Convincing nervous wife to holiday with baby.

[BabyPapa]

So my LO is now 15 months old and we haven't left the UK since 2019 I feel like I'm climbing the walls!!!!

Discussed a holiday with the wife and she's initially agreed in a date flight and location great!

Problem now comes at the booking phase and she's using every excuse to not go onto make it impossible for us to book.

Does the accommodation have a cot...yes...hmmm well we need a travel cot because people will use the cot to keep bags and it won't be safe...

Getting from the airport well we can't get a taxi because I can't trust they will have a car seat...I can book one with a car seat...it might not be safe...ok public transport...but what if the bus crashes or how will we get all of our stuff on and off....ok hire a car...too expensive.

Honestly everything I say or do is followed up by another issue.

I know my wife's just worried and wants our LO to be safe but eughhhh.

Is there anyone one there with a guide to holidaying with a toddler that I can maybe show her or any advice on how to deal with her?

I'm so close to just saying F it and staying in the UK for 5 more years!

(Sorry this is a bit of a messy rant I'm out on a head clearing walk)

I've never suffered with anxiety I'm very much a practical thinker and know I can usually sort out any issues but it's been useful to hear from a few people with that mindset.

It's a bit eye opening for me to be honest.

Thank you to everyone that commented and posted!

We've been on two cruises with our 2yo and they've been brilliant. If you go from Southampton you have no weight limits and can take all the stuff you want (although they provide things if you want them to), don't need to deal with airports, have loads to entertain a toddler (our last one had a play room, toddler classes, a kids disco, night nursery if you wanted it) and food is easy. We still got to visit some interesting places too. Might address a lot of concerns.

i always use the travel cots provided tbh your child is 15 months not new born!

just bring your own seats

maybe you can clip your car seat to your buggy to make it a bit easier?

we have a YOYO buggy and can clip the car seat onto it - very handy

I love travel with my kids and don’t agree it’s same shit somewhere else

yes you still have to look after the child, get up early etc

but no work and no laundry or house work or cooking to do just enjoy time together and have fun with your child

seems better than.normal day to day grind to me

We’ve travelled abroad with our boys are various ages (3 months, 11 months, 22 months and 2.5 years) and we’ll be going with a 18 month old and a 3.5 year old in September.

We’ve always used a hotel travel cot, they’ve always been clean, fully functioning and had no issues with them. If she’s concerned about cleanliness then you could maybe take a cot sheet with you to put on it. Generally you wouldn’t have a travel cot in the room if you haven’t asked for one so unlikely anyone would put bags in it?

Airport transfers we’ve always used the coach transfer. Baby/toddler sits on our lap. Admittedly your wife might not be happy with this so you could take a car seat with you (Joie stages is a good, safe, reasonably priced car seat for travelling) and book a private transfer. Fit your own car seat in the transfer taxi and off you go.

i’d have a look at the TUI Blue chain of hotels, they’re specifically aimed at people travelling with young children so they have any equipment you might need there. A baby room near the pool you can go in for a cool down/nappy changes/etc. Good toddler pool, park, entertainment. We went to one in Gran Canaria (Orquida or something like that) and we’re off to one in Greece in September.

I don’t agree with the ‘same job but elsewhere’ argument, unless you don’t really enjoy holidays abroad. For me it’s not the same, it’s relaxing, I get to immerse myself in a different culture, food, art, music, etc. We’ve been on so many holidays since children, and from 10wks. Every holiday has been amazing
Totally agree. I'd have been as exasperated as OP if DH had been as difficult about going on holiday as OP's wife is.

@BabyPapa our DD is 18 months, and when we have taken her abroad one of us has driven and got the ferry/tunnel, and the other has flown. Flight to Amsterdam was absurdly quick. That way we have a car load of stuff, but DD isn’t spending a day at each end travelling. It isn’t that much more in terms of cost.

I also have anxiety and PND and you’ve had some really good advice about how to react :).

There are travel agents who specialise in holidays with babies/toddlers.
they will be more pricey but may help with anxiety knowing that they have experience with toddler holidays?
Google holidays with toddlers and I’m sure there will be lots of blog type accounts that will offer useful info and helpful to-dos.

