This is somewhat related to nursing in a roundabout way... Some people know I went to Vancouver for our X-mas holidays. I was travelling alone with my daughter, Sandrine, who was 21 mos. Our flight was about 30-40 min. late leaving Montréal, and late therefore getting into Toronto. The flight from Toronto to Vancouver was already full, overbooked, and we didn't have a seat on it. They put me on the next flight that evening as "standby" saying it would be a miracle if we got on it as there were 80 people standing by. I was actually fine with this, as I figured they'd put me up in Toronto for the night and I could get an early flight out in the morning. I was intending on surprising my parents by arriving a day early, so they wouldn't be worried anyhow, or even expecting me yet. We ended up getting seats on the late-night flight (the "miracle"), except it too was late departing...a whole 1.5 hours late leaving Toronto. We didn't get into Vancouver International Airport until 1:30 am. Since I hadn't told my parents we would be there that day (original estimated time or arrival was about 9 pm, a perfectly reasonable time of the day), I thought I wouldn't bother them at such a horrible time of morning. There were quite a few people lying on benches in the airport trying to catch a bit of sleep. We went to eat, because Sandrine had slept all the way over, was wide awake by the time we de-planed, and I was hungry. After that, I found an area of carpet and laid out my sling as well as another baby carrier and my jacket for padding for us to lie on, but Sandrine just wanted to get up and go "visit" with the other people who were trying to sleep! I thought we'd never get to sleep. It was now 2:30 am. She would cry if I tried to get her to lie down which I was scared was bothering the other people around us. All of a sudden, I had a flash of ingienuity (sp?). I was seeing, near the children's play-area, one of those plastic signs with a bottle on it (argh!) denoting the presence of a baby room. I knew that some of the baby rooms here in Québec are quite nice, and even have comfortable lazyboy-type chairs to nurse in (along with microwaves...obviously for the nursing moms' tea...not!). I thought maybe that would do...and if I could close the door, we'd at least be in private and she'd have a better chance of going to sleep. Then I could get back down on the floor to sleep myself. I was not prepared for what I saw when I entered that room. Ok, there was one mangey-looking rocking chair which was actually broken and didn't rock...but aside from that, there were *4* cribs and a playpen!!! My second flash of genius hit me for that evening (which was quite a feat given my 15 hours of travel with a crabby almost-2-year old and my own fatigue); I took 2 mattresses out of the cribs, laid them on the floor (they had sheets on them), found that there was a real light switch I could turn out (which I did) and not long later we were both sound asleep this time with my sling and coat over us! I woke at 4:30, 5:30 and 6:30 (it wasn't the most restful sleep I'd ever had) and then took the city busses with 2 large suitcases (on wheels) and my daughter in her watchtower backpack. But for anyone travelling with infants (and I'm sure I'd have done the same had I thought of it, if I were in a similar situation with a tiny baby), check out those nursing rooms, you never know what you might find! They could probably use fewer cribs and more rocking chairs or maybe a real adult-sized bed, but all in all it certainly did the job with a bit of brain power added. ;-) Fio. Mama to Sandrine Leïlou, 13/03/00 (PS my parents WERE pleasantly surprised to see us appear on their doorstep at 7:15 am when they were getting ready for work!) *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html