Long Distance Air Travel is like Natural Childbirth!!

Long distance air travel is like natural child birth? What? Are you crazy? How could there be similarities? One leads to a new life and the other leads to a vacation, or at least, a homecoming. Oh, yeah, I guess they both lead to good things. As someone has observed, there is no good outcome without effort…and long distance travel is no different! While returning via plane from a pleasant summer vacation in Europe, it came to my mind like an epiphany. The experiences have similarities.

After months of anticipation, trepidation, and preparation, the traveler and the new parent make a commitment either to the birth or to the flight. They become inevitable and unavoidable. They are the logical and expected conclusion of what can be a pleasant interlude. One cannot be on vacation or pregnant forever. Eventually one faces reality.

Following a protracted and often detailed planning period, the anticipated air flight begins. Once on board, just as in pregnancy, there is no going back. No option to just stay pregnant, or to just back out of a flight once on board. Recently we have witnessed both airlines and passengers engaging in violent and often bloody encounters to end flight experiences. This never ends well and is uncomfortable for all involved. Thankfully it is also rare! Regardless of the outcome, with pregnancy and air flight, there are complicated and difficult consequences to the commitment.

Similarities abound. The trip to the maternity ward and the trip to the airport can be experiences in themselves. There is anticipation and stress around the fear of arriving on time, in a functional condition and in a pleasant frame of mind. This trip may involve a wild taxi ride or a forced and fearful rush by a relative through crowded streets at an ungodly hour.

Once at the airport or maternity ward, there are formalities that must be handled. They cannot be avoided and must be dealt with in a graceful and efficient manner. Registering, the indignity of security checks and scans, questioning regarding your experience so far, provision of proof of person, the list is endless. Eventually, after proving who you are, removing personal items and anything potentially threatening to others, and locating your proper place in the established order, you wait for the anticipated event. If you are lucky the wait is short and relatively painless. The unlucky face delays, inadequate facilities and equally stressed co-laborers or travelers.

Once on board the plane, one is again committed. You struggle to find your place, settle yourself and secure your well prepared belongings. Women in the troughs of labor often have little concern for these things, but would like to be comfortable, in familiar or at least chosen surroundings and feel safe and attended to. In both situations you attempt this as gracefully as you can. On the plane you crawl over obstacles, bruising yourself on armrests and unnoticed protrusions, all the while praying your underthings are not giving fellow travelers a free and unwanted lingerie show. Similarly in the ward, you are often stripped of attractive attire and must proceed with the process in the most basic state, in full view of well meaning, but equally stressed, strangers.

After disposing of all your physical possessions and dignity, you must assume an uncomfortable position. Your legs are held in a unnatural position and begin to scream their discomfort. Your back hurts; you are not quite sure what to do with your hands, arms and even your facial expression is on public display and open to interpretation.

After several excruciating hours in this position, during which you attempt to ‘get comfortable’ but can only do so within the confines of the circumstances, you begin to realize the extent of your captivity. You have been pushed, prodded, examined and confined, given up your privacy, and your dignity, and now face enduring hours of torture and confinement in the presence of complete strangers…or even worse, accompanied by equally stressed loved ones.

You just want to sleep and escape all this! When you wake, it will be over. You need it badly, your body is a wreak and the situation is untenable! But no! Just as in childbirth when you are periodically checked to determine “how you are doing?”, your flight experience is subject to well-meaning stewards and stewardesses who need to know “how you are doing.” They may be charged with restraining your movements via seat belts, restricted areas, small spaces and heavy pieces of equipment which confine you even further. Want to use the restroom? This is a logistical exercise in itself, again involving the loss of privacy and dignity. Your freedom of choice is further restrained by a 30,000 foot drop to the ground, and in the case of an extremely negative birth experience, certain death!

Just at that moment, you receive an inquiry as to your desire for sustenance. Your stomach is like a shoe factory, complicated and confused. Just as in child birth, what you are offered may not be what you are expecting. Ice chips may be about all you are offered in the delivery process, due to a fear, and prior experience of stomachs revolting and rejecting anything else.

When ice chips are offered, you may feel yourself turning into a character from The Exorcist. Your voice deepens. Your head spins. The whites of your eyes become dominate, and you hear yourself saying in a demonic tone: “Ice chips! Did I ASK for ice chips!!!” How about something like ice cream, filled donuts, or filet mignonette?!” What happened to the pampering of pregnancy you have been used to? Here you are risking your life, experiencing discomfort and humiliation, submitting to a loss of power. Ice chips! Are these the compensation for this?

On the plane you may be offered a variety of beverages, but not have any room to really enjoy them, only being able to move your arms from the tray table to the general area of your face without smacking your seat mate with your elbow, or touching someone you don’t know with your arm.

Food may arrive, and after determining what it is and how it might be unboxed, unwrapped and perhaps even cut into edible portions, you again have to determine how to move it from the tray table surface to your mouth. Is it worth it? In some cases, not! But you accept the offering, again exhibiting grace under duress, and attempt to eat. After all, who knows just how long this process may take? You may need the strength this food provides. There are estimates and projections of when the experience will terminate….but never any guarantees!

Just at the moment of complete abjection, a voice comes out of the ether. It’s the doctor! (or midwife, nurse practitioner, or other authority figure) In the case of long distance flights you hear “This is the captain speaking!” So while piloting the plane, he is presenting a public service announcement! He has examined the situation, and will now deliver his determination of your future.

In a medical situation, the medical interventionist may tell you “You are doing fine!” Easy for them to say, they aren’t being starved, examined endlessly, prodded, poked, measured, exposed and tortured by recurring pain. Their determination that you are ‘doing fine’ seems somewhat condescending at that moment. However, you grasp onto the assessment like a drowning man to a life ring. In an adverse situation, you may be told you need a C- section, medication to speed up the process, or some other equally frightening pronouncement. These may not have been on your list of desirable alternatives, but at this point, you need some options, some hope that this process will end and end well.

So it is with air travel. The captain’s assessment that “In approximately three hours we will arrive in Nirvana Airport where it is a balmy 105 degrees and raining.” This news is welcomed like it was a bequeathment of a fortune! There is an end to this flight. I will survive it, yet again. I will live to fly another day!

Then before you know it, you are presented with the last excruciating experience. Your parts are ripped apart…or was that the landing gear touching the tarmac and the engines being thrown into reverse? You are free to exit. If all has gone well, you have either a new child, or an arrival at some place you want to be. Either way, you are grateful to those who got you here, and quickly forget the negative parts of the experience.

You emerge, no longer attractive and put together. You resemble someone that, as they say, has had a 'bad day!" Whatever that means, not an experience I personally recognize! Your hair is now flat, or sticking straight up. Your makeup has long since been worn off, leaving you pale and colorless. Your clothes no longer seem to fit properly, and are inexorably wrinkled.

But as with child birth, all’s well that ends well, and you quickly find yourself pleased with your efforts and perhaps even anticipating your next experience.