I think listening to your wife’s anxiety may help instead of just trying to problem solve it. What is the real issue behind her raising so many barriers?
(I’m not saying you don’t listen but sometimes it’s hard to open up with anxiety as the anxious person may worry their feelings/thoughts will be dismissed as the non-anxious person just doesn’t understand the reasons for the anxiety).

Thank you so much! This is such a great idea!

Appreciate it!

I have a very busy toddler and we have opted for ferry travel as well in the past two years. You can use your own car seat, bring whatever baby stuff you need (feeding chair, travel cot, etc.) and on board they have (extremely sturdy) travel cots, your own ensuite, etc. Toddler loves looking at the lorries and trains arriving on board. We always do a night sailing, so wake up and are at our destination (Netherlands/Belgium/France, etc.) There are perfectly lovely places within these countries to visit that don't require hours on end of car travel.

Try to perhaps compromise and do a shorter/less far trip than you dream of. Something that can build her confidence/reduce her anxiety, but would still give you a change of scenery. As a parent, you are so hard wired to want to protect the kids, it is easy to get carried away.

Not so much about the travel abroad, but on the topic of anxiety:

I struggle a lot with anxiety. I catastrophise and I’m always looking out for everything that could possibly go wrong. Often, if I’m expressing a worry to my partner, his instinct is to reassure and tell me that thing will never happen, or find a quick solution to one example without really hearing the underlying concern. That actually makes my anxiety worse because I feel like I’m alone in trying to prepare and risk assess.

It’s more helpful if he acknowledges my worries, even thanks me for thinking ahead so carefully, expresses some shared concern (at an appropriate level). Often that helps me to feel safe to (gradually) reduce my level of panic to match his, and I feel much more reassured that we’re going to figure this problem out together.

But maybe it’s just too much, too soon. Too different from normal life so it feels out of control. Sadly those emotions don’t respond well to logic! You sound lovely, I hope you find a holiday you’re both happy with.

I forgot to say, I hate travelling with DD solo, or being away from her whilst DH travels solo with her. It sends my anxiety into overdrive - so it definitely isn’t an easy fix. But overall I feel it’s worth it to go away, as a family, with all the things that make that easier. But your wife may not be there yet.

I think I'm a bit like this. Which is a shame because my husband loves travelling. Did your wife enjoy travelling before? I have always hated travel and found the lead up and the travel bit so stressful. Usually I enjoy myself once I'm there but before I mentally go over every single possible scenario there is. We have been abroad with our LO a couple of times now. Each time I was probably a nightmare in the lead up questioning everything my husband was doing/suggesting.
Bringing a car seat I would say is important. We have a back up car seat that we take in a car seat bag and pad it out with blankets nappies etc. I also found it helpful when we rented a car to sit next to our LO in the back. I could focus on her, couldn't see the road so easily and then couldn't back seat drive as much (lol).
Some of the travel cots in hotels are a bit rubbish and I always find they just give you a bedsheet which doesn't fit. But your LO is a bit older now so it's not the same risk as a newborn and by the time you actually travel it'll be even less. We found that we just ended up with our LO in our bed with us (but we're also not big drinkers). We also have a really light travel cot we use for UK travel which I guess you could take abroad it's just an extra thing to carry.
I think what helped me which might also help your wife is going somewhere that's more familiar to her. So we travelled to where my husband is from which meant he knew the area and could speak the language. That meant that if we had any trouble he knew how to get help and knew the good doctors.
I wouldn't make a spreadsheet I think that would piss her off. I don't find it helpful when someone tries to be super rational with me when I feel anxious because it doesn't take that anxious feeling away but leaves me feeling more detached and isolated with my own thoughts.
Each time we have travelled I have enjoyed myself once I got there so I don't agree with the posters saying how shit it is.

Thanks for the reply yeah we used to love travel. Been all over the world together over the years.

I don't know if it's me being selfish but I kinda just wanted to give her that bit of herself (and myself) back.

We both used to talk about taking our kid away when we had one.

I might quietly look for travel car seats prams and bits have a chat with her about what's actually bothering her and what we can do about it or what I can do about it..

We had some success with a company called Tots to Travel (guarantees things like pool alarms) and also getting the overnight ferry to Brittany with a cabin e.g. Portsmouth to St Malo. That hugely cuts down on the travelling (as you are hopefully asleep for a chunk of it). Brittany Ferries are very family friendly.

