My first flight after having my baby: no longer a sole passenger whose primary concern is whether she gets a window seat or not. I now travel as his mother. He has not asked to travel and doesn’t understand why we are confined with strangers. It is unfamiliar to him. My role is to protect him and make him comfortable. If he becomes frightened, I am there to reassure him.
I do not know the stranger with a laptop behind me. I have never even met him. He has probably paid extra for that particular seat to enable him to work. I don’t know the couple sat in front who have just toasted their two glasses of bubbly. Maybe it is their anniversary?
I observe our fellow passengers, all baby-less. The old me immediately cringes and feels embarrassed. I make eye contact with laptop-man and feel the urge to crack an apologetic joke to him about claiming for compensation but something stops me and I know it is important somehow that I do not. I am not here to make his or any of the other passengers' lives comfortable, I am here for my son.
Turn around to look at me and you’ll see me not take my eyes off him for the entire flight, leap to my feet and invent yet another energetic game if he looks bored, check his body temperature repeatedly and adjusting his clothing accordingly, getting ready to feed him the moment we take off to do all that I can to stop his ears popping, watch me juggle a changing mat, spare nappies and wipes down a narrow aisle to change him in a bathroom the size of a postage stamp. Watch all this and realise my sole focus is this baby and his safety and you will see that there is no capacity left to crack a pre-emptive joke about not interrupting somebody else's flight. There are no excuses to be made, not on this flight and not anywhere. Something inside me shifts and there is no longer any embarrassment and I am filled with a quiet, steadfast knowing. My travel status is hereon cemented: I will be the one flying with a baby and no, I will not be sorry about it.
