# CIO on a plane?



## wallacesmum (Jun 2, 2006)

I was on a cross-country flight last week, which departed at 7:30 pm. There was an infant across the aisle from us, just starting to crawl (so maybe about 6 months?). The baby wasn't breastfed and was fussy - I really feel for parents of infants who don't breastfeed, on planes. I can't imagine how stressful and exhausting that must be.

So, I am totally sympathetic and not bothered by the baby's cries, until they put the child on the floor, awake, lowered their trays, covered them with blankets, and let her cry! WTF????? I wanted to go punch them both in the face, seriously. Can you imagine being on the floor of an airplane? Finally, it got too obnoxious so they picked her up and walked her around, at which point she fell asleep.

What is wrong with people? Seriously.

And that's my rant.


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## wytchywoman (Nov 14, 2006)

Yeah, I'd have issues too. I am not a fan of CIO, but in the end if a parent does it in their own home, there's not much I can do about it. When they do it in public and force everyone else to listen to it as well, that's not cool.


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## Nautical (Mar 4, 2008)




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## fresh_water (Feb 29, 2008)

Oh ffs! That's awful! What a great job of nurturing those parents are doing.


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## lifeguard (May 12, 2008)

Allowing a child to CIO in such a confined space with other people is just disrespectful to everyone on the plane. A lot of people do use this method at home but it seems SO inappropriate in this situation.

About the floor thing though - my MIL said my DH slept wonderfully on the floor of the plane for transatlantic flights when he was a babe - so something that might work for some people.


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## tree-hugger (Jul 18, 2007)

how sad


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## wannabe (Jul 4, 2005)

OP, I hope you come back and (humbly) update this thread when you've been on a long journey with an inconsolable, overstimulated and overtired child yourself.


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## LeighB (Jan 17, 2008)

That is very sad (and rude to the other passengers...). I've found that people who cio, don't tend to keep it at home. At the park I've seen numerous mothers put their babies in the stroller, cover it with a blanket and let them cry to sleep.


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## KCMommy (Jun 24, 2006)

While the described situation might have been shocking to you and does look bad from the description, I think it is hard to judge without knowing the full story. For example, sometimes my 9 mo actually struggles to get out of my arms. Maybe they'd been struggling with her and trying everything under the sun for the whole trip before deciding that maybe the baby needed to get down. Maybe the blankets were to simulate night-time darkness or to help shield her from the over-stimulation of the plane. Then, when they saw that she wasn't settling, brought her back out and tried something else.

I am so acutely aware of what other parents might be thinking of me sometimes. My 3.5 yo is in a phase where she will get very upset over something out of my control. Any attempts on my part to hug her or help her are met with shouting and "GO AWAY"s. I have discovered that she just needs some space and time to re-group and then she approaches me for a hug or a snuggle. To an outside observer who sees me apparantely ignoring my small daughter while she howls at the park, I must look like a terrible mother.

So, I always try to give other mothers the benefit of the doubt.


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## avantgauze (Jul 21, 2008)

i totally agree with kc mommy.
in fact i had a crying infant on a plane, and i breastfeed, and i had no way to calm her till the seatbelt light turned off and i could walk her around.

my baby barely ever cries, but started wailing the second we got into the plane. neither breast nor toys nor the other five thousand ridiculous things i tried helped one iota. there was a chinese family behind me being very kind and concerned but kept suggesting to me she was hungry when i continually tried to shove my breast in her face to no avail.
i had her head covered in a blanket as well.
she was too little to crawl, but if i had thought of it, i probably would have laid her in the aisle with a blanket over her face, at least to see if that could help.

they might have been at their wits end and perhaps this had helped in the past with their little one. when my baby cries in the car seat and i am beside her(because she hates cars-go figure) i cant look at her either, for some reason if i look at her it makes things so much worse for her, but she will calm down if i stare out the window and purposely ignore her.


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## ecoteat (Mar 3, 2006)

I can just imagine these parents planning this trip and thinking "How are we going to get the baby to sleep on the plane?" and brainstorming ways to make the plane as much like home as possible. If their home means CIO, obviously that's unfortunate, but they were probably just trying to keep to their own routine as much as possible. So, given the options, they must have figured the floor was more like the baby's crib than their laps, and thought they'd give it a try. I'd be pretty upset about having to be on a plane with a crying baby that the parents were not actively doing anything to stop, but they were probably cringing and quietly wishing the baby would just fall asleep already!


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## ilikethedesert (Feb 4, 2004)

oh my.


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## StayAtHomeMama21 (Nov 6, 2006)

I think we were on the same plane!!!!!

I agree, I'm def. anti CIO, but what you do in your home is technically your biz, but to torture the other passengers.... even my 26 month old was getting VERY concerned. He didn't understand why they weren't helping the sad baby...


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## Attached Mama (Dec 4, 2005)

I would prob have gotten out of my seat, found a flight attendent and "tattled" that there was a baby on the floor and that I was concerned she might be hurt with the least bit of turbulence.


