Just like us, I’m sure that parents of multiples experience panic attacks thinking about their first family trip, especially when it involves air travel. For our family’s first holiday, we went to Phuket because it was near enough and my parents live there, so we could have some sort of peace of mind that there would be an extra pair of hands to help with our twins.
Also, like all parents, we were hopeful, optimistic and confident that it was going to be an awesome first trip filled with wonderful memories. Little did I know that I’d be the one coming home completely traumatised.
You see it was one of those trips where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
The journey to Phuket went smoothly even though the flight crew didn’t offer to help folding and assembling our stroller.
On our second day, Jade had a fever, which we brushed aside as teething fever. Fortunately, I packed some medicine but when her fever didn’t subside the next day and she started throwing up, we had to buy a thermometer from the pharmacy to monitor her temperature. Worried was an understatement mainly because Jade has never been sick before; she also had trouble keeping anything down, even her medicine. Thankfully, she was much better on the third day but we kept her out of the sun and let her swim with us a little bit to keep her temperature down.
On the same night that Jade was feverish and throwing up, we had a small incident in our hotel room that required us to switch rooms in the middle of the night. From juggling a sick baby to the other baby who was so tired he went past sleepy to hyper, it felt like one of the worst nights of our lives. Thankfully, the hotel did everything for us and I could just worry about the babies, which was difficult enough!
After that bout of bad luck, things started looking brighter the following day. Jade got better and was enjoying her pool time. Leo showed no signs of catching whatever Jade had so we were yet again very hopeful and optimistic about the trip.
Then came the plane ride back home.
We were very courageous (more like naïve and stupid) to book the last flight out of Phuket because we didn’t want to be rushed and we wanted to get the most of our holiday. We were so optimistic (more like naïve and stupid) that we didn’t even factor in the probability of a delay, the time it takes to come back from the airport, and getting the babies ready for bed.
On our way to the airport, Leo was getting a little warm and by the time we checked-in, it was definitely a fever. Luckily, I packed the fever medicine and newly bought thermometer in their diaper bag. But because we were flying in the late afternoon, the babies didn’t have their afternoon nap and they were getting very cranky. When we boarded the plane, they were in full-fledged tantrum mode and I was ready to cry.
They calmed down once they had their bottles in their mouth and were mostly asleep during the flight. Unfortunately, the 80-minute flight became 150 minutes because we were queued to land and we got home very late.
I failed to mention that I also caught Jade’s bug in the middle of the holiday and all three of us took about a week and a half to recover. There’s seriously nothing worse than being sick yourself while taking care of sick babies.
A couple of months ago hubby and I toyed with the idea of bring the twins along on his business trip to the United States. I got so excited about the thought of posting selfies of the babies and I in Central Park, eating bagels and pizzas.
After our recent trip, that idea has been stored in a box and that box has been buried deep in our garden and will probably only resurface in a few years time.
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