Traveling With A Baby: Just Do It
Before getting married a couple should make sure they do the following things well together: canoe, pitch a tent, and travel. These are the ultimate team building activities and if you can handle them without killing each other you can handle anything. Derek and I have always been great at all three, but in particular traveling. Whether we are taking an impulsive road trip up the east coast on a long weekend or flying to visit family we love traveling and do it well together. We both have a relatively go-with-the-flow attitude and we travel light. I’m not sure we have ever flown with more than a carry-on suitcase and a general itinerary.
Before Ellie Jo was born I worried about how having a baby would affect our ability to travel. Our friends with kids told us we just had to do it. The first trip would be the hardest, so we just had to get through it and then we would be fine. We took this to heart two weeks ago when we decided Derek and Ellie Jo would accompany me on a work trip to South Florida. I had to go to two industry conferences and both were family friendly where most people would be accompanied by their spouse and kids. I would go to meetings and receptions while Derek and Ellie Jo hung out by the pool and enjoyed the cable in the hotel room. It was a short trip, just Thursday to Saturday, and we were driving rather than flying so it seemed like a good time to test the traveling waters.
Like all the best laid plans, it was unraveling before it even began.
The first challenge was all my own to wrestle with: having patience. When Derek and I travel together we usually have a flexible itinerary, but as long as we make it to the airport on time the schedule is more of a suggestion. When I travel for work I have a three ring binder with a detailed agenda, maps and directions to all my meetings, hotel and conference registration confirmation, and any other information I might need. Having to loop two other people into my plan, one of them being small and irrational, was stressful and tested every ounce of patience I might have. (And then, some I didn’t.)
Speaking of small humans, the next challenge was packing because holy shit do kids need a lot of crap. Worse than that, on top of actually needing a lot of crap, first time parents think they need even more crap than they actually do. I can fit everything I need for a week long conference in a small carry-on size suitcase. But for Ellie Jo we packed, I kid you not, FOUR blankets for a three day trip to South Florida where the average temperature hovers right around 98 degrees. I have absolutely no way of justifying how we decided that was rational. We lost all ability to make rational decisions when Ellie Jo was born. We packed water, formula, bottles, brushes to wash the bottles, a cooler with her medicine, a pack n’ play, a play mat, a bag of toys and books, sunglasses, hat, sunscreen, bug spray, towel, pool float, clothes, a full three days worth of extra clothes, three nightgowns, baby bjorn carrier, owlet baby monitor, the sound machine and projector, diapers, wipes, diaper bag, extra pacifiers, and the fore mentioned four blankets. We filled the back of our suburban for three days away from home. We couldn’t even carry it all to our hotel room in one trip.
To make things even more interesting, on day one Derek got sick and on day two Ellie Jo got sick. Since they were just cuddled in bed sick most of the time we didn’t really need the play mat or the pack n’ play and they obviously didn’t make it down to the pool so we could have ditched all the pool stuff. Ellie Jo seemed most interested in watching the tv (I know, parents of the year over here) or playing with things like breakfast bar wrappers so we probably could have made it three days without the bag of books and toys. On top of that, when I’m at conferences I have to be very “on” the whole time. So I usually come back to my hotel and crash. This trip I had to come back to the hotel and take over caring for a sick baby because Derek needed to rest. Which left him irritated because he didn’t feel good and me irritated because I never got a break and was exhausted.
The final challenge was having a baby in the car for as long as we did. Ellie Jo is not terrible in her car seat but she doesn’t love it. The first day we drove five and a half hours with only one break and she did so well. In hindsight, she was probably just getting sick which is why she slept the whole time but it made me feel like the trip would be a breeze. The second day we drove three and a half hours. She still did better than I expected, though not as great as day one. The third and final day was not as smooth. By this point we were all exhausted. It was two and a half hours of a crying fussy baby pretty pissed about being in a car seat. In a moment of dramatic self-pity I might have yelled over her screaming that the whole idea of them coming with me was a disaster.
In the midst of the mess though, we survived. And admittedly it was nice to see Ellie Jo and Derek at the end of the day rather than miss them. It turns out traveling with a baby is even more of a team building activity than pitching a tent or canoeing and Derek and I passed. It did give me more confidence in our ability to travel with a baby because it showed me how much I need to adjust my expectations- and our packing list. (Next time we will try to bring just three blankets. But no promises.)
Do it all with love.
