the child slept for half the flight.

I fly 3-4 times per year, mostly long haul, occasionally in Business class.
We have a good income but business class is still a treat for us. We have had at least 50% of our business class flights ruined by screaming babies and badly behaved children whose parents made none of the efforts described here to keep their children happy and entertained. THIS is when I, rightly I feel, get really pissed off. I don't actually care what other people think of this opinion and I am only posting in support of angel.
When my children were small, it would not have occured to us to take them on a long haul flight for our annula hols. They were happy to be running around a campsite in France and we waited until they were old enough to tolerate a long haul flight and to appreciate a hotel type holiday abroad. I am not saying that the way I did it was right, just pointing out that there are different opinions about this.
We deliberately avoid school hols but this makes little difference!

What age of 1 year old?

HUGE difference between entertaining a 14m old to a 22m old for example.

Trying to think back to when DS2 was 18mo and we did our Australia-UK trip - as I remember it, that was the fun one when Ds2 had some kind of allergy flare up on the way to Singapore (the 8h trip) and so we spent most of it in the back galley, with the stewardess taking photos and calling the land medical services to see what drugs we could give him...

So no help there.

On the way back, I think he slept most of it - we did a couple of walks around the aisles, and he looked at the VOD screen (wouldn't wear the headphones. Toys, books - he wasn't much interested in except for throwing purposes (not useful). Lots of snacks. He was in the toddler travel seat on the bulkhead table though, not in his own seat - BA have these, they recline, they're jolly useful. Unless turbulent, in which case fucking annoying because you have to take them out of their seat and belt them to you for the "seatbelts on" period.

Doable though - possibly the WORST thing you can do, IME, is to wonder how much longer you have to go...