Not the kids fault, but last time I travelled, there was a couple travelling with a child that was crying, hysterically the entire trip. This was a 20 hour trip all up, from NZ to SA, crossing NZ to AU then to SA, and they were with us all the way. The kid was going for the entire thing - I watched the parents take turns to look after her, standing near the toilets. I feel sorry for them having to deal with that, and for the girl being that upset (presumably sore ears? dunno), but that would not have been fun for the people around them either.
I was always super wary of travelling with ours in case that happened. We were lucky that they just slept through all the flights, but it could have easily gone the other way. I would have felt pretty stink subjecting the surrounding 40+ people to a very upset child.
That’s the main thing - each family and each child are different, so it’s kind of hard to base your decision on what you see and hear from others.
Never had a second for some reason.
I was labeled colicky as a baby and my own children turned out to have some digestive issues with certain common foods that make them cry a ton when they or their mother eat them (and they get it via the milk). If I hadn’t debugged the food issues I might have labeled them “colicky”, but when we avoid those foods religiously they only cry when it makes sense and when the issue is solved they stop. I’m guessing I had a similar issue as a baby, my parents definitely didn’t attempt to debug it.
No judgement by the way I’m just curious if you tried debugging things like that as I imagine “colicky” could encompass issues that aren’t possible to debug also, and it’s also understandable if you couldn’t put in the resources to debug it as in my case it’s been a gigantic and expensive pain in the ass.
Trust me, the debugging is a big part of the trouble. Everyone is telling you to debug, but that is actually the thing you have to learn to stop doing. Your brain is telling you to debug. But it can't be debugged. I watched multiple women have mental breakdowns trying to debug a baby with a 6 month streak of colic. Eventually their brain just goes psychotic because a baby screaming 6+ months non-stop with nothing wrong while people frantically try to solve the problem is basically sever mental torture. It is not the hours, or days, or even weeks of screaming that get to you, it is the months of never ending ear-pearcing torture that nothing will fix, and they will not fucking sleep because they just want to scream for all of their sleep as well and naturally the caregivers won't be sleeping either due to this. And you cannot rely on crying to figure out when to feed, when to change a diaper, when the baby needs sleep, or some gentle motion -- all of your indicators are worthless.
It is a hell for the baby and it is a hell for the parent. People struggling with this generally do not have any more children. Any other stage past baby for such child is 99% easier, I laugh when people say babies are the easiest stage.
We went on to have more kids. They were all quiet and easy. We sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with them.
It's way more work to travel with a 10-year-old than a 1-year-old. Then quadruple that difficulty for each additional kid of roughly that age...