We are on a crowded sandy beach in Cornwall in the middle of a heat wave. Confusingly no one is looking for shade, wearing a rashie or sitting under an umbrella, but I’m still glad to be here.
It’s a trip across the UK, which I dreamed of watching hours of British crime shows that got me through months of dismal lockdowns.
It’s the perfect time to sit on a mat, relax and eat the delicious sandwiches I just bought at the cafe.
Everything is prepared ready to eat. But, twist! No eating for me! Our five month old baby needs a nap.
Of course he does! It’s Baby on Tour and nothing happens the way you think.
Here’s how it went.
Transportation
Expectation: Our baby is not great in the car but at least on the plane we can feed it and entertain it. It will be hard but everyone says the noise from the planes helps them sleep.
I bring a new toy to distract him and a blackout blind for the airplane bed. I am cautiously optimistic.
Reality: The worst part of this vacation was the first 24 hours. Our sweet boy barely slept for an entire day, wouldn’t fit in the bed we paid extra for, and couldn’t care less about the toy. Suffice to say, it was heartbreaking. After landing, several passengers approached my husband and I and praised our efforts to try to calm him down.
You know it hurts when strangers on the plane are nice to you!
The return flight is better, however. He slept more, the trip acclimated him, and most importantly, we had no expectations.
Sleep
Expectation: zero. Our child is not the best sleeper and the jet lag would hit him hard I guess. Combined with all sorts of accommodations (Airbnb, hotel, family home), we expect this to go terribly well.
Reality: Excellent, by the standards of a baby who wakes up about once or twice a night. He was so tired after that first flight that he slept for record time and then acclimated to the time zone almost instantly. Hot air probably helped too. The jet lag on the way back was not so easy to deal with and took a few weeks.
Food
Expectation: high. Simplicity was the goal. I really didn’t want to introduce solid food until we got back. I figured, given that we’d finally made breastfeeding work for us, that that would be enough to sustain him on the trip and streamline at least some of our baggage.
Reality: Baby time is a mystical thing in itself and our boy decided this trip would be the perfect time to jump on the adult food train. The first thing he ate was a raspberry in Bath! The second was a small bite of dahl at a nice Indian restaurant in Salisbury.
He really ate a Corsican peach at the Borough Market for which I paid the incredible sum of three pounds.
Something I had dreaded (solids) turned into a host of adorable first food memories.
Fun and socializing
Expectation: average. I haven’t been a big night owl in eight or nine years, but I was worried about how much we could do in a day on the road with a baby. At home, we usually only went out once a day and that could be for a walk. A whole day of sightseeing seemed impossible. Also, the main purpose of our trip was a family reunion. Would the baby cry to be held by so many strangers?
Reality: I didn’t need to worry. Our outgoing child was the life of the party at the reunion, and it made me so happy to see him in the arms of so many loving aunts, uncles and cousins. Later, we traveled with friends, as well as ourselves, and it turned out that he liked to sightsee. Galleries and museums, he was the perfect age to ride around in the baby carrier or lightweight pram we purchased.
The result
This all brings us back to the day at the Cornish beach. When the baby finally woke up from his nap in the shade, we stripped him of his clothes and propped him in a bucket of seawater on the sand.
Her chubby arms dangled above her own purple plastic sea bath, ingeniously shaped by our friend Amy. A few minutes later, her son came over to say hello and we watched as the two gestured and chattered, apparently deep in baby talk.
It is an image that I will cherish forever, along with countless others from this journey.
In the end, what surprised me the most was how much our baby loved our absence.
Before leaving, I assumed that we were the only ones to benefit from the trip, that our baby would have been the same if not better at home.
I was wrong.
It soaked up all the new faces and places and grew rapidly. Everything was made so much easier by the support and love we received from the friends and family we visited and went on road trips with.
Who knows, we might even have a little traveler on our hands.
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