Quick poll: is it madness to take a 2 week old baby on holiday to France, driving from London to the Dordogne?

[doodling]

(I am regular I have just namechanged BTW)

Or am I being oversensitive in thinking that it is lunacy?

SIL is due in August, we had planned a big family holiday in the dordogne. SIL is due her first baby at the beginning of August and her and her dh are still planning to drive through France down to the Dordogne, for a week's holiday?

Surely these are the ramblings of a clueless first time mother to be? What about any problems that might crop up? She doesn't speak any french.

Or AIBU?

Yes, madness.
But then I think it's madness to do anything other than cosy up at home with your new baby and rest of family for the first 2 weeks...

I take it somebody has informed the baby of the importance he/she comes out on their due date? I did something similar just after DS1 almost had a breakdown.. ended getting SO stressed came back with PND.. Oh and baby slept the whole time the car was moving.. took me almost 7 hrs before I realised I hadn't fed him!

I would be very surprised if you got a passport without two weeks of the birth.

Hi,

I haven't read the whole thread but just wanted to say that I don't think she's entirely mad - I did this with my first baby, although we live in Belgium so there wasn't the issue of crossing the channel. My family is large and very close but we manage to get everyone together very infrequently, and this holiday had been booked for over a year before it turned out that dd was due two weeks before. I was just determined - as someone said I think (sorry can't remember who/where ) some of us are just strong women (who are possibly also a bit nuts ).

However, I had been trying to prepare myself for it not being possible for basically my entire pregnancy, for all the reasons that you sensible ladies here have mentioned.
What made it do-able for us was:

1. DD arrived on her due date
2. it was a straightforward birth and I was recovering well/quickly
3. I did NOTHING for the first two weeks - and in Belgium the first week is spent in hospital anyway, with no worries about cooking etc and midwives on hand 24hrs to help with bf and anything/everything else
4. Bf was going well - although obvioulsy by 2 weeks not exactly established, I was confident of being able to feed dd the whole time (and did).
5. We allowed a whole day for the drive, stopping at least every 2 hours for as long as it took to bf
6. we borrowed a car carry cot so dd lay flat - I would not have been comfortable using a car seat at that age
7. We both speak fluent French
8. I looked up contact details etc of each hospital with an A&E within 30 mins drive of the roads we would be following on the way down, and of the doctors surgery/hopital once there.
9. My mum had 5 babies, bf all of them, and I knew she would be an immense support while there

Also, a bit of background on what made it so important to me: we live a long way from both our immediate families, in a country that is not our 'home' country, and not a single member of my immediate family would have been able to be with us for the first few weeks of dd's life if we hadn't gone with them. I felt incredibly isolated by that and really did not want to begin motherhood that way. I am the first of my friends here to be married/have kids and it has turned out I was right to fear feeling isolated because it has been the largest difficulty in life since having them.

So, I suppose I wanted to say, there may be reasons why she feels strongly about going rather than just wanting a holiday - but as others have said, there are many better ways to do that, so if not then she might be being a bit rash! But assuming she thinks it all through and plans VERY well and is generally capable, why shouldn't she aim to go? But she will need to be very realistic, and she will need to be very honest with herself if things are going at all less than fabulously well with her newborn, and cancel.

Yes, totally bonkers. My guess is they won't show. Apart from anythign else she could potentially by say 10 days overdue.
Don't count on them for their share of the rent, that's all I'm saying.

Why do the passport people care so much about seeing a newborn baby's eyes? I thought all caucasian babies' eyes were blue?

YABU. Maybe your SIL likes the sound of screaming, the smell of poo and lochia stains on her seating. Maybe she is looking forward to bonding with her DH over 16 hour argument.

Babies under 1 do not need to have their eyes open in passport pictures.

She is crazy- I moved from Kansas to the UK when my son was 5 weeks old- I had no choice and I was lucky my son was induced 2 weeks early due to my BP going up(due to the stress of arranging the move!) It was really stressful- we had to do a 9 hour drive to the airport with 5 week old baby 13 yr old, 11yr old and 2 dogs!!! It was awful I cried so much. It would be better if she flew but an airline will not accept a baby under a week old so if she goes overdue (and thats very likely with 1st baby!) that would rule out flying.

She really is dumb if she thinks she will feel like driving that way- if she has stitches she won't be able to sit for that long!

She is assuming her baby arrives on time by straightforward delivery and is fine afterwards!

Don't worry I strongly suspect that once she had the baby she will cancel these plans!!!!!

Chippingin my question in the OP was intentional - I really didn't know if I was being unreasonable in thinking it was a tricky thing to do, because I had such a traumatic time with dd in her first two weeks.

Obviously I'll leave her to it, I'm not her keeper, hence me posting earlier that I would just hold my tongue about it. I namechanged because I post a lot on MN, and I didn't want SIL stumbling on this thread, which I would be more than happy for her to read, and then her searching for other threads I'd posted on, which maybe things that I would be less happy about sharing with her - I'd have thought that would be why most people namechange

I think the overwhelming sentiment on this thread is that it would be madness, but that I've just got to let her get on with it, which is what I plan to do. Its really helpful for me to know that the majority of people don't think IABU thinking like this, so I know I'm probably right and I'll just leave her to it, and help if I can.

