Does it really have to be like this with babies?

[Juno999]

Just from one or two friends who've had them in the last year. One friend says they won't be leaving the UK for several years now that they have a baby. It's not a monetary issue, they are very high earners.
I mean it's their choice of course, just seems a bit restrictive.
Both friends have incredibly strict naptime routines. Maybe it helps with the baby's sleep at night, but they will never deviate from the routines, the entire days revolve around them.
I suppose I was naive, I know some babies will only sleep in certain places but overall they're portable. I'd always thought I'd take my baby with my where I went, rather than limiting how much I can go out or do anything due to very strict naptimes.
Sorry if this all sounds naïve.

I wanted to take that approach but my dc1 needed a strict routine and a lot of sleep otherwise he’d be inconsolable and as he got older, wild and angry. DC2 was much more chilled and portable sleep wise. I think it’s a nature one rather than nurture.

Haven't been abroad since having kids (6yo and 1yo) would have been up for taking DD1 between her being old enough for it not to be really stressful on the plane etc (3/4) and us having DD2, but covid and not having enough money stopped that happening.Won't consider going now til DD2 is at an age where she can sit still and concentrate on something for awhile (like a film) on the plane, and is at an age where we won't need to take loads of equipment.
A friend took her 18 (ish) mo DD on a plane to florida disney afew months back though....I really don't know how she coped! 😅

Apart from anything I wouldn't like to inflict pain from cabin pressure on a baby for the sake of doing baby stuff in a different, less convenient location.
But horses for courses.

I have 3, my first was a dream - would take her anywhere and everywhere and she was always able to nap when she wanted. She was so easy going. My 2nd was not easy breezy beautiful at all and it shocked me as I just presumed other parents were just not as good as I was at parenting! My 3rd is pretty chilled and easy - but not as much as my first

I took my baby to Spain at sus weeks. I had a fairly strict bedtime routine but daytimes were pretty much as and when, but there was definitely a pattern to them. I certainly didn't need silence and full darkness and own room - how restrictive and would have felt like setting things up to fail!
But people make their own parenting choices. All I can say is my two slept well at night with minimal fuss (after three months of our routine it clicked), and were able to sleep during the day through noise, at a café, at a friends house, in the pushchair.
Soon enough your routine will revolve around a child - at about 18 months they are no longer a passive addition, but demanding and requiring entertainment (not to mention mobile)!

I just fed my dd during take off and landing. The sucking equalised the pressure in her ears and she wasn't in any pain.

Ime (six kids and lots of kids amongst friends) some people take huge comfort in a routine. Its often more for the mothers sake than the childs. They are scared that if they do anything outside of The Routine then it will all fall apart, especially after they have experienced the first few weeks of "WTF?!!!!!" when they are learning about being a parent. They have found a way of living that works and they are terrified of it not working, so they stick to The Routine rigidly. I can understand it, I was a bit like that when DD1 (second child) was tiny as she had colic and it was only by doing certain things at certain times that it was manageable.

It may not work for you, but also you may find yourself doing that. Yes babies can be portable, but frankly holidays abroad where you spend thousands to sit in a dark air conditioned room singing the Wheels on the Bus for hours on end, aint worth it! You could but personally, I wouldnt. Lots of lovely places to visit in the UK, cheaper (usually) and if anything bad happens you speak the language and dont need health insurance. Oh and you can always get their favourite cereal!

It's always going to be oh how long's a piece of string until you have one yourself and you get what it means. Do report back on how portable your baby is.

It is dependent on the child

Your thoughts were mine before I had one to be honest, then we had a fairly high needs child due to severe reflux as a baby, allergies in regards to food, and harder to settle than some. There was a period where he was almost exclusively having to be held upright constantly due to excessive vomiting when laying down so mass exhaustion at the start, and I think the amount of effort it took to finally get him sleeping in a cot meant that once we got there we didn't vary it too much.

That being said we would visit houses etc for visits, but he wasn't a 'buggy sleeper', nor one to just sleep on you in a busy environment after he got used to sleeping in cot/bed over 6 months or so, and if over tired we would have up to a week of shite sleep afterwards so ended up actively avoiding that happening.

