There are a number of reasons why it might be the right time to do it, is all I think we’re saying–having an infant doesn’t necessarily reduce the desire to go on a vacation, and if the beach in Hawai’i is what you like then that’s where you oughta go.
I’m also going to re-iterate that it really depends on the baby. I’d take Mini-Miss just about anywhere, but she’s a very easygoing baby and adapts well to routine changes. I have met babies who I wouldn’t take to a baby-friendly restaurant if it involved their bedtime moving by five minutes.
Yes, that’s a good point - my father’s parents and my mother’s mom all lived in the same city we did.
I was about to say then take them to a local beach than all the way to Hawai’i, but - duh - not every where has a local beach. Dangers of living on the west coast all your life…
That’s kind of where I am - I am disabled and ended up not being able to do everything I wanted while we were there. Then I see these bitty babies and think these moms chose to restrict their vacation! OTOH, maybe they are able to go there all the time and so it wasn’t that big a deal to them.
Those responses are far different than calling me a hag or whatever it was. I know I have trouble understanding the topic, which is why I ask questions!
But OTOH, I think I was able to respond without insult to you to your, er, “apparently you just don’t get it because you are not the kind of person who understands that kind of bonding” when you told me that leaving my cat behind simply couldn’t be the same thing as leaving a baby. I was extremely excited about that vacation - I’d never been to Hawai’i, I’d never been any place with just my husband for more than a long weekend. But I canceled our first plans (with his full understanding and support) because one of our dogs had new medication I needed to monitor and I knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy a vacation worrying about that. Even tho someone well experienced with dogs stays at our house when we leave. And when we finally did go, I really really didn’t want to because I was so worried about my cat, and I continued to worry about her thruout the trip. But the best thing for her was to leave her home. What I don’t get is why it isn’t the best thing for the baby.
Really? Huh. That may have been one reason why my parents didn’t take us on their long weekend trips, as they tended to go to Victoria, BC to stay at the Empress, go to high tea and all that. Perhaps kids weren’t allowed then. They did start taking us camping when we were both old enough that my mother wouldn’t have to be spending the whole time taking care of us. The first motel I remember staying in I think I was 12, so maybe by then I was old enough to be permitted to stay there?
Yeah. The drive from Seattle to LA and back is not one of my more favorite memories…
Yes, that is another place I just don’t get as a destination for children. It makes slightly more sense to me than Hawai’i since it is generally cheaper to do Vegas, but good lord why would you pay the money to stay in a casino with children of any age??? To me, the whole purpose of staying in the casino is so you can stagger drunkedly back to your room at 3 am after having spend the last four hours on the blackjack tables - I really hope parents aren’t planning on doing that! :eek:
You can still take the kids to Circus Circus and have a pool to swim in if you stay at an off strip place, it’ll be cheaper and the kids will be much less likely to get thrown up on or something.
That was directed specifically at CairoCarol who seemed to be saying that a mother would take a bitty baby to Hawai’i because it would make her memories of the event better.
I’m another who just kept on keeping on once kids came along. If a Hawaiian vacation had been on the table when they were wee babies, for sure we’d have packed them along. And as someone who went jogging with a baby stroller almost every day when they were infants (I still pack the 2 year old into one for a run if I can’t catch a solo run) I can say that going for a run in Hawaii sounds like Heaven, and I’d have thought nothing of a baby joining me. I agree about Vegas, and also that it would be weird to just take an infant to an exotic locale simply for the infant’s sake, but definitely in my family now and when I was growing up, this doesn’t seem weird at all.
An additional agreement with whoever said sure, it won’t be as free and easy as an adult only venture, but if my choice is caring for my kids at home or in paradise, mark me down for paradise, please.
As it happens, my wife and I just took a weekend break this last weekend, and brought our 18-month-old with us.
Why did we do this? Well, going somewhere fun sounded more fun than not going somewhere fun. Going somewhere fun even with the added hassle of bringing the baby along was still more fun than staying at home. Our nearest family is roughly 3000 miles away, so leaving her behind wasn’t an option. Frankly, even if there had been someone nearby that we trusted, I don’t think we would have been able to relax and enjoy ourselves being that far away from her.
We took her to a few places she wasn’t interested in, and she behaved herself, though we did have to move through them a little faster than we liked, but hey - that’s parenting. We also took her to a beach where she ran around like a maniac for a couple of hours straight*. Even though she won’t remember it, she still had a damned good time, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her have a damned good time.
A lot depends on circumstances, and beach vacations with babies can make a lot of sense.
We went to St. John, USVI when our sons were 12 months and three and a half. My inlaws had rented a house there and invited us down. They also invited one of my husband’s sisters, whose daughter was a toddler.
Pros:
We live in south Florida, so the flight was short.
My inlaws paid for the house rental, so the trip was relatively inexpensive.
We got to spend a week with family we don’t see often, including a cousin close to my sons’ age.
Built-in babysitting!
My kids love the beach.
The vacation was kid-friendly in that we stayed in one house and drove to nearby beaches.
We like spending time with our kids and with our extended family.
Cons:
Unless you are a terrible curmudgeon, you will be hard-pressed to find one. Was it harder than going without kids? Yes. But the whole POINT was to go WITH the kids. We had an amazing time.
Traveling with anyone else, no matter who, involves accomodating their wishes and needs. It’s just sometimes a different set of wishes and needs with babies than with adults.
As has been said, not taking a vacation with a baby could well mean not taking a vacation for several years, for a family with more than one child. So you do the best you can, accomodate where necessary, and work it out.
As for parents in years past not taking their kids along, I think that might be more personal to your family, with possibly a bit of confirmation bias in your memories, than it was typical of the time.
But then, too, it’s easier to travel in general than it used to be. There are places to eat all over, it’s easier to get from here to there, cars are more reliable, such things as that. That could have a lot to do with it.
In the judgment of many parents, they baby will be far MORE “thrown off” by having mommy/daddy abruptly disappear than they will be thrown off by the other changes in routine involved in vacation.
That’s not necessarily true - sez I, who have moved internationally with cats 7 times - but it is a red herring anyway. I was speculating on what “danger” you saw to you cat, and wondered if it was putting the cat into the cargo hold. Okay, this