Sarah K Tyler

I was happy to have been able to attend my sister’s wedding, but I realize how lucky I was that everything worked out. We gave ourselves a recovery day after flying out and before wedding activities started, and one for after the wedding and before flying back. Turns out I needed both rest days. I tired myself out at the rehearsal, and needed to go back to the hotel. The day after the wedding I got sick to my stomach. But the day of, I was alright, and lasted until the end of the night. I feel less guilty now about missing my college roommate’s wedding. It’s clear that this trip was right on the cusp of what I was capable of. Had my college roommate lived closer, and we could have made a day trip out of it, I think I could have managed.

The return trip was not as pleasant as the flight out. This time we were switching planes during our layover. The trip started out very positive. Tuesday is a light travel day, so both legs we got a row to ourselves. I could have the window seat, Domingo could have his aisle seat and I didn’t have to worry about disturbing anyone (other than him, of course).

I managed to fall asleep on the first flight during one of the only times the fasten seatbelt sign wasn’t illuminated. Poor timing on my part. When we started landing, we hit a bit of turbulence. Seven months pregnant + turbulence was pretty miserable. The layover ended up almost two hours, and, to be honest, I was glad to have a break. It was our only opportunity to eat real food, but I didn’t recover my appetite in time, so I stuck with fruit juice and a bagel. I just couldn’t stomach the thought of anything else. When we were standing in line to board for the second plane, all of a sudden zippy gave me a good kick and I needed to go RIGHT. NOW. I didn’t want to give up my spot in line, so I had to wait again.

I can’t tell you how happy I am to be home.

We survived our flight to the east coast, at thirty weeks (plus!) pregnant no less. I admit I was nervous about it. Despite my assurances to Domingo to the contrary, I knew there was potential for problems. I still get pregnancy related migraines and nausea on occasion. A three lbs baby dancing on my bladder combined with turbulence cannot be a good combination. My goal was to never let my bladder get too full, which meant using the restroom early and often.

I wanted to sit close to the bathroom in the front of the plane, since turbulence is usually worse at the rear. In order to ensure this, we sprung for priority boarding. Southwest has open seating, so if you want to sit somewhere specific, you need to board early. The priority boarding was a complete waste of money. We checked in with boarding numbers A58 & A59. Once at the airport, the gate agent told us that pregnant woman can board with the family boarding (after A60) so the $20 we spent only moved us up 3 spots in line! We still ended up in the middle of the plane.

I’m not sure we could have depended on the family boarding, though. I tried to find the policy online, but the only mention of pregnant fliers was that southwest recommends flying prior to the 38th week. I think letting pregnant fliers board in family boarding might be the prerogative of the gate agent. I may have had a distressed look on my face (I’m not very good at hiding nerves) and she may have assumed I was more uncomfortable than I was, and taken pity on me.

Normally I would opt for a window seat, but this trip we went with the aisle so I wouldn’t have to disturb anyone with my frequent trips to the rest room. Well, actually Domingo was in the aisle seat, so I disturbed him, but he’s my husband so that’s allowed. We also packed a bit of extra food (especially protein bars) and bought a couple bottles of water at the airport.

The first leg of our trip had little turbulence and Zippy was pretty easy on me. She was bouncing around a lot, but stayed off my bladder for the most part. Much to my delight, most people recognized that I was pregnant too, and made some sort of comment about it. The stewardess referred to me as “momma”, and the person sitting next to me asked when I was due.

I did have one time when the woman in line in front of me, not only noticed, but asked if I “had to go, like, every five minutes?”. I made a joke out of it, and said that baby was being good to me, so it was more like every ten. I admit, I thought she’d let me go first, since she not only noticed I was pregnant, but also acknowledged I had to go badly. Had she offered to let me go first, I would have declined, since I didn’t have to go that badly. But she never offered.

Having the iphone also proved useful. The first leg of the flight I noticed some playing a word search game. That looked like fun! The plane had a layover, but we were continuing on the same plane so there was no time debark. I was able to use the time between flights to download a similar app, and kept myself busy for the second leg.

So the flight out was as good as we could hope for. I’m so glad. Had it been miserable I would would spend the whole trip dreading the return. Here’s hoping the return is equally good to me!