Tonight I was investigating a travel mattress I saw at Babyccino Blog, and I stumbled across a lovely Moses basket woven in England from willow fronds. It vaulted right into my top-five bassinet list, from back when I was searching for one, right next to that Leander swinging canvas cradle:

It’s about $206, converted from pounds, at the British site Natural Mat (who also manufactures it). Natural Mat ships overseas and there is a six week lead time.

To me, there is something about a Moses basket waiting empty for a baby that evokes exactly the delicate, amorphous last days of waiting for the baby when you can almost see them there, wrapped up safe and sound inside. To me, the way it captures all the hope and anticipation and fragility of waiting make it the sweetest piece of furniture there is, which no doubt is why bassinets still catch my eye these days.

(If you’re waiting for your first baby, I feel like I should share my tip, here - leave yourself freedom to figure out how the sleep thing works, then order the beautiful nest. I’m sure there is a Feng Shui rule somewhere about how empty, expensive baby nests drag down the chi of a household!)

This morning, reading a post on Ohdeedoh (I’m such an Apartment Therapy fan, seriously) about traveling with kids reminded me about our recent trip. We took our little Capucine to France in June for a month, and among the many memorable moments were, unsurprisingly, a few lessons on air travel with an infant. There are a lot of ‘what to take’ lists around, and I read at least ten sites on the subject ahead of time. But of course, there is always something to be learned. I emailed these thoughts to some other mamas originally, and they liked it so much, I’m posting it again here. (Note that these tips are most appropriate for international flights. It would be a little overkill to worry about all this for a four-hour flight. Except the one about the nose-rinsing, boy don’t skip that one.)

I’ll put in links for products I used for this list, too. It was all one small backpack, no big deal. Here ya go!

- We booked the aisle and window seats in a three-seat row, on the hope that nobody would want to be in a seat between two parents and a baby. (The Air France lady was the one who told us to do it.) That worked perfectly, we had an extra seat to pile stuff in both ways. Barring that, go for a bulkhead seat.

- We reserved a bassinet, many airlines have them on long flights. Request one when you make reservations and then call to reserve or confirm again 48 hours before the flight, because there are usually more babies than bassinets. That is a tip from a flight attendent, too.

Here’s what the Air France bassinets are like:

(more…)