Travel Anxiety and Flying with A Toddler

ksnyder662

Hello all! I'm not sure if this is the proper board to post this (I didn't see another option that seemed more appropriate) but I need some advice. I apologize ahead of time for the length and rambling.

My daughter just turned 15 months old on April 30th. Last May when she was about 3 months old her daddy and I took a trip from eastern Kentucky to Southern California to visit his family. It was my first time on an airplane and it was a disaster. Our flight was delayed so we were stranded at a hotel in Charleston, WV overnight. I ended up getting food poisoning the hotel food and didn't get any rest. The next day I had to fight with the airline who told me I wasn't allowed to take unopened baby shampoo, powder, oil, lotion, Desitin, even pre-bottled Nursery water for formula, etc. on the plane with me after I had already called ahead of time and made note of items that were supposedly "acceptable" to have in a carry-on in certain quantities, of course. (These things wouldn't fit in our checked baggage no matter how hard I tried.) We had to leave some of it behind and they stuck litmus strips or something in her water which infuriated me. We almost missed the connecting flight because we didn't allow ourselves enough time to find the next terminal when we booked the tickets. At any rate nothing seemed like it was working out easily for us to make the trip and I stayed stressed about the return trip during the entire visit.

Fast forward a year later and they want us to come and visit again. I have since discovered I hate flying. I swore I would never do it again as it caused me a ton of anxiety and fear that I can't seem to shake no matter how many statistics people throw at me. My daughter is no longer an infant. She is extremely clingy to me and me only and weary of strangers (don't look at her or talk to her or she screams and cries). I've tried to reason with everyone involved and explain I do not think this is a very good idea but I'm more or less told "It's perfectly safe for you to fly in a plane and she will be fine, just do it."

I am at a loss here because I do not know how to deal with her on my lap for that many hours is such a confined space with so many strange people around. Last year all four planes we were on had so much turbulence we were not able to get up and walk around at all (not to mention one of the planes was a propeller rather than a jet). It's about a 10 hour trip with at least one layover plus it takes an hour and a half for us to travel to Yeager Airport from home and another hour to get from LAX to his parent's house. Needless to say I think her daddy and his family are rather irritated with me for trying to keep this trip from happening.

Has anyone out there had this issue and how did you deal with it?