Hmm looks like Tots to Travel went bust a few years ago, sorry. I can recommend the accommodation we used if you pm me though (Brittany, owners have brought up 4 kids and are so helpful).

We both used to talk about taking our kid away when we had one

But the reality of having a child generally knocks a lot of those ambitions on the head.

We all think we're going to do x,y and z when our babies arrive, but we find very often that we can't.

Yes as my sister says ‘I was an amazing parent until I actually had children’

You can just take your own car seat on most planes for free. That's a non issue.

I can relate to a lot of your wife’s anxieties. I used to enjoy travelling but have found it quite stressful since having DD, now aged two. It’s still early days yet and hopefully travelling will get a lot easier when they are more mobile and car seats are less of an issue.

Maybe you can take a more proactive role in addressing her anxieties. Maybe she is finding it more stressful because she is the only one thinking about what is needed for the baby on holiday. I find my husband often doesn’t think of any of that and just expects everything to be exactly what it was like before.

If you are just doing a short transfer to the hotel and mostly staying there or only going out on foot you can probably skip the car seat. If you want to explore a bit more look into hiring a car and bringing your own (or a backup one just for travel). For getting to the airport in the UK a taxi company might be willing to take your seat and bring it back to collect you or you can drive and use airport parking (a bit pricey but convenient if taking lots of stuff).

Most hotels provide a pretty standard travel cot so it won’t have been used to store luggage or anything. That said there have been two times (one in UK and one abroad) when I haven’t been happy with it. One way to assess is to search reviews for keywords like cot, baby, toddler etc and see if people mention any concerns.

If you decide to rake your own travel cot you can take 3 items by taking a cabin sized pushchair on board the plane. Make sure it is comfortable for napping to provide more flexibility while you are there. Car seat on the pram options are not always as comfortable and can get hot due to less airflow and bring more tightly constrained.

Are you the wife?

You’ve had lots of kind and helpful replies, but I have to be blunt and say that this level of anxiety isn’t normal. if you were talking about a first born newborn, fine, but your baby is 15 months old.

How is your wife day-to-day? Is she very anxious?

Holidays are fab, even with young kids. We took the oldest to Easter Island to see the moai at that age and the youngest went to Indonesia for his 1st birthday and we wandered round the temples at Borobudur and Prambanan at 7am (that early as it was really hot later in the day). Many happy memories. If your wife is not anxious at home and it's the idea of travel that is triggering the anxiety, how about somewhere like Lisbon or Porto, where you can use a train to travel from airport to destination. There must be many other choices that have a train between airport and city. In both those places I suggest you can stay on the coast and have the best of both worlds, culture and beach. Public transport may be quite tricky if she wants to take a travel cot and all your own equipment with you though. The other posters suggestion of one driving the car is also a good call.

So we took our 18 month old twins to Spain.

My then H was very much like you and was keen to travel.

• the boy wasn't able to clear his ears on the plane and screamed for the whole 2 hour flight. We took turns rocking him up and down the aisle. It was very, very stressful.

• both of the them struggled to settle in the strange environment at night and were awake much later and woke up much earlier than they did at home. It was hard to get them to settle and without and adult in their room they screamed (we were in a self catering Spanish villa£

• the Spanish villa had a tiled floor and they were cruising at the point. They fell over a lot and the tiles meant more bruises than the carpet would have done.

• the boy turned out to have an ear infection and we had to get local doctors appointments and antibiotics. We didn't speak Spanish at all.

• they both hated the beach and would scream if you put them on sand. We went twice and then gave it up as a bad job.

I'm sure that other people manage to travel with small children. We found it so stressful we didn't go abroad again until they were 5.

We love holidays with our family but with your wife being hesitant I would wait until it’s easier. Flying with someone that doesn’t want to be in a seat is hell. Wait until they are more easy to distract and try holidays in the UK so that your wife can see just how wonderful it can be.

Take a car seat. I bet you can order a travel cot from boots and collect it at the airport boots. Or just pack one. They're pretty light and you can pay for extra baggage.

Telling her that her concerns are unfounded won't help. So find the solutions.