I'm so fortunate to know awesome moms like Sarah Kate Levy, who are way cooler than me and have far more talent, as they too juggle career, kids, & standards- Managing not to drop any of them. Today SKL chimed in from 30 thousand feet & helped me, help you, plan a "BabyMoon".
HOW TO PLAN THE PERFECT BABYMOON IN THREE STEPS
My kids are now 6, 4, 2 and 2.
You can imagine the joy we bring other people when we travel. The noise. The piles of crap we try to stuff into the overhead. The diapers we can’t change ‘til they turn the seatbelt light off. We’re the 6 idiots sneaking in and out of our 4-max occupancy room in groups of 3, trying not to get kicked to the curb.
With the dog.
Yeah, we take the dog, too.
It would be pretty much unbearable if I didn’t have the memories of the truly lovely, adult, romantic, two-of-us-against-the-world trips MrBigIdeas and I took just before the births of our first two kids. (I don’t remember getting out of town before the twins were born. Those poor kids never get anything of their own.)
So here are my hard-won 3 STEPS for planning the perfect babymoon:
1. Go early
Don’t put off heading out for your last hurrah to the last weeks of your pregnancy.
First off, towards the end, you’re just not going to feel all that hot. Yes, I am throwing down and calling out every woman who has ever said she loves every minute of being pregnant. Ladies, I think y’all are lying. It is truly not possible to be THRILLED to be pregnant every second when, at the end of those 40 weeks, your back hurts, your hips ache, there is literally no comfortable sleeping position, and even if you COULD sleep, you’re getting up every fifteen seconds to pee.
And the reflux. Oh, the reflux.
It is simply not possible to just LOOOOOOOOVE that.
It’s not even possible to LOOOOOVE that sitting at the Four Seasons.
Plus, when you get too pregnant, a lot of airlines get squirrely about letting you fly, so the bigger you get, the closer you gotta stick to home.
Which means you’ll be stuck driving to your babymoon. This is not the end of the world. I quite liked driving to Berkeley for our babymoon before our first daughter was born. We stayed in a great hotel, and walked around and looked at things, and had massages, and it was all lovely.
Aside from the feeling like poop. Which I did. Because I am not a liar-face unless I am making something up to scare the poop out of my kids. (Poop is a word I throw around freely now that I have four small kids who never stop talking about it.)
So get smart:
Go sometime second trimester when the HAPPY HORMONES kick in and you feel invincible and you want to go places and try things. Those hormones are great for the libido, too. You go find some great hotel with those happy hormones kicking in, and I promise you will have a babymoon you will never forget.
3. Go somewhere you can ENJOY those happy hormones
For our 2nd babymoon, I got smart and went early. Our trip involved heading to Cuba for the weekend and then hanging in Jamaica for a few days after that.
Cuba was interesting, a little depressing, and not exactly comfortable. I didn’t feel all “let’s get happy and naked” in Cuba. I felt all, “Huh, this is interesting, but you know what I’d really like? SOMETHING KINDA FANCY.”
Which I got when we went back to Jamaica, and we stayed in a CHILD FREE boutique hotel. It was awesome, except for the MOVIE that was shooting there, and the awful B-list actor who thought we should be happy hanging out with him and his INCREDIBLY LOUD MOVIE MAKING.
We were not.
So MrBigIdeas threw a bit of a fit and we ended up spending four days in the owner’s house, on its own private cliff, with its own swimming cove and private, fully serviced dining nook.
We didn’t put our clothes on for four days.
Ahhhhhh …. Naked House. How I miss thee.
3. I repeat: go somewhere where kids aren’t welcome.
You will have enough of kids soon enough. Promise. You want that nice memory in your head of that truly adult trip you and your partner took, right BEFORE that kid came along and turned you into one of those zombie parents in the airport dragging car seats and strollers and screaming toddlers across the terminal.
Zombie parents take trips. Youwant to enjoy a great last VACATION.
More from Sarah Kate Levy:
www.ChecklistMommy.com www.MomciergeLA.com Follow @MomciergeLA
