We are back after a 14 hour flight to Seoul and almost missing our 6 hour connection back to Singapore. Airlines should not think that 45 minutes to get off the plane, clear security and board another plane is possible. It wasn't as Amazing Race crazy though because we had agreed before hand that it wouldn't have been the worst thing if we missed our flight and stayed a night in Seoul. My only condition was that we did not sleep on the airport floor regardless of how pretty Incheon Airport was.
Anyway, they held the flight for us as ground staff whisked us through security much to the anger of many others standing in line. My guess was that it cost less to hold the flight 10 minutes than to put up 6 people, who missed the flight, in a hotel.
So we are back.
And I have to face the much hated jet lag.
I have always hated the jet lag that comes with flying from the US. Mine manifests as morning sickness- nausea, dizziness and depression apparently brought about by the lack of sleep.
This morning, I had another revelation. That if my own jet lag felt like morning sickness, jet lag with JED naturally and truly does feel like having infants up at all times of night.
JED lost consciousness about 7pm and we thought that it was close enough to their usual bed time that they would sleep right through the night. Unfortunately, like when they were infants and we foolishly thought that going down for the night meant staying down for the night, it was wishful thinking.
By 2 am, the two boys had big big eyes and were awake and wanting to play, Muffin wanted to play with the shadows in the room and Evan wanted to go downstairs and watch tv. Even though the first thing I did was douse them with sleep inducing antihistamines, it took two hours for them to fall back to sleep. Muffin, like an infant, demanded two feeds of milk to make up for falling asleep on his dinner.
Jordan, who had slept through her brothers' shennanigans, woke an hour after her brothers fell back to sleep. She decided at 5 in the morning to be sensitive to my calling her "Baby girl" and burst into tears, once again, a throw back to her infant days. She did however calm down when I told her that I called her that out of love and affection. She declared then that she had "changed her mind" and was okay being called baby girl. If I wasn't so tired, I would have rolled my eyes. By that time, there was light in the sky and the familiar sour taste of bile in my mouth with a stomach churning.
The only difference is that with non-infant JED, both Packrat and I could coerce them, threaten them and show that our being annoyed at being woken at ungodly hours was an understatement. With an infant or two, there was no reasoning let alone yelling at them. Even as I write that, I am reminded of those brochures at the polyclinic blatantly imploring new parents to "NOT SHAKE YOUR BABY!".
One can only hope that tonight is better. And I remember the mantra of sleepless nights.
This too, shall pass.
0 comments:
Post a Comment