Flying with a little one can be hard. Sometimes, it’s great—you get lucky with a sleepy baby and a good seat mate—but every parent knows the feeling of dread and helplessness that comes when your baby is uncomfortable at 10,000 feet in the air. That’s why we are applauding the work of two flight attendants who made a couple of stressed out mamas feel supported instead of shamed when their babies were being, well, babies. Both flight attendants are going viral this week and they deserve every bit of recognition they are receiving for their good deeds. ???

A hero in a Southwest uniform

As WNBC reports, mama Savannah Blum was flying with her husband and their 19-month-old daughter, Brittain, recently when little Brittain got upset. The family was heading back to their Nevada home after visiting relatives in Texas and had just boarded a connecting flight from Las Vegas to Reno when the meltdown started. The flight attendant, Jessica, told Blum not to worry and reached for Brittain. “Come here, baby. I got her, Mama. You go sit down,” she said. She took baby Brittain up and down the aisle closing the overhead bins and soon Brittain was in a great mood, blowing kisses to her fellow passengers. With one simple act of kindness to a tired mama, Jessica spread joy all over that flight.

An act of kindness on a Delta flight

Mom Sonja Redding has an added layer of stress when traveling with her two young children who have a rare genetic disease called Methylmalonic Acidemia (MMA), a life-threatening illness with no cure. Her youngest child, 5-year-old Xayvior, was also recently diagnosed with Autism, just before the family boarded a Delta flight home to Atlanta. According to his mama, Xayvior has “has meltdowns in public often, and usually people just stare or make rude comments,” but Delta flight attendant Amanda Amburgy showed the family empathy and compassion. Amburgy (who previously volunteered with Special Olympics) noticed that Xayvior was having a hard time about halfway through the flight, getting loud and hitting his mom. “It felt like everyone on the entire plane was looking at us and annoyed by my son’s outburst,” Redding latter wrote in a now viral Facebook post. “It can feel very frustrating and isolating when others just don’t understand that he is not just a kid with no discipline, but rather a child with special needs who doesn’t know how to control his responses to things.” Amburgy came over to the family and offered to take Xayvior for a walk up the plane because she noticed his mood had changed completely since boarding. “I noticed he may have some trouble communicating his feelings,” she recalls in a news release. Redding handed her son over to Amburgy, who knew just what to do. “I showed him the blue lights that were illuminated over the overhead bins on our way up to the front—he really liked those. I showed him all the other people onboard and he quietly looked all around,” Amburgy recalls. Redding was so grateful for the flight attendant’s help in that stressful moment, she took to Facebook after the flight to share photos of her hero in action. “This hero gave us a bit of sanity back in a chaotic moment. When they came back, Xayvior was much more calm and he just loved on his new friend so happily,” Redding wrote.
Cheers to these two women who prove that not all flying heroes wear capes. Some of them wear uniforms.

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