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## petitchou (Mar 10, 2008)

I don't have a huge problem with the baby being on the floor. I just got home yesterday from an overnight transatlantic flight with 21 month old ds and he slept on the floor pretty much the whole way. It was either that or have him lay facing me on my chest and he's just too big for either of us to be comfortable in a little airplane seat for that. (On a side note - I feel INCREDIBLY lucky that he slept this time - it definitely isn't always like that...) I didn't do that on our flight when he was 6 months old - I felt more comfortable with him in arms at that point - but I can totally understand baby sleeping better with more room to stretch out.

I would have a HUGE problem with letting the baby CIO on the plane though! I imagine that it would have been quite obvious if the parents had been trying to get the child to sleep to no avail and that was a last option. I've soooo been there with ds - overtired, overstimulated, overexcited, jetlagged and hyper. But to me, expecting a child to just CIO out in a strange situation like that is just too much even if it is what they are used to at home. I do try to make things similar to home when we're travelling but I also bend the rules a lot when ds is so obviously out of his comfort zone.

(Of course, I'm not a fan of CIO anyway so perhaps that clouds my judgment a little...)


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## lolar2 (Nov 8, 2005)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *wallacesmum* 
Can you imagine being on the floor of an airplane?

My very first memory is of being on the floor of an airplane in front of my mom's feet! Shortly before I turned two.









If they walked the baby around, to me that means they were trying to get her to stop crying. So, maybe at home this baby quiets down when it's dark and they hoped it might soothe her. When that didn't work, they tried walking her around. It doesn't sound to me like clear-cut CIO.

My parents tell me that I was able to scream with the best of them on a plane, and I was breastfed until I was fifteen months, so that's not a guarantee of quietude!


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## katheek77 (Mar 13, 2007)

How long did they let the baby cry on the floor?

I'm asking because, although my DD usually liked to be worn to sleep at that age, there were a couple of times where she absolutely, positively screamed her head off while I tried everything I could to comfort her, and she didn't calm down until I put her down and walked a few feet away.

Possibly, they thought the baby was overstimulated and that blocking out the light and motion around them would soothe the baby.

If the full-scale crying went on longer than two or three minutes, then, yes, I would have a problem with it (and, please be aware that studies have shown the people waaaaaay overestimate how long a baby has been crying. What seems like forever may have only been a minute or so). But for a couple of minutes to see if that *might* work? Nah. I've been there, where you're trying everything short of hanging the baby upside down from the ceiling fan while you sing Gregorian chants just to see if that will do the trick. (At one point, if DD woke up in the middle of the night, after she ate, it had to be DH - not me - on the floor laying on her little Dora couch in the middle of the room and a humidifier on, left hand under her cheek, the other hand stroking from her forehead to her ear, with one of the "good" binkies and a light blanket - seriously - luckily for DH, that stage did not last too long, although she still has to have the hand under her cheek to fall asleep).


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## sweetpeppers (Dec 19, 2007)

I would have said something in that situation. That is just bad manners. Of course, I got myself banned from the nursery helpers for refusing to let this woman's baby cry himself to sleep. whoops. in the privacy of your own home is bad enough, but in public, that's cruel to everyone, not just your child.


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## mama crane (Apr 11, 2008)

FWIW...I have heard from more than 1 person, that the air on the floor of an airplane has less oxygen and so not the best place for a little one







I think it has something to do with the way the cabin is pressurized.


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## kriket (Nov 25, 2007)

you couldn't pay me to fly with my (hypothetical) infant! I am at my wits end just flying with the other adults on the plane!


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## Rockies5 (May 17, 2005)

i had my 1yo on a plane cross country, she wouldn't nurse and demanded I let her lie on the floor. She fussed and cried until asleep. I'd done everything I knew (5th baby, no cio or anything). and she said that was what she wanted. I picked her up 4x but she'd flail (middle seat, full flight, sitting on the tarmac for 2 hrs) until I put her down.

I wouldn't be so quick to point, you know?


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## Lily's_Mom (Feb 11, 2008)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *wannabe* 
OP, I hope you come back and (humbly) update this thread when you've been on a long journey with an inconsolable, overstimulated and overtired child yourself.

That was us on our flight home from Germany. Dd was 20 months old. She was bopping around on our laps until the couple in front of us turned around and said, "Please don't kick the seat!" We tried to keep her occupied without hitting the seat in front of us, but she kept managing to bump into it. So we put her in her carseat to have a nap (after nursing her), and then they kept turning around and giving us dirty looks because she was crying. And if we took her out she probably would have kicked their seat, so...


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## Telle Bear (Jul 28, 2006)

When we first flew with my son he was only a couple of months old and spent the majority of the flight singing the ABC's to him (it always calmed him down). Some people looked at us funny and I finally told people around us, it was our singing or his crying...then my husband made some funny remark about how his crying might sound better than our singing...


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