Check out part two of this post, Tips for traveling with a baby (especially alone) and why it’s a fantastic idea here!

Let me tell you the story of a crazy, very young and very new mom who decided it would be a good idea to take her nine-day-old babe on a weekend trip from California to Texas. By herself. She had never traveled with a child, let alone an infant, and had also never been to Texas. When her son was five days old, she decided it would be “fun” to go visit Daddy at his duty station where he would be, unaccompanied, until their baby was four months old, so she hopped on Google flights and spontaneously bought plane tickets for their weekend trip.

When she arrived back from her trip to Texas, she went into whirlwind planning mode for her trip to Malaysia. The birth certificate had not yet been filed so she couldn’t rush order a passport for the child yet–and the flight left in one week. Her parents, living in Malaysia, didn’t think she would be able to make it. Who takes 20 hour international trips with a two and a half week old baby by themselves?

Crazy people, that’s who. Crazy two-weeks-out-of-the-teenage-years moms who think three flights, two continents, two layovers, and one overnight trip into Hong Kong on the way are a good idea.

When her son was 12 days old, she propped him up with pillows and a white bed sheet on her friend’s coffee table and tried to get a shadow-less picture of him looking straight with his eyes open and both his overly flat ears showing. She rushed to Walgreens to get it developed and sped off to Salinas in hopes that her son’s birth certificate was ready for pick up, completely unsure of what she would find because, you know, they can’t give private information like that over the phone. Two days later, she showed up in San Fransisco hoping to expedite her son’s passport.

It was Thursday. Her flight left on Sunday morning.

They told her it would take six hours and to come back in the afternoon, but due to it being a three hour trip up to San Fransisco and three hours back down and her sweet friend having volunteered to take her meaning there were three kids under four in the backseat, they went home and came back the next day. The passport was ready. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.

On Sunday morning, her son was two and a half weeks old. She woke up at 3am, nursed him, and finished packing her bags. April, (author of Stories of Our Boys–check out her amazing blog and read her story about this crazy mom here!) dropped her off at the local airport before the sun was up. There was a flight to LAX, then to Hong Kong, where she and her son ventured out into the country to spend the night, then finally to Penang, Malaysia.

Three weeks later, she headed back to the US with her parents and siblings. They drove all the way up the coast of California, hitting major cities along the way, and then flew to New Mexico where she stayed for two months, sleeping on sofas and in shared bedrooms, enjoying the nomad life.

When her son was three and a half months old, they packed up their bags again and headed across the country to their new permanent duty station in North Carolina. Just her and the baby and an eight hour drive to Dallas. Then six hours to Broken Bow, OK, where they finally reunited with Daddy after more than four months of being apart. There was a twenty two hour trip to the Tampa area of Florida, done in one day, then another four hours to the north of Florida. They stayed overnight and drove another eight hours to Columbus, GA, stopped for dinner with friends, and drove eleven hours through the night to Jacksonville, NC.

They arrived at the doorstep of the their new hours at 9am on a hot morning in the middle of August. After a quick tour of the house they had never seen except in pictures online, they drove into town and closed on their house at 10am. One hour and 15 minutes after arriving in their new city, they were the proud owners of a house that is now home base during all the rest of their travels.

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Friends, that crazy mom is–you guessed it–me. I’ve continued to travel all over the country, sometimes with my husband and sometimes alone. Spontaneous trips to Cleveland and New York and Charlotte that happened because we’d been sitting on the sofa with nothing to do and decided we should do something fun, so we threw some clothes in a bag and jumped in the car. Next week I go to Salt Lake City for a week, sans husband; in August I go back to Malaysia for as long as I feel like it, also sans husband. There aren’t many perks to the Hubby always being gone for military training, but being able to travel freely is one of them.

Here is the point of this post: don’t be afraid to travel because you have children. Traveling with infants can be an absolutely piece of cake. Everyone told me I was brave for taking my son on fourteen airplanes by the time he was two months old, but I wasn’t brave–the mom across the aisle with a toddler was brave. Perhaps you have to be a little crazy to get up the nerve to travel with a new baby, but once you’ve done it once, you see how easy it is.

In a few days, I’ll be sharing a post with tips on traveling with a baby and why it’s a fantastic idea. I see my mommy friends with babies much younger than my now-toddler desperately post to Facebook, Help! Taking a six hour road trip tomorrow with the two month old. I’m so nervous what do I do? I’m going to pack everything in my house just in case I need it ahhhh why am I even doing this I must be crazy! 

Then “helpful” mommies share advice telling them to sit in the backseat of their car with their babies for six hours and play the Sesame Street soundtrack and lean over the carseat to nurse the baby when he or she gets fussy. Y’all, doing your trip like that is why traveling with a baby becomes overwhelming and miserable. 

There is a much better way. Traveling with a baby doesn’t have to be scary and you most certainly don’t have to pull your back leaning over the carseat to nurse your child every time you hear a cry over Elmo’s delightful singing wafting through the speakers.

Traveling with my son is now my favorite way to travel. In fact, traveling with my son alone is almost preferable to traveling with my family but shhh, don’t tell my husband.

Stay tuned, friends. Tips and tricks coming soon.