These things impacted our decision to not holiday abroad - effectively we felt it wouldn't be a real holiday for us until naps were over and we could have a good 12 hour day without serious repercussions! If we had done it earlier then we'd have had to either factor in naps alongside airport/luggage/travel to accomodation/flights - or miss the nap, and have multiple disturbed nights with night wakes due to over tired child!

Of course I wouldn't change him for the world but we aren't all blessed with super easy going children who can sleep wherever and have their routines messed with too heavily

I do still think people can be too rigid (e.g. certainly we moved nap/bed times by 2-3 hours to attend parties etc and just got him up a bit early or had a lay in the next day etc to let him catch up, some people seem to literally stick to times like clockwork) but ours couldn't just go out all day much as we would have liked. Though we tried! Quite a few times, but overall knew the price was too much and gave in eventually as we had to work and if he was over tired he would night scream probably every 30 minutes for 5-7 days!! Most the time he barely woke but you definately did when you heard it!

I'm not trying to put you off but it's worth bearing in mind before you have a little one that even the best made plans can just go AWOL!

We've flown with our children from 3 months because much of our family lives abroad. It's not as easy as getting there solo, but it's still very much possible if you want or need it to be (first flight with tiny dd was to visit a dying relative). We changed the way we travel, but we still travel - some trial and error involved eg we ruled out city hotel breaks after one attempt but discovered that an airbnb apartment with kitchen/high chair/travel cot can work really well as it let us work around our children. I can't imagine enjoying a pool holiday with small kids who won't sit still. We sometimes persuade lovely babysitting grandparents to come with us too, which is a win win situation.

I guess it depends how much you enjoy going places and how much you're prepared to juggle what you expect from a holiday vs what your dc will need while you're there. One dc needed to nap in the afternoon and napped best in the pram while walking so we planned our time around that. One hated long car journeys (discovered that on a long car journey...) so we avoided that for a while and now we stop more often if we have to drive. They both did best with an early bedtime and often took a while to settle, so we didn't eat out in the evenings, instead we bought nice food and nice wine and enjoyed some lovely long evenings together. Dh and I travelled a lot together before children and it's a thing we really value, so we've found ways to make it work with dc. If we didn't enjoy the journey so much, perhaps it wouldn't have been worth it, but we've had a lot of fun over the years even with our non-sleeping, nap-avoiding, fussy eating, ND children and I feel really lucky that we've been able to have these experiences with them. Is it hard work? Definitely. And completely different to going away before children. But it's hard work at home too and for me, the change of scene was something to look forward to and to look back on. You've just got to weigh up how you balance everything and what works for you when you start feeling your way through life as a parent.

I think this is a really good point. There are so many compromises and choices to make within a family, and everyone lands on a different way of making parenting work. Dc probably don't care if they're paddling in the English channel or the Mediterranean, but dh and I really did, so we compromised in other ways instead.

My youngest is 5 and still not taken him abroad, because what's the point? He's just as happy in a caravan 30 miles up the road, and honestly I don't want the hassle. Probably going to do it next year for an extended family holiday

My baby was waking up to 25 times a night; he sleeps through now and I will not break the routine for love nor money. Also, babies and children are hard work! Meals and snacks and clearing up the high chair and breastfeeds and napping them at the right time and woe betide the parent who forgets the blackout blind on holiday and fresh air and playground/running around time and whining if they’re hungry/tired/bored/overstimulated.

Going on holiday just relocates the work and isn’t half as fun as it was pre-kids. Mine aren’t the kind who can stay up a bit later so you can go out to eat, they turn feral. They wouldn’t sleep in a pram at a restaurant. Supervising a baby in the pool is fun but not relaxing. There’s no afternoon nap and reading a book and having a lie-in. Plus they hate the heat so going abroad in summer limits the options.

Theres a sweet spot for long distance travel 0-6 months old (aKa immobile) and then 2.5 years plus. In between is complete carnage in my experience on flights. I say this as someone who did a 6 hour daytime flight with an active, angry at being caged up, 9 month old during Covid, and then took our children “in the sweet spot” on a 13 hour flight. They got norovirus the day we flew and we had the worst holiday and flight of our lives. The older one threw up on my husband, an air stewardess and another passenger in one go. My DH finished the flight in airline pjs. We then got the bug and spent an expensive holiday in our beds. I’m not in a rush to repeat that again 😂. We now stick to drivable trips until they’re both 3 or so. Then pray for the best!

