| Traveling with babies isn't as hard as it seems. My wife and now-two-year-old and I mostly live in the French countryside now, but travel together frequently to Malaysia, the US, UK, and around Europe (for various reasons, sometimes work, sometimes family, sometimes fun... though alas that's less often than we'd like). We got the baby a passport before she could even sit up (the photo was tricky), and as long as we just plan a little better than we would with just adults, it's not hard. A few things helped an awful lot, for anyone considering this. Nurse instead of using formula/bottles/sterilizers/warming up/etc.. Buy a good carrying sling and learn to tie it; strollers are a PITA in so many places and ways. Put time into associating peeing/etc. with a noise or word. Long before a baby is potty-trained, you can still save tons of diapers by holding them over toilets frequently and letting them go. Let the baby sleep in your bed. It's hard for little ones to adjust to different sleeping environments -- in our case, changing to a new bed half-way around the world still looks almost the same, because her parents are still there just like always. YMMV (all kids are different, I imagine; I've only parented one so far!) but this has worked great for us, and our daughter enjoys the new places and people. And she can already swear in at least 4 different languages.... |