
One of the most stressful parts about traveling with small children is not being able to anticipate and calm their tantrums or keep them entertained. The most stressful part is trying to keep your fellow passengers comfortable while your little one does what infants and toddlers do — cry, flail, and make their grievances known.
While most travelers are annoyed by screaming babies, I can assure you the parents of that child are both annoyed and embarrassed, knowing that they are being judged by strangers in an enclosed and uncomfortable space. One traveler on Reddit admitted to judging some parents on a recent flight and wondered if she was wrong for doing so.
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A solo traveler sat near a couple and their crying infant.
A 28-year-old woman came to Reddit to see if she was overreacting in her analysis of a couple traveling with an infant. The woman, who is already a nauseous flyer, was on a flight that lasted for several hours. She took a Dramamine and tried to fall asleep, but to no avail. The infant’s cries kept her awake. But she wasn’t too concerned about that. “I know flights are scary and stressful for infants,” she wrote.
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The couple changed their baby's diaper on the airplane food tray.
The issue was that the couple had to change the infant’s diaper. And the OP felt that the way they went about it was out of line. “What got to me was the couple changing their baby’s extremely stinky #2 diaper right in the middle of their seats, using the mom’s food tray as a changing table,” the OP explained.
They were seated near the back of the plane and there was a changing table in the restroom. The OP confirmed this for herself when she had to excuse herself to go to the restroom to vomit because of the smell of the dirty diaper.
She asked the couple if they could use the bathroom instead.
The OP didn’t say anything to the couple the first time. But when she heard them go into the diaper bag a second time a couple of hours later she said, “I asked if they could please go use the plane bathroom instead of exposing everyone on the plane to the smell.” The mother did not take the suggestion kindly.
“The mom went off on me,” the OP said. “[She] said I had no idea how stressful it is to travel with an infant, which is true—I don’t have kids.” But the OP wasn’t alone. The flight attendant asked the couple to only change diapers in the restroom. Later, the pilot made an announcement to the same effect. The couple was certainly not thrilled about being called out and “looked extremely annoyed,” the OP wrote.
The Reddit community agrees she was NTA.
Even with the cosign of the flight crew, the OP wondered if she was an a–hole for asking the couple to stop changing their child in the middle of the plane. The Reddit community also agrees that she was not an a–hole.
“Just the fact that she was using the tray intended for passengers to place their food on is revolting,” one user wrote. “I can’t begin to imagine the smell. Yes, flights are stressful for parents and their children, but that’s no excuse to be inconsiderate and downright gross.”
One person showed sympathy to the parents.
One user felt the parents were in a tough position. “The only point of sympathy I would have for the parents is that the changing facilities in most airplanes are barely fit for purpose," the Redditor wrote. "The change tables on short haul aircrafts are wedged into the corner of the fuselage and offer basically no room. It is my single worst experience changing a baby in 18 months.”
This person still agreed that the OP was not the a–hole and the parents should have done better. “But still,” the person concluded, “don’t change s—-y nappies on seats.”
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