TPE to PHL - Call 911!

Over the last two days that we've been home, we've received several phone calls and emails from people inquiring as to how we are, how we fared on our return trip, how William has settled into our family.

Let me first offer our apologies for the deafening silence resounding from our end. We will get back to you! In the meantime, we have been trying to recover from the shellshock of our recent 21 hours of travel. The human body is just not meant to endure crossing so many time zones in such a condensed amount of time. In a previous post, I had quipped about stumbling through the door once we got home. I wasn't joking. The morning we arrived home, I was literally losing my balance as I walked around the house, dizzy with the lingering sensation of movement and addled by a serious lack of sleep. Craig didn't fare much better.

The first leg of our flight home from Taipei to San Francisco went pretty well. Thankfully, the return trip was only 10 1/2 hours, unlike the 14 hours it took to fly in. William slept in the shuttle van on the way to the airport and through much of the check-in and wait time. He woke just before we boarded. He stayed awake for about an hour and a half, then fell asleep for another 6 hours or so. He had many half-wakings during which he'd cry but not fully rouse. We had to pick him up out of his bassinet and walk him around so he'd stop crying and fall back to sleep. Sometimes he'd even cry when we set him down. Nonetheless, he slept - and we are thankful for that.


We had the blessing of sitting across the row from Mel and Craig and their newly-turned one year-old son, Odin. It was great to trade adoption stories with them and to watch the boys babble back and forth together. I think they definitely remembered each other from St. Lucy's.

Once in San Francisco, we cleared our ways through the Customs and Immigration lines. William slept through that process and re-awoke as we waited the four hours to board our plane to Philadelphia. We caught up again with Mel and Craig, who were also taking the same airline back to their hometown. Ordinarily, the thought of letting my child roll around on the dirty carpet of a gateway floor would repulse me. However, after a long trans-Pacific flight and faced with another 5 1/2 hour flight, I threw caution to the wind and let William have free reign of the filthy floor.

The flight back to Philadelphia was very trying to say the least. On the bright side, William did sleep for about 3 hours. However, once again, he'd interrupt his sleep with crying, this time harder than before.

Note to traveling parents: do not take a red-eye flight with a fussy baby. All of your fellow sleeping passengers will hate you like you've never been hated. The young lady across the aisle from me gave me innumerable dirty stares and audible "hmph!"s. Others were probably doing the same thing in front and behind us.

Every time William cried, we'd have to get out of our seats, navigate our way through the narrow aisle over assorted legs and carry-on bags, and head back to the bulkhead area. There we'd stand for twenty to thirty minutes holding and rocking him. We took turns. Surely, the men sitting in the bulkhead area were none too pleased with us. Twice, when William was inconsolable I took him into the airplane bathroom so he wouldn't wake everyone up. Did you know that the bathroom diaper changing table makes a great play place for a fussy child? Germs? What germs?

When I came out of the bathroom with William the second time, I noticed that several of the airline staff were crowded around our seats. I saw Craig standing at the forward bulkhead seat, so I knew he was okay.

Once I was finally able to make my way up to him, he told me that the woman sitting next to him in our three-person row had informed him that she felt unusual. Soon afterwards, her eyes rolled back in her head and her hands began to shake uncontrollably. She was unresponsive to his questions. He thought she was having a stroke so he stood up and called out to see if there were any doctors on board. Thankfully, a woman sitting close by happened to be one and attended to her immediately. The woman couldn't remember what had happened during her episode.

What a ride! We were so thankful to step off that plane and to see Craig's dad waiting for us in the baggage pickup area. Philadelphia never looked so good. Home at last.