stormpelt

Okay, I am honestly not sure how this works. Grandma really wants to see her great-grandkids, but she lives halfway across the world. She has congenital heart disease or something like that (not sure of the exact english translation of the condition, since she is not from the US, so I think it is congenital heart disease). She thinks she can't fly because of it, but I don't think she talked to doctors about flying. Can people with heart disease fly?
She has flown before to the US, some odd years back.
Or, the other option is for me to take my 2 kids under 2 (toddler and baby) and fly there.
The total trip consists of two 3-hour flights, and one 12 hour flight, with about 4 hours in between each flight (layovers). So it's like this: 3 hour flight, 4 hour layover, 12 hour flight, 4 hour layover, 3 hour flight. My toddler has developmental delays and isn't fully walking yet, don't know yet when he will start fully walking. He just crawls and walks with support. So I might possibly have to lug around 2 non walking kids if he doesn't walk by then. I can't even imagine how I'd do this.

So far, if I take my kids out to the mall for example, I have a double stroller, and it's a pretty large stroller (babytrend double stroller). It's thin enough to fit through doorways, but it's really long.
So, if theoretically I were to go, I'd need to take the double stroller, two car seats, and a ton of baby food and changes of clothes. I only have two hands. We're not even considering having a lap baby, both kids would have seats, and the 12 hour flight would obviously have to be scheduled for overnight, so that they sleep during it. Once my baby gets a little older, he will start crawling and being active, and I already can't keep my toddler still, he wants to crawl everywhere. No way can he sit through 12 hours during daytime. Only overnight. Plus I don't know how to transfer the stroller in between all these flights? Surely, that huge thing doesn't go on the airplane carry on, right? I mean, it's huge! It barely fits in the trunk of my sedan.

And plus the time zone change? Holy cow. How will my kids handle it? They will scream. If we only go for a couple of weeks, I'm just afraid my kids will be psychologically freaking out. Time change, then another time change going home? And what if they can't take the flight too well? I personally get nauseous a lot of the time when there's turbulence, and during landing. What if they get nauseous and start throwing up? And then they'll be psychologically traumatized. What if they will be traumatized by the turbulence and just the whole experience in general? Once my toddler experiences something negative, he remembers it very well, and he FREAKS out if he ever does it again. Such as, one time, when I was bathing him, some water got into his mouth and he inhaled it and started coughing and screaming. Ever since then, I can't keep him still in a bath, or keep him from screaming-- every bath is a nightmare with an extremely kicking and squirming toddler. What if he gets traumatized by air travel? How will I ever handle this? Am I over-reacting about all this?

I mean, if it were just a short flight, or at least just ONE flight... but nope, 3 flights, and one long one. And a time change.

Is it really that unsafe to fly with heart disease?