This.

I think some people have taken this very personally. I haven't judged, I have asked the question as to whether a lot of parents operate in this way.

Our child was in a routine from birth but also just went with what we did, we went on one very long haul flight when they were a young baby and other week long holidays away for bank holiday weekends so we pretty much stayed with the routine on holidays, and our baby was out and about daily from birth so just got used to it

Depends on the baby and can also depend on the parents. DC1 was portable, she slept in the pram and we took her out for dinner often. We went on an international holiday when she was about 14 mths, she was very easy to travel with. Very happy, placid baby.

I was also happy to be led by her. So we didn’t have a routine or schedule. One of my friends who had a baby around the same time nagged me constantly about routines because she couldn’t cope with not being able to plan her day in advance. Whereas it didn’t worry me at all. DC slept through the night from an early age, she just didn’t always go to bed or get up at the same time.

We didn’t have a strict nap routine. We all slept when we were tired. Also managed to take them out a lot to socialise. We had a big pram that they could sleep in. Having my kids close together meant I was very busy with them; so I wanted to keep a sense of normality by seeing friends and still having a social
life. Lots of my friends were similar. Although, even now the kids are older, we all still tend to meet for a long lunch, rather than supper. Have also flown with them as toddlers - including one with a disability. Holidays are hard work! Same workload, different location. But worth it for a change of scene. People parent differently. No judgement, either way, from me.

Utter nonsense. We have 3 kids and took one of them away for the 1st time at 4 weeks, our other child was only 18months. It's easier to take an immobile baby away, toddlers are harder. As for naps we never did the napping in a specific place at a specific time, they nap on the go wherever, same with noise, there's no be quiet they are napping, carry on with life. My sister is shocked how my 2 year old will nap anywhere and through any noise, her one year old will wake at the tiniest sound and she does rigid naps. He doesnt sleep any better than ours did either.

We and our friends have all gone on 1+ holiday. 8-10m is pretty perfect imo. But some are coming up to 2 some went at 3m.

We arent going away with 18m dd1 this summer because of finances so a holiday of daytrips is what we are doing. I am quite lazy /have seen a lot of the world and have a nice house so can see myself not bothering to go on holiday until my 2nd is 2.5/3 and talking. But thats just my preference we def could if we wanted

I had one portable and one non-portable baby - twins - so it was a routine and naps at home for us. I wouldn't describe it as a strict routine though (and I think this is probably true of a lot of people who have a "strict" routine) - I was quite flexible around the kids, like when they started not falling asleep at nap time I would move it on by half an hour, till eventually they dropped one nap after the other. Where I was strict was when other adults asked us to cone and do stuff during nap time, I would say no or invite them to our house. So where people maybe saw me as having invented this strict routine and held everyone to it, I saw it as protecting my children's need for sleep.

About the holidays, until my kids were about 5 or 6 there was basically nothing they would do on holiday that wasn't hanging out with us, so we did lots of kid things, playing on the beach, going to like theme parks and stuff - but apart from that it's just childcare in a place that we don't know very well. Hotels remain a pain in the arse because you have to share a room - we've tried to book adjoining rooms a few times but yet to find a chain of hotels that bothers to actually reserve you adjoining rooms even if they agree to it at the time of booking. Our kids are 11 now and they sleep OK in those circumstances and they're OK to stay out for dinner but doing it when they were little would have been really shit.
I think if you're the kind of person who mucks in and has plenty of energy you can certainly go abroad when they kids are little but if you like a bit of quiet time, the best way to get it is to stay in your own home with your kids in their routine.

Mine would only nap in the buggy or sling (we didn't have a car, so not sure about that). It was very regular, they just hated the cot. A sort of mobile routine. Annoying if you want to get stuff done at home but great for adventuring.

They've been all over the place and we didnt feel the need to come home for naps. Terrible sleepers at night though so being on holiday is just be knackered somewhere else. But I maintain before the toddler years kick in is a great time to travel (white noise on planes!), they're pretty portable. We lived overseas for years as well so of course all our friends were taking their kids intercontinental as soon as they got passports.

But I can also understand if they won't nap, or you're feeling worried about things, you might feel differently. It's a bit of an interaction between the actual baby and the parents I think.