I'd also consider this doable with enough stops on the way.

And getting a passport is fairly easy you just have to be organised. I had a trip to San Francisco booked for when DS was 3 weeks old. I called registry office in advance of his birth and booked our registration appointment (with the caveat that we would have to cancel if he hadn't arrived). Then I booked a session at the passport office for the day after that. Passport then takes around 5 days to come.

Pictures took a while to get but you just keep snapping until you get one that fits.

The CS thing is also a red herring. I know some people struggle after one but not everyone. I was up and about the day after I left hospital - went out for lunch most days, shopping, walking etc.

We also travelled in the car on a 5 hour journey when DS was about 2 weeks old. He did sleep most of the way - we had to wake him up to feed.

Appreciate it's not for everyone but it's definitely not impossible.

I don't think the baby would be a problem in the car. I remember going on an 11hr drive with ds2 aged around 4 weeks, to see family at Xmas once. He just slept in his car seat and I fed him from time to time - stops every 3 hours or so.

I'd be more concerned about a late baby, mother or child health problems, etc. I wouldn't make a plan that involved a financial commitment or affected other people's holiday plans.

Don't think I could have sat in a car for that time - stitches ,sore coccyx etc. ds would have been fine, dd (reflux) a nightmare. Kindly suggest they get a fleixble ticket , just in case.....

OP Please come back in the summer and tell us how the holiday goes. I think Euro mum's post contains a lot of valid points....time will tell whether your SIL makes the journey. I did a lot of travelling (just me, not DH) in DS1's first year, and all is possible - however, I wouldn't have made any decisions like this prior to the birth.

How on earth will the baby get a passport in time? It takes more than two weeks to process a new passport application.

Going against the majority here but I dont see what the big deal is as long as they factor in lots of stops. I would much rather travel with a little baby than my 4 and 2 year old.

No Bonsoir you can get it done in one day, that's what we had to do. You just make an appointment with the passport office and have to go in person instead of doing it by post. Of course how practical that is depends on how far you are from a passport office. For us it was a 2 hour drive which also adds to the whole thing being a bit of a pain to organise but not impossible.

I suppose if they are planning a road trip to France a quick day trip to the passport office might be on the cards.

I was quite physically uncomfortable with lochia, breastfeeding etc for the first six weeks after childbirth and certainly wouldn't have wanted to sit in the car myself for all that time. I expect the baby will sleep most of the way - though as frakkin says, the car seat isn't great for a new baby for hours on end.

I would never have wanted to do this - far too many logistics - but it takes all sorts...

Just re read the OP. For a week's holiday I really wouldn't bother. Far too much hassle.

I just wouldn't have dared to plan anything so soon after the birth. Hopefully she will be fine but you just have no idea how you're going to feel, whether it's your first baby or not.

mumof22222boys - - of course I'll revisit this thread in August.

I don't think I'd have organised a holiday quite so close to an EDD but we had a fab camping holiday in Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay (nearly as far from Sussex as the Dordogne!) when ds1 was 5 weeks old. With me bf and him as happy as a grig in a sling, it was the most stress-free holiday we had! Far easier than taking 2 children under 2 on a boat trip...

With plenty of stops, the drive to the Dordogne is a piece of piss, to be honest. I'd be more bothered about not delivering quite as exactly to plan as the OP's SIL assumes.

PS. What is significant about needing to speak French en route - or more importantly, in the Dordogne? It's like Richmond on Thames down there!

It's between 4 and 5 hundred miles to the Dordogne though, depending which port you sail to, which is a good hundred miles further than Sussex to Whitby. There is also the drive to the port in this country first. I think that's a lot of traveling for a newborn, like belgo said, is it worth it for a week?

En route if you have a post-childbirth complication they might need to explain to the paramedics or doctor that she's just given birth etc. It's not English speaking all the way down!

I don't see why driving 4/500 miles with a 2 week old baby is such a big deal at all. We drove from London to Inverness on holiday when my first was 10 days old. It was lovely. Also drove from London to Interlaken (Switzerland) when no 3 was 6 weeks old and others were 1 and 3. No problems at all although obviously we were sensible about stopping regularly.

On that basis, frakkinaround, it'd be unwise to leave England all the while you have children!

Only I found the greatest challenges to my linguistic skills came when my dcs were older and could be relied upon to develop ear infections/fall off bikes/develop mysterious rashes, once we were 50 miles south of Calais. French was easy. Hungarian more of a challenge. But you sort things provided you don't start off predicting doom and despair.

Incidentally, and quite unlike in England, the motorway services through France are staffed by people who speak English (as well as other European languages) and certainly, I cannot imagine having difficulty with doctors or paramedics. But then I'm working on the basis that childbirth isn't an illness.