Always take a bottle with you!

We travelled out of England to get away from the snow and to celebrate the babies first birthday with their family in Israel. There are many parts of my outward journey that I could have chosen to blog such as the nightmare in the airport where security insisted on us collapsing the double stroller to put it through the x-ray machine or how we passed the time at Luton with a 4 hour delay, but the highlight of my journey had to be worth blogging.

We lucked out on the plane and managed to get 5 seats between the 6 of us and we had only paid for 4. When we came to land boy in the middle sat by the window and Baby E and I sat in the middle next to him. Eldest daughter, dear husband and Baby A sat on the row in front.

With plenty of warning that we were going to land we put all the toys and dvd's away, got out a sweet to suck, strapped ourselves in and looked forward to landing. Then with 15 minutes until landing I heard the word every parent dreads hearing at a time like this "Mummy I am desperate for a wee". "Too bad" I reply, "You should have gone when I told you to". "But I'm desperate". Dear husband who was so happy to be on the row in front just having to deal with eldest daughters blocked ears advises distraction techniques.  I try all sorts of topics of conversation but my ears are hurting me by this time and baby E really wants to practice standing up.

Eventually when I realise the only alternative is going to be wetting himself I suddenly notice the small empty mineral water bottle in the seat pocket in front of me. Ok needs must. I explain to boy in the middle what is going to happen. He isn't sure. I explain there is no alternative and that no one need know what is happening.

He gets up, we remove the lid, he wees and he really was desperate. As I fear that the bottle may overflow, he stops and relief beams out from boy in the middle. He is no longer in agony and he is rather proud of his achievement. He sits back down, I breathe a sigh of relief as there was no accident and no-one noticed what was happening. About 5 minutes later the plane touches down and we are happy to have reached our destination. As the seatbelt sign switches off, boy in the middle is excited to take off his seatbelt. He grabs the bottle before I realise what he is doing, holds it high up in the air and proudly tells his daddy, his older sister and half the plane how great is was to wee in a bottle!