Skip to main content

Feeding Rooms at BIAL and CIAL

Since this was our first time travelling with baby E, we were quite nervous. Understandably.

I had everything planned out - from the time we were to leave home to the time spent completing airport formalities to when and how many feeds E would have prior to boarding.

Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL

Fortunately, the extended BIAL is supremely comfortable. It's like someone with an actual brain designed it - from the tables provided at security check (to rest your bag while you pull out electronics or a baby) to the heavenly little feeding room that I visited.

Yes. Those are actual dispensers of baby wash, lotion, and cream.
I was beyond touched. I had, like, tears in my eyes when I saw how these feeding rooms were designed with care - two lock-able stalls each featuring a soft pleather couch, a tiny crib (pictured) and an outlet with a tiny holder to hold your phone while it charges.

Common to both stalls is a sink with a surface next to it (that I'm guessing is to change baby's diaper). Adjoining said surface are dispensers dispensing baby wash, baby lotion and baby cream - just in case the loonies at security check arbitrarily, always arbitrarily deem baby's toiletries to be a national security threat.

The changing area was brightly lit while the feeding stalls weren't. The crib isn't too big - E is 5 months old and she just about fit in there - but my guess is that it's meant to hold baby while you prepare baby's feed.

As I left the room, I vowed to buy only Himalaya products. I broke that vow a day later. If only it didn't smell so synthetic.

 Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL)

On our journey back home, E needed a quick top up before we boarded (also I was dying to check out the CIAL feeding room).

OMG. It was beyond bad. It ranks up there with this "Baby Care" Room I visited at the Passport Seva Kendra on the Outer Ring Road (tiny unlit area separated from the main waiting room with two dirty plastic chairs in it).

Damp Is there any place in Kerala that isn't damp?, dark, and dirty, the CIAL feeding room has two grimy sofas and a black granite parapet with a sink and tap. I don't know why, but whenever I see black granite or tiles used in a kitchen or toilet, I assume it's because people want to hide grime.

Satan's Own Feeding Room in God's Own Country. 
The feeding room at CIAL had a nasty smell and honestly, I couldn't wait to get out and feed my baby on a plane in front of 150 other people. Cochin desperately needs a new airport. And new feeding rooms.

Also, new climate.

Coming soon to Headbath - starting baby on solids: approaches and trends - (I've shelved the post on piercing baby's ears for the time being).

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dealing With Baby's First Cold

E caught her first cold on 14/09/2014. From me. I did everything I could to protect her from my illness my hands were raw from washing . Still, she woke up with a runny nose on that fateful Sunday morning. I messaged E's paediatrician who recommended that I give E half a dropperful of T-minic drops, two times a day. T-minic apparently eases symptoms such as a runny nose, stuffy nose, and sneezing !  Generally mistrustful of medical practitioners, I quickly Googled, 'T-minic.' Which was just as well, because  the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) advises parents to refrain from administering cold and cough medicine to infants below the age of 2 . The active ingredients in T-minic are chlorphenamine maleate makes a person sleepy and phenylephrine hydrochloride a decongestant , both of which are contraindicated by the USFDA for infants under the age of 2. After having conducted research on usage of such medication, the USFDA found that that reports of harm to ch...
6 comments
Older»

Separate. Connect. Separate. Connect.

If you've ever gone through my posts and decided that I sound like a sanctimonious mommy blogger, you're probably right. I have one daughter and I'm dispensing potty training advice? The intent isn't to dish out spoons full of self-aggrandisement. This website is one of the many ways for me to say that I was a harried mother. That I tried. And failed. Many times. But I kept trying until something worked. Can Attachment Theory Explain All Our Relationships? is writer Bethany Saltman's   essay in the New York Magazine, in which she analyses and compares her attachment to her mother with her attachment to her daughter who is now 11-years old. Ms. Saltman writes of feeling lonely and overwhelmed in the early days of motherhood and making scary faces and muttering angrily at her nonplussed baby. Words that mothers are terrified to confess to one another. The article made me think about the evolving nature of my attachment to 2-and-a-half-year old E. Before she ...
4 comments
Older»

Mourning the End of Breastfeeding

I breastfed E for 26 months. It's been only a few weeks, and I don't even remember the exact date. One day she asked, I said no, she fussed about it for a bit but didn't cry or insist. And that was it. I had breastfed for the last time and I didn't even know. In hindsight, I suppose I did know, because the last feed was different from all the feeds that came before it. In the last one, it was me and her, sitting in our nursing chair lit by the blue-green from her nightlight - both only as old as she is. As we've sat hundreds of times, the only ones awake in the quiet nighttime house, she lost in thought, and me, staring at her, willing at her to be the person I know in my bones she is. In the last feed, she watched me closely, something she rarely does. She always liked to unfocus a little, puzzle out her world while the repetitive motions of her mouth made her verdant brain, process the individual tendrils of life. She may notice me once in a while, giggle whe...
2 comments
Older»