Preparedness Central

For the month of February I was basically in "freak-out" mode trying to imagine how we were going to manage the upcoming wedding flights. We leave Wednesday the 31st at 10am and have a 4 hour flight to Atlanta, then a 2 hour layover followed by a 9 hour flight to London. We arrive there at midnight SLC time but 7am London time. We're hoping our kids will sleep a little on the plane and then crash most of Thursday at our hotel. We're not even trying to convert to time zones, we'll just sleep when we can and try to have presentable kids when we're in public.
Then Saturday we have a 7 hour flight that leaves at 2pm and arrives in Dubai at midnight their time. All of these flights are during the daytime (mostly) and seem manageable (again mostly) with our kids. Tragically the only flights we could get leaving Dubai all started after 10pm their time. So we'll have mostly adjusted to their timezone between Sunday and Tuesday and then we'll board the plan on the 6th in Dubai at 10:30pm and fly 15 1/2 hours STRAIGHT to Atlanta arriving there at 6am Eastern time. Then we'll have a 2 hour layover where we get to go through customs and drag our dog-tired selves and children onto our last plane which is another 4 1/2 hours long. That's a total of 40 hours of flying in one weeks time and that's not including arriving early, security, and any delays we might hit. I think my month of freaking out was justified.
And then I decided to make the best of it and try to be prepared. So I've turned my free-time (nap and evening times) into make-it-plan-it-pack-it time. One of my dilemmas was whether to bring a boppy or not. It would help so I don't have to hold Miles the whole time and would make me feel better about sleeping (I'm afraid I'll drop him off my lap if I'm really exhausted and don't have something to prop him on) but the boppy is so huge and would take up almost an entire carry-on bag. Amazingly I found this infant "hammock" online and thought it looked easy enough to make so that was my project last night and this afternoon and here's the finished product. I was talking to my sister and confessing my guilt for stealing someone else's idea and she said it was okay as long as I passed along the wisdom to others. So if you're traveling on a plane with an infant under 6 months here's a great idea for you. Let me know if you want me to take specific measurements, etc.
Sorry, couldn't get the picture to turn. The straps on the top sides hook onto the tray table and then you close the table back up.
It's called a "Flyebaby Hammock Sling" if you want better pictures of kids actually in them on planes. It cost me about $10 between material, straps, and buckles but they're $50 online.

There's a basic car seat harness to make sure the kid doesn't fall out the sides and another strap at the bottom to put around yourself. His legs and bum end up basically sitting on your lap during the flight, but at least I'll have my hands free to do other things and I won't drop him if we nod off.
This is how it would look on the back of a tray table. All the straps adjust so they have a tight fit.
And here's Miles modeling it for you. He is already a fan of the slack in the front straps. I plan to clip on a few toys with those plastic linky things so he has easy access to them and so I don't have to keep picking them up. You can see he's leaning to the right but if he was really hanging I think the material would just mold to him like a hammock does (let's hope).
As an added bonus, this works as a high chair. Miles can't sit up yet so we still have to drag his entire car seat into restaurants or else we have to hold him the whole time. Now we can just ask for an extra chair, strap this thing to it, and Miles to it, and we're good to go.
I'll let you know how it works.