We planned for a lot of things before our twin daughters arrived, but never leaving the apartment again wasn’t exactly one of them.  It did sort of happen for a while after they were born.  “Getting ready” wasn’t worth it and somehow became a new thing we constantly talked about.  “Do we have everything we need?  Did you remember the bottles?  Did you remember the blankets???”

Then suddenly, after four blurry months of feeding, changing, sleeping and crying (mostly me), we felt cooped up and cocky enough to buy tickets for a 72- minute flight to see my family in North Carolina.  Although I was nervous about what flying with two babies might look like, I leaned heavily on the mantra that soothed and calmed my husband and I through all the tense moments of early parenting.  “At least they aren’t triplets.”

We applied the same man-to-man defense when we traveled as we did at home.  One baby, one car seat, one diaper bag.  Each.  I had read every blog and website and book and pro tip on traveling with infants. And realized above all that there is, of course, a diminishing point of returns on preparing for anything that simply turns into a full-blown freak out.  Extra diapers and wipes?  Obviously.  A bottle prepped for takeoff and landing to avoid ear popping?  You got it.  An emergency backup outfit in a gallon sized plastic bag?  I’m on it.  A favorite toy, pacifier, blanket, raincoat, bathing suit and winter hat?  Check, check, check, check, check, check.   At least 90% of it wouldn’t come out of the bag.

On the 25-minute drive to the airport, my husband and I planned a strategy for our arrival. He would drive us to the departures terminal and drop me off with the girls and our luggage, while he went and parked.  This was all meant to avoid lugging our bags and babies through the parking lot and up to the ticketing agents, but really, I drew the short straw and we both knew it.  I accepted it for the free pass of getting mad at him if everything went wrong.  Of course, the girls slept the entire time he was gone.  The reality is that we didn’t know what we didn’t know.  And standing anywhere by yourself with 4-month-old twins is usually a dream compared to 14-months-old twins.  Because 4-month-old twins can sometimes sleep, strapped into a stroller or car seat.  While 14-month-old twins will lock you in the closet and take your car for a joy ride if you aren’t careful.  In this case, there they slept, strapped in and secure.  But because I didn’t know what I didn’t know, where was he already? 

When I was 6 months pregnant, I stopped a twin mom in Whole Foods to ask what she thought of her stroller.  She was wheeling around 9-month-old twins through the freezer section with one hand and balancing a basket of groceries in the other.  The basket held a gallon of milk and what I could only estimate to be 16 other items that clearly weighed down her barely 5’ frame.  Registering none of this, I leaned in on one leg toward her like Snow White to a forest blue jay and asked if she was happy with her stroller purchase. She stopped, generously, and told me everything she knew about strollers and then motherhood.  I’m sure I did something with her stroller review, but I don’t remember a word of what she said about it.  I do remember, however, that what she shared in the other 7 minutes came from deep within her.  A passing on of wisdom from twin moms that came before her.  An homage to the sisterhood I was about to enter.  I can see her lips moving in my memories, the almost unnoticeable way she rocked the stroller and her snacking, but otherwise totally chill 9-month-olds who gave me a false sense of how easy children would be.  I should have been writing everything down, but I was entranced by her calm.  Her words that might save me hours and days and months of overwhelm on the road ahead.  But, alas, I registered and remembered nothing.  Except.  One thing that still rings in my ears, many years after it was meant to help.  Its wisdom applies not just to infant years or toddler years or elementary school years or even pre-teen years.  It applies to everyone, everywhere, in all situations.  “Someone will always be crying.  And they will be okay.”  The only solace I offer myself is that at least I remembered that instead of, like, “you have to get the diaper wipe warmer that Beyonce has.”

So, there I stood, in the United departures terminal with a double stroller, 4-month-old twins and two giant suitcases, repeating to myself that if they both start crying, they would be okay.  Or better yet, I would.  Ultimately, the girls were totally fine.  But the worry that they might not be fine at any second distracted me for the 13 minutes that it took my husband to park when it should have taken nine.  Simultaneously, every single person that passed by, gave the girls a longing look of joy and love that shouted, “you might be the best thing that we will ever see!”  Then over to me, “you did that!  You must be in heaven.”  I knew they wanted me to appreciate what I had.  But I did the opposite.  I was distracted by impending doom and hated their reminder to “be in the moment”.  Yeah, yeah, they are adorable.  But let’s see who’s asking if they are identical when one of them starts screaming her little head off for no reason whatsoever and we can’t get her to stop.

