No cats were harmed in the making of this post

The last time I flew, I was in the very early stages of extremely premature labor. I didn’t know it, which can be viewed as good or bad, if I want to look back and think what might have been. Amniotic fluid started leaking at the Met on Saturday, but I thought I was just having bladder control issues. Had I understood what it was, that’s me in the hospital in New York City. By Sunday night at the hotel in New Jersey, it was worse, but I still didn’t realize it. Had I, that’s me in the hospital in Newark. Maybe they could have stopped it, maybe not. I guess you could say that I could have bought more time for my fetus, and things could have been different. He could have had dual citizenship in Minnesota and New Jersey, thus opening up numerous exciting and perhaps lucrative possibilities. As it happened, I didn’t get it until Wednesday, and they absolutely could not stop labor, and he was born in Minneapolis.

So it goes. I can speculate all I want, but who has the time? He’s doing extremely well, so “what if’s” provide nothing more than interesting scenarios that involve a preemie in a NICU in the Northeast and a family in limbo.

Flying with a fetus was easy, anyway.

I was really worried about flying with a full-blow baby person.

Captain Kinesis, as we call him, or Godzilla, as day care calls him, does not like to be thwarted or constrained in any way, and it’s the business of airplanes to thwart and constrain. I was relying on the power of The Boob and the extremely early fight to help us through at least part of the experience.

We got up at 4:00 a.m., which is not really news, aside from the fact that we had to get dressed and get things done. Finn got up at 4:30, which is not really news, aside from the fact that we had to get him dressed and out the door for our cab at 5:00.

That part went pretty well.

The airport was packed, but check-in went pretty well.

Security went pretty well.

Even Finn had to take his shoes off.

We had a lot of crap. Once we added a car seat to all the other stuff, plus a bag of baby food, I felt like we had a mile of gray bins snaking slowly through the machine.

And we packed light.

Finn was fussy and tired, so I latched him on as we started taxiing. He slept for an hour and a half. When he woke up, he had a diaper change and a walk up and down the aisle. He really wanted to get down and crawl and was mad that we would not let him. I broke out the new toys, which were interesting for 20 minutes or so. A story. More boob. Then we landed, and he loved looking out the window. That was pretty cool.

All in all, it was barely interesting enough to deserve a post.

We didn’t forget anything major. No cats died. The house is not a disaster area.

I’ll call it a success.