When people think of “baby food,” they often think of the commercial baby food pureed, as made famous and normalized by Gerber. So when you think about baby-appropriate food in flight, the only stuff they are going to give you, if anything, will be commercially made and jarred pureed foods like fruit or meat and gravy, which all sound quite disgusting if you ask me. We were told erroneous information by the American Airlines agent over the phone, who said that when prompted on their website, I can choose either my food or my baby’s food (commercial food) since I have an infant-in-lap ticket. The option allows you to choose either/or, not “and,” so I chose my adult food and was told by the agent that the baby food would be in-flight since they would know I’d have an infant in lap given my ticket type. Well, that was wrong: they told me not only that there was no food for the baby inflight, but also that I should always choose the baby food when presented with the option online, because there would always be more than enough adult meals on any given flight.

Either way, I wasn’t pleased. The food seemed too salty to give Kaia in flight. I have been pretty strict with only a couple exceptions about making sure that no salt is added to food she eats, but this food would be WAY too salty. It was even salty for me! Not to mention I really had no easy or safe way to feed her without a proper high chair (or ANY chair) to sit her down in. So we just had her drink breast milk in flight that I pumped. Wouldn’t it be nice if airlines actually did pre-prepare baby appropriate food as opposed to commercial food — if they just steamed or roasted some fruits and vegetables until easily pierce-able with a fork, along some rice or noodles, and just didn’t add any salt or sugar? How hard could that possibly be for them? I suppose that is just too much effort for an airline to make for a family.