Worst Flight Ever?

Red-eye, SEA to IAD

The plane has a 3-3 economy configuration, and I have the isle seat on the right side. Soon thereafter, a family of 7, with none of the five children seemingly above 6 (and they definitely acted the part), sat down around me-three children across the isle, one more in front of me, and the remaining three across the isle from her. Then a family with a newborn (definitely less than 12 months) sits down the row behind me.

As soon as the plane starts moving (and by that I mean as soon as we pull out of the gate) the baby starts screaming, and I could not drown out the baby's screaming with my over-ear headphones (or at least to the point I could barely tolerate my music without busting my ears). Throughout the flight, the parents tried to placate the baby to no effect, even carrying the baby up and down the plane (and probably waking up half the passengers that could actually fall asleep). I'm not sure how the baby managed to scream almost nonstop for almost 5 hours, but the baby finally fell asleep...as we landed at 530am.

Of course, the fun didn't end there. As soon as the seat belt sign was off, the father of the family of 7 sprung up and grabbed several (probably 7) pieces of luggage from the overhead bins and placed them in the aisle, thereby blocking almost everyone from going anywhere, which was a problem because he couldn't seem to get his kids to take a suitcase and get off the plane, and no one was able to get off the plane for about a good minute after the first class passengers got off.

My advice on flying with very small children: don't. If your child cannot behave and control themselves in public, don't fly with them until they can. If you absolutely must fly, fly when it's not going to disrupt everyone else, especially on a red-eye. You can't go around telling everyone that your child will behave because you think that your child is special and thus obviously can't have any faults because you're a perfect parent. This is obviously not true and is just an indication of people's lack of taking personal responsibility.