Traveling with a 9 1/2 month old

I am sorry I have been absent for a bit, but as we do every year I was off to New Brunswick for the Holidays. Tones to talk about but this entry will be about travel.

So you are all packed and you head out to the airport (60 minute drive) and arrive there to find out that your flight is delayed because the plane you are supposed to be on is stuck in Vegas because there is snow in Vegas. Yes snow in Vegas. they ended up finding another plane for us but we only got to leave at 1:30am by the time I was at my sisters house it was close to 6am. This would not have been anywheres as bad as it was if it was not for the fact that I traveled alone with my son. Geoff was joining us on the 23rd. Luckily Geoff stayed with us at the airport until I had no choice to go threw security, not because my flight was leaving but because security was closing for the night.

The 23rd rolls around along with a snow storm in Toronto, Geoff was in the same boat as we were with a plane being delayed and delayed some more. I was starting to think he would not make it to us for Christmas. He should have arrived in Moncton at 11pm but got to my mom and dad's around 7am.

You would think that was enough delays, well no. The day we were supposed to come back to Toronto our flight got canceled.

Well we are now home and all is back to normal.

What did I learn from all this travel.

1. Pack enough diapers for 1 1/2 days in your carry-on
2. Have a good long nap before you leave for the airport just in case you need to stay up all night holding a sleeping baby on the plane wishing you were sleeping
3. Bring head phones so you can watch Satellite TV on the plane to help keep you up at 3 am when you have been up for 20 straight hours.
   
4. Pack healthy snacks for your baby
5. Pack toys to distract him at the airport while you wait for your flight
6. The Baby B'air vest is useless for us. In Canada you can not use it during take off and landing, Christophe falls asleep during take off and does not wake up until we land; so I am not about to risk waking him up to put on the vest.
   

planning our first big trip

It's official. Our tickets are purchased we are going to Moncton to meet the rest of my family. We are leaving on June 26 in the evening (that way papa can drop us off at the airport) and we will be back home on July 6 just in time for mama's 30th birthday.

Last weekend we bought the travel bag for our stroller that I will be bringing along. Bugaboo really gauges you on accessories. My parents are buying a car seat so I don't need to worry about that and my aunt is lending them a playpen.

We still need to get swimwear for the both of us. If it's nice I want to take him to the beach.

If any of my "long lost friends" from Moncton want to schedule a play date to meet the munch-kin drop me a line.

Talking about turning 30 what does one do for a birthday once she has a wee one? I have to figure it out and send some invitations.

Eventful Day II

I was scheduled to go to New York yesterday evening, spend a few days there getting the NY developers up and running on automated builds, and so forth. I had lunch with Pierrette, said goodbye, then went to the TD Bank to get some US$.

I waited in line for ten minutes, and then as I was third from the front or so, I suddenly felt as if I'd lost all the blood in my head -- vision went black, "closing in" for about a half second, then came back, and my heart was racing, both fast and strong.

Possibly because I was a little disoriented by that, I finished my line, did the cash exchange, then went and sat in the chairs. I was still feeling like my heart was racing, and I was sweating a little. At this point, I wondered if wearing a blazer and a winter jacket in a bank line was the only source of all this, or if there was somethign deeper, so I went down to the Shoppers one floor below and got my blood pressure checked. The Pharmacist said that my pulse was a little high and my pressure a little low, and that I should take it easy, but that nothing was necessarily wrong.

I walked (very slowly) back to the office; that took maybe 20 minutes, at which point I was still feeling like my heart was racing, so I called TeleHealth. They suggested that I should probably go to emergency, just to get checked out, so I let my colleagues know that I wasn't going to NY, went down, got in a Taxi, and went to Toronto General.

It took about 15 or 20 minutes to see the triage nurse, who I guess decided I wasn't critical, because it then took another four hours or so before I got in from the waiting room. (Whee). During that time, I cancelled my travel arrangements and then Pierrette arrived. Within about half an hour of waiting in the emergency room (sitting, in a chair), I felt pretty normal again. Pierrette brought me some fruit and water, which helped to stave off hunger. The moving sign said I shouldn't eat or drink before seeing a doctor, which in the modern system of long wait times at the hospital seems like bad advice, so I didn't take it.

When they finally let us in, they hooked me up to an EKG machine, took my blood pressure and some blood. After analyzing the results, I am apparently fine, so they decided that I had a small bout of vasovagal/positional presyncope, which apparently means, in this case: you came in from the cold to a hot area, wearing two jackets. The heat made your blood vessels dilate. You stood in line for a while, causing the blood to pool at your feet. The combination of these factors lowered your blood pressure, causing dizziness/faintness (pre-syncope), which your heart tried to compensate for by beating faster.

It's a "rational" explanation, but I haven't heard anyone else relate to me the time they were hot in a bank line and felt faint, so I have to admit I'm not very satisified by the explanation: it doesn't give me much to go on, or to do. So, yes, I'm going to set up an appointment with the naturopath and with Dr. Sood and see what they have to say. In the meantime, I'm going to take it easy and hope that I don't see any further signs of something being off.

Fingers crossed.