Flight to California

Morning before we left for the airport.

Thursday, May 10th was your day to fly out to Califronia for the surgery. We were both very anxious about it. We slept very little the night before thinking about all of our stresses and worries. We got up early to have my parents drive us to the airport with all of our luggage. We had a ton of luggage to haul around which we were worried about being about to get around. We had a small carry-on duffle bag, back pack, diaper bag, and computer bag, and one very large checked bag, and a medium sized checked bag, Aili's car seat, base, and stroller, and her oxygen concentrator and bag. So that's a total of 11 separate items. We looked ridiculous, but we seriously needed all of it!

My parents drove us to the airport to send us off. They helped us haul in all of our crap and watched us go through security. Luckily the security line wasn't long at all. We had to take Aili our of her car seat and walk her through the metal detector with her oxygen....and of course we beeped walking through with a machine so then they took me and Aili to the side. I didn't mind that they had to pat me down, but I thought it was a little extensive to pat my baby down. I know they are just doing their jobs, and I respect them and know they are just trying to protect us, but patting down a 3 month old baby? I was super overwhelmed and and stressed just about everything, the flight, the surgery, just everything. So just the little extra hold up, having the pat down, searching my bags, waiting for the bomb buy to check out her oxygen concentrator put me slightly over the edge, and I started crying. Not for any specific reason, I was just really overwhelmed. The TSA agents were really nice, and respectful which helped. We waited for a while for the bomb specialist to come and he literally looked at the oxygen concentrator and said, "Well it's doing what it need to do." Then we were on our way.

When we booked our flights we asked for disability seating, because we heard that is what we needed to do. We told them everything, why were were flying to Cali, and that we would have an oxygen concentrator. We were expecting to be able to sit towards the front of the plane, or somewhere where there was a little more space to put the oxygen concentrator....but no. They let us board the flight very first, which was nice so we could get all situated. But we were way far back in the plane, which wasn't helpful at all, carrying a baby, 4 carry-on bags and the oxygen. We had to take the oxygen off the rolling cart to be able to put it under the seat in front of Chris.

We were kind of worried about how Aili was going to be on the flight, let alone just around people in general, since she has been on lock down. I put her in my arms, gave her, her binky and she went straight to sleep, and stayed asleep all through take off until we got all the way in the air. Then she sat in our laps just looking at a smiling playing, perfectly content. We changed her diaper, then sat back down and she feel asleep sucking on her binky again for the whole decent and landing. She was AMAZING! The lady in front of us turned around and told us that she was so good, and that you would have never known there was a baby on the plane. We waited til everyone was off the plane to put all of our stuff back together and get off the plane. Once we got into the airport I needed to feed Aili, so we sat down and ate, then headed to go pick up our bags.

We apparently took way to long getting off the plane and feeding Aili, because the bag claim was empty and our bags were locked away in a back room. So once we got those we awkwardly found, and got on the bus to take us to the car rental place. Luckily we got a little bit bigger car so we were able to fit all of our crap in it.

Aili was amazing through all of this. Either awake and content or sound asleep. We couldn't believe it. Totally a blessing. It was stressful enough as it was, but if she had been crying it would have been that much harder.

Thank you again for all your thoughts and prayers! We can totally feel them, and see them working!