Since I’m traveling to China with Lauren alone, I needed to repack my suitcases because now I can only bring two big ones instead of four. It proved to be a big challenge. As a result, quite a few of Lauren’s toys didn’t make it to China. The suitcases were filled with diapers, wet wipes, canned baby food, baby medicine and toys. It was a struggle to keep each suitcase below the 50 pounds limit.
On the day of the trip, which was really just the next day, a friend with a van came over to drive me to the airport. I was actually unsure about the whole thing, and the thought of cancelling the trip came through my mind couple of times.
After praying about it, I decided to take on the challenge of bringing Lauren to China myself.
The flight was at 2:45pm, and we left my house at 10:45am. I strapped Lauren securely into her car-seat. She seemed to be happy, actually, she’s happy whenever she’s out of the house. I then loaded the two big suitcases, a small carry on, her diaper bag, and her stroller onto the van.
BTW, I just want to mention the stroller. I bought it specifically for this trip, and intend to leave it with her in China. The model I bought was the
The drive to the airport was uneventful. Cosmo Ex Merlot Stroller, which turned out to be a great stroller to use in the airport and for general day to day usage. It’s basically an upscale umbrella stroller but with some very nice features. For more detail, read my Amazon review on it by following the link above.
But I digress.
The trip to the airport was uneventful, traffic was light, and the mood was good in general. Lauren shouted quite a few times, she’s very vocal nowadays, trying to prepare for her language development I assume. Our friend, who drove the van, got startled when he first heard her shouting, it was kind of funny.
Check-in was pretty easy, although there were quite a few folks in line already, JY and my mom brought Lauren to a seating area to feed her and change her while I waited in-line. It took me around 30 minutes to check-in.
I asked about the bassinet that I ordered for Lauren at the check-in counter, and was told that I should have ordered the hanging one because it’s much bigger. My problem was that when I first ordered the bassinet, I was put into non-bulkhead seat, so the bassinet I ordered was the floor model. On the 747-400 I was traveling on, only two bulkhead rolls can have hanging bassinet, and although I changed myself to a bulkhead row couple of weeks ago, I didn’t change to the bulkhead rows that have that feature. The problem was, I was never told about this before I arrived at the airport. I actually called United a few times to change things, and every time I was told I’ll get a bassinet for Lauren, but the difference between the bassinet was not explained to me.
This has just made my trip much more difficult, because the floor bassinet can only hold a baby up to 6-months. Well, I was at the airport, and there was no turning back.
To be continued.