Sam Faiers fought back tears on first class flight after being mum-shamed over son’s behaviour
SAM Faiers has admitted she struggled not to cry after a “traumatic” flight home from Dubai with her baby son Edward.
The former Towie star, 32, was in first class with 11-month-old Edward and her elder children when “everything that happened, happened”.
Opening up to her sister and former reality TV co-star Billie, Sam admitted: “I’m not exaggerating. Looking back now, it was actually quite traumatic.”
“By the end of the flight, I thought I was going to break down into tears. I actually welled up when I got off the flight but I held it back.
“It was that sense of relief getting off the flight. I can’t tell you.”
To make matters worse, Sam said the air hostess repeatedly told her off for letting Edward climb up and down the first class stairs as she tried to pacify him.
“All Edward wanted to do was climb those stairs,” Sam said.
“The air hostess must have said to be five times, ‘You can’t climb the stairs, it’s very dangerous’.
“And it is, I get that, but telling an 11-month-old that who has only just started walking… All he wanted to do was climb those stairs!”
Sam and her partner Paul Knightley had flown to Dubai with their three children – Edward, son Paul, seven, and five-year-old daughter Rosie – for a no expense spared luxury holiday.
But despite living the high life in a £1,000-a-night hotel, things took a turn when it was time to return to the UK.
The family’s seven-hour flight was grounded with them sat onboard – albeit in first class – for 90 minutes before take off.
The mum-of-three admitted “tension” then flared between herself and Paul because she had bought their eldest children chocolate muffins beforehand.
“The crumbs were everywhere,” Sam told Billie in their podcast, The Sam and Billie Show. “Then all of a sudden, belts were on and little Paul said he needed to go to the toilet.
“We sat for another 20 minutes without taking off but everything was ready to go. Little Paul is crying by now. I went to get up and [the stewardess] told me to sit down.
“He’s a seven-year-old. You can’t let him sit there and wet himself. We got him to wee in a bottle and had all the blankets over him. I felt so sorry for him.”
The flight eventually took off, with Edward asleep on Sam’s lap, but the star said an attendant suddenly woke him up by offering her a drink.
Sam spent an hour walking up and down the aisles with her baby son, but says he then “had a breakdown”.
“Out of the seven hours we were in the sky, I’d say five of them he was unsettled. Crying, throwing himself around, shouting, stressed out,” she recalled.
“I had him on and off the boob and he kept biting me. He must have bitten me four times. I was at the end of my tether.
“I was in so much pain on my nipples and mentally I didn’t know what else to do.”
Sam even fed Edward cheese and crackers, despite him being dairy free due to eczema.
She admitted: “In the end I resorted to locking myself in the toilet with him.
“I had the tissue, the taps on and off – we were soaked. But it gave me half-an-hour and I did it twice.”
Sam attempted to hand Edward to Paul after four hours, but said their baby “went even more crazy”.
Thankfully, none of her fellow passengers complained about the disruption. One even sympathised with Sam for enduring such a “tough” time once it was over.
Sam’s confession comes just a few months after she was slammed by fans for complaining about another long haul first class flight to the UAE with her kids.