24hr flight with 9 month old - how did you do it?

[Bloomingbury]

I've just booked to take our daughter to Oz to meet her paternal family at Xmas. She'll be 9 months by then. First time on a plane. Probably crawling so slightly less happy to sit still! We're going on Arab Emirates, have her on our knee throughout or in the bassinet we have reserved. They said they provide infant / baby food for her.

Can anyone share their experiences with me? How did you find it? What did you do with them? Changing them in airplane toilets? Breastfeeding them on the plane? Do they really provide baby food? Getting them to sleep? What did you do about routines? What are the bassinets like? How did they find the odd atmosphere, sounds, smells, vibrations? How good are Arab Emirates with babies/infants? How do you sleep when you dont know how long she'll sleep for? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences. I'm a little befuddled about how to do it all!

Hannah x

Hi there, I've done that trip a number of times with young babies. Honestly it's not too bad at all or I've buried out the memory.

I've never flown with babies with Emirates, I like the Asian airlines personally, Singapore & Malaysian are lovely with babies. BA are horrors.

I always booked and used a bassinet, they're not enormous but should be ok for a 9 month old. The annoying thing was that if there is any turbulence you have to get dd out of the bassinet and on to your lap. I found this would happen the minute my dd fell asleep. Take a familiar cosy blanket for the baby as the planes can be cold and the blankets they supply are thin.

Baby food, this was supplied but it was full of sugar etc so I (being a ghastly pfb type mum) took my own supply of organic pouches on board with me. Breast feeding was fine, I was just discreet. Changing in the loos is dooable, are you going on your own or with dp? I found it a bit tricky having 2 kids on my own and going to the loo myself. But changing a baby isn't too bad, cramped but doable.

Basically we all managed, it was fine, the baby wasn't stressed or fussy or bothered by noise or other people. Cried occasionaly, but I guess I gritted my teeth through the tricky bits. Mostly other people were lovely. My worst trip was with dh when dd was 3 months old. Dh found the whole travelling with a baby thing embarrasing and stressful which frankly made it worse. When I did it on my own it was so much easier.

You'll be fine. Do you get 3 stops when you fly Emirates?

We are just back from NZ with our 9 month old flying with Emirates. The flight wasn't as bad as I had feared. Staff were lovely but I would take some food as the baby food they had was very limited and my DD didnt really like it.
We found the bassinet really quite small - our DD is really long though and it has an 11kg weight limit. She was happier to sleep on us and it was less faff than having to lift her out every time the seat belt sign came on.
I have done the flight from the UK to NZ many times and this was the only time when I didnt even see how my tv worked or what films were on! Neither of us really got any sleep but if you are prepared for that it will be fine. We just let her feed and sleep when she wanted during the journey and adjusted to NZ time as soon as we landed and she got into the swing of the new time zone within 24 hours.
good luck and have a great time