My husband returned and led us through the ticket line easily, handing over our suitcases and keeping only the identical diaper bags as we began searching for an elevator up to security.  Before that point in my life, I had never thought about elevators in airports.  I’m sure they were in my periphery as I breezed through terminal after terminal in my lifetime.  I suppose I assigned them, apathetically, as a resource for people in wheelchairs or anyone that overpacked.  But they are, I’m here to tell you, also essential to families with strollers.  And they are also, it turns out, not easy to find in airports.  At this point, 12 years later, I can confirm that there are only two conveniently located, visibly functioning, safe elevators under the purview of the Federal Aviation Administration.  And I am still looking for one of them.

Airport security is a place that no one wants to spend much time.  Even, and especially the people that work at airport security.  If I was at work and shouting at strangers for more than half of my day, then I would have to find a different job.  Then again, if those same strangers set off the metal detector with keys in their pocket, I would want to be known for my patient reserve and not hitting anyone.  The bright side of traveling through an airport with infant twins is that everyone, everywhere wants to help.  We had barely registered how long we’d have to wait in the line for security when we found ourselves being ushered past everyone instead. 

The happy front-of-line glow wore off quickly as we realized we had no time to consider a game plan.  Could we actually carry helpless humans and manage to get bags through the x-ray machine, while taking shoes on and off?  Just then, someone casually added, “you’re going to have to also send the car seats and stroller through the x-ray machine.”  I felt like replying, “should we just send the babies through too?”  But I didn’t want anyone to yell at me.  My husband and I had each popped a car seat out of the stroller base when the man behind me said, “let me help.”  He waited for me to pick up my daughter and then set the car seat and my diaper bag on the conveyor belt for me while my husband accepted help from someone else.  We looked like pros.  Because pros always have a huge team of people around to make them look effortless.  I held my daughter against the left side of my body while smiling at the stranger.  Just then, I noticed that my hand, holding up the back of her body was soaked from fingertip to wrist.  The Transportation Security Officer waved me through the metal detector and as I took my first two steps, I pressed my daughter’s body into my own, to look over her shoulder and down her back.  My brain filled in the image of the feeling across my hand.   Butt to neck poop.   Or “diaper blowout” as insiders know.  If anything conjured up a similarity to changing a flat tire on the side of a highway, it would be cleaning up poop on the back half of a human.  Blowout was the only word for the job.  I briefly thought, “someone is going to have to help me get my shoes back on.”  And then, “I get to use the plastic bag I packed with extra clothes!”  The real downside to this being our first ever flying experiencing was that I expected that same blowout every single other time we flew and it never, ever happened again.  Expecting to see heads when you picked heads and it ends up being tails is one thing.  Expecting a poop high five in the security line for three years is another.  There are anxiety side effects.

On one of these trips to see my family several months later, my husband left earlier than the rest of us, but only because my mom volunteered to travel back home with us to help.  I walked her through the whole strategy that, by that point, was a fine oiled machine.  My dad was sick and we made the trip often.  The departures terminal/car park drop off.  The front of line security shuffle.  The one baby, one bag, one car seat cha-cha-cha.  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she replied, rolling her eyes.  “Dad worked for airlines for years, remember?  I used to travel standby with a 2 ½ year old and an infant.  By myself.  With no stroller or diaper bag or extra bottle for take-off ear popping.  In a blizzard.  I think I can do this.”  We all knew she was exaggerating.  But we also all knew she stopped listening at “car park drop-off” and she was sticking to the made-up facts of a story that literally no one could check.  I would just have to be ready for game-time directions.  We moved easily through every phase of our travel plan, largely because we were flying home from the Piedmont Triad International Airport in North Carolina. Arguably the sleepiest airport in the entire world and therefore a dream to travel through with children.  I can’t prove it, but I think the ticket agent may also fly the planes.  It must be the only way to balance the budget of that place.  It’s huge and empty.  All the time.  The girls were calm, my mom didn’t need much direction and our flight was on time.  I felt like one of those new moms who overreacts about everything and started to relax but in a “what if everything suddenly goes wrong” kind of way. 

Although airlines offer families a chance to board first, my husband and I bypassed that opportunity every time, realizing that the less time on the plane, the better.  As we handed our ticket to the agent, she made an announcement that we had earlier missed.  The jet bridge did not connect to the plane.  As sometimes happened with smaller planes, we had to walk down the jet bridge, exit via a short flight of stairs, walk across the tarmac and up a flight of stairs into the plane.  Because the jet bridge was open to the outside world and a runway filled with planes, it was hard to hear anything.  Let alone deliver my in-the-moment plan to my mom who didn’t want to hear it anyway.  My husband and I had done this down and up the plane stairs thing once or twice together and it required a lot of back-and-forth to get ourselves, our babies, their car seats and stroller to the plane.  My mom walked down the jet bridge ahead of me, next to the long double stroller I was pushing.  As I started shouting out what we had to do to get through the next 25 yards of life, she continued making funny faces at my daughters and nodding dramatically toward me like I was repeating something I told her a thousand times before.  It was clear that she believed that she had this.  I had a nagging fear of my own that she didn’t. 

The strategy was this; Because the steps of the jet bridge are small and steep, the first grown up takes a baby in a car seat out of the stroller base and carefully walks down to the bottom and waits.  The second grown up takes the second baby’s car seat out of the stroller base and walks the baby down, setting the car seat next to the first grown up, waiting below.  That same second grown-up walks back up, collapses the stroller and brings it and the diaper bags down to the person loading luggage into the bottom of the plane.  Then each grown up grabs a diaper bag and car seat and boards the plane.  Not impossible, but a bit of choreography needed for a situation that otherwise would require none.  You know who still behaved like she required none?  My mom!  As we approached the end of the jet bridge, she turned and popped out the car seat in the front of the stroller.  Turning toward the steps and noticing their steepness, she set down the diaper bag she was carrying.  Possibly from my seconds ago direction but more likely her own instincts.  I watched her descend safely and yelled out, “just stay right there, I’ll be down in a sec.”  Unclipping the second car seat, but running into a bit of trouble with tangled straps, I finally turned back toward the stairway and my eyes were drawn across the tarmac and up toward the plane door where my mom took her final step up, readjusted the car seat in front of her and entered the plane.  She didn’t even know what seats we were assigned but figured it out because she never turned back.  Not once.  Not ever. 

There I stood, at the top of the jet bridge steps, double stroller, two diaper bags, baby in car seat and so much noise that I had been literally screaming to her for help but wasn’t heard.  My entire body started sweating.  Because we had waited until the end of boarding, there were no other passengers coming down the jet bridge behind me.  The airline employee on the tarmac was still busily loading bags into the bottom of the plane with giant headphones to block out the sound of screaming jet engines and new mothers.  To make matters worse, I could see him from the top of the jet bridge, but he couldn’t see me at all, because of the skewed perspective.  I was a cartoon version of myself, screaming and flailing my arms around my head to draw attention, while repeatedly taking one step down and then back up, uncertain of what to do with all the stuff stacked up by my side.  I was sure that the door of the plane would close without us behind it.

Without any alternative, I set down the car seat and collapsed the stroller, grabbing one in each hand when I was done.  I wanted to heave both diaper bags over my shoulders to manage the entire thing at once but knew that the steepness of the staircase would be unforgiving.  It wasn’t worth the risk.  Occasionally bouncing the side of my body off the arm rail for balance, I made my way down to the bottom.  The man loading luggage had already transferred the other bags from the bottom of the stairs to the side of the plane where he was working.  I was halfway under the wing of the plane to hand off the stroller that I didn’t want him to miss before I realized I was under an idling engine with my four-month-old infant and totally freaked out.  I dropped the stroller and back peddled toward the jet bridge steps, with an irrational vision of us both getting sucked inside the whirring void.  I side stepped back up to the top of the stairs with the car seat and looped one diaper bag over each shoulder, cursing myself for packing so many unnecessary things while I made my way back down.  The car seat felt 50 pounds heavier than when I picked it up.  At the bottom, I glanced over at my still abandoned stroller and attempted to wave down the airline employee with my foot, which was the only part of me available enough to move freely.  Somehow it worked and he grabbed it and tossed it inside the hull.

I glanced up at the final staircase into the plane, a shrunken version of the one I just traversed and wondered how I could shimmy up with two bulging bags on each arm.  Taking one step at a time, sideways, I made my way painfully slowly to the top where a smiling, unhelpful flight attendant had watched the entire thing and only offered, “You sure have your hands full!” I dismembered her body in my mind.  Glancing down the aisle, I noticed the top of my mom’s head about 8 rows in on the left, where I assumed she was engrossed in play with my daughter beside her.  I carefully placed my other daughter and car seat in the window seat across the aisle from my mom and let the diaper bags fall from each arm at my side in the aisle with a giant, gravitational thud.  Startled, my mom looked over at me and then to the bags on the floor before turning back to my daughter asking, “can you hand me her bottle?  We are about to take off.”