I recently started flying with a student who is the mother of two young children, a wife, and a full-time employee at a utility company. Her story resonates with many of us: She started flying more than ten years ago, but before she was able to earn her private pilot certificate she got married, got pregnant, and life took a wonderful new turn away from the airport. The family moved here to Jacksonville and with reliable child care secured, she decided it’s time to refocus on her flying dream. She arrived in my office with a logbook full of memories, and a notebook containing the details of every hour she flew, including fuel receipts and what the weather was like each day. She’s obviously a very detail oriented and passionate person and after just a few hours flying with me, is starting to remember what she needs to do in the airplane.
I’m so excited for her and can relate to what she’s going through, in a way. Even though I was established as a flight instructor when I married my husband and fellow CFI, Dana, and got pregnant with our daughter, Alex, the downtime I experienced during my pregnancy and C-section recovery was significant. During my 18-week ultrasound, Alex was diagnosed with a condition called congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH), a life threatening birth defect that would require surgery shortly after birth. I stopped flying at the end of my fifth month because I was too physically uncomfortable to do much of anything, and a few weeks later I fell and broke my arm, which was excruciatingly painful and had me laid up in bed for the bulk of the duration of my pregnancy. Looking back at my logbook, I had a solid three-month gap in my flying, but returned to work on a limited basis during Alex’s hospitalization because I needed something to make me feel alive, and normal, again. She was released from the hospital in early June 2013 and her first flight with me and Dana was on June 22, 2013. It was the most victorious lap around the pattern I’ve ever flown, because it was a celebration of her survival, of our new life together as a family. This month, we’ll celebrate her third birthday as a healthy, smart and awesome little girl. My gift to her is a pink pilot logbook that I’m using to record every flight she’s made with me, both before and after she was born. I’ll include photos and mementos of these experiences, and in a few years, when she’s old enough to appreciate it, I’ll give it to her to keep as a diary of her aviation experiences. There’s no way to know if she’ll want to become a pilot like me, but if she does, I hope she’ll let me be the one to sign her off for her first solo in that pink logbook.