Have baby, will travel

Baby becomes world traveler

It's 8 am and my nearly 5 month old daughter is noisily sleeping in bed next to me. She fell asleep mid-suck during her last feeding an hour ago and I just kept her on our bed. She's been farting every few minutes. It's kind of cute, actually. (Add that to the list of things you never thought you'd say until becoming a parent!) Her pudgy little arms are stretched out in a T; she's enjoying taking up half of the big person bed since Rory is currently in Austin, Texas.

Maëlys gets her own seatbelt!

After spending two weeks in Scotland with his family for Christmas, Rory left us here to go be an academic and give a talk at the Linguistics Society of America conference. I'm still enjoying the kind assistance of his parents so that I don't have to take care of the baby on my own in Paris. I tried that for three days after our return from Oregon a month ago (we spent Thanksgiving with 20 family members!) and it was by far the hardest time I've experienced thus far with the baby. While Rory was at another conference in Milan, Maëlys and I were suffering from a 9-hour jetlag, and for nearly a week she was waking up every 15-30 minutes during the night and wailing. Nothing made it better. I could count my total hours of sleep that week on one hand. I have much more sympathy now for parents of children who sleep poorly. And for single parents. I felt like a train wreck.

But in all other respects, travelling with a baby has been easier than I anticipated. Maëlys has now been on five airplanes, 30 total hours of air travel, and she was an excellent passenger on four of them. The only exception was the 10-hour flight back from Seattle to Paris, which she didn't seem to like despite doing fine on the way over. We had a bassinet* at our disposal, but she barely slept anyway and was fussing in our arms most of the way. Still, she's had no problems on any of the flights with the change in altitude creating pressure on her ears, which was my big concern, and we've always had enough diapers and spare clothes to get us to our destination. For reference, we packed one diaper for every hour of travel and had plenty to spare. Just in case that's useful information for you.

Travel expectations
When I married a Scotsman, I knew my future would involve lots of travel. We've made it to visit our families in both the US and UK almost every year that we've been together. And I knew if we had kids it would mean plenty of plane, train, and automobile rides with our offspring. But whenever you tell someone you're taking a three-month-old on a 22-hour door-to-door trip, they unfailingly look at you with shock and pity and then say (perhaps with a hint of schadenfreude?), "That's going to be rough. It'll be even harder when they're older!" The effect these words have on an intrepid new parent is to terrify the pants off them. We already know it's not going to be easy. Long-distance travel is hard on anyone. But when seemingly every single person perpetuates the same fear-inducing attitude towards travel with babies, it makes the experience much worse for first time family travellers.

Can I make a suggestion? If someone tells you they're travelling with a young child, don't express how hard you think the journey will be, whether you have personal experience or not. Don't even assure them that it'll be fine now but worse when the kids are older. Instead be excited for them. Ask questions about what they'll see and do. If you do happen to have helpful tips from your own family travels, share them tactfully if they are welcome. And then when they get back, perhaps congratulate them on a successful trip and by all means empathize with them if they had a difficult journey. But help them stay positive both before and after their trip and they'll be more likely to enjoy the experience.

After all, for the last two months, Maëlys has been experiencing a deluge of new people, sights, smells, and sounds, all of which enrich her development and understanding of the world. She's experienced Oregon evergreen forests, rambunctious cousins, the salty sea air, sheep in Scottish pastures, a surprising number of rainbows, an assortment of accents, Christmas trees and lights, babies older and (two days) younger, grand- and great-grandparents, and cuddles from everyone under the sun. She has taken it all in stride, often with wide-eyed curiosity and an eager smile. For her to have those opportunities is worth any potential discomfort from the voyage. I, for one, am excited to travel with my baby and can't wait to share the delights of the world with her.


That's all for now! We're still trying to get caught up with our normal lives after spending five weeks away from Paris. Obviously, blogging has fallen by the wayside. We'll put up some pictures from our trips to Oregon and Scotland soon, I promise!


*A word about bassinets on planes: Delta Airlines has sleeping bassinets for babies under 20 pounds and 26 inches long (9 kg, 66 cm), but their policy on providing one is iffy. When Rory called to book our flights he was told they couldn't guarantee him a bassinet and it was first come, first served, so we should get to the airport three hours early and request it at the gate. We dutifully did this, and it worked fine in Paris. Coming home however, the Portland Delta staff told him the bassinet would go to whoever booked their flights first. The lady spent ages looking up this information, as there was another dad waiting in line just behind Rory for the same reason. Turns out we booked second, so it should have gone to the other family, but they had booked an extra seat as well and were willing to give us the bassinet. Hooray! Too bad Maëlys didn't want to use it. The moral of the story: find out your airline's policy on bassinets. Then be prepared to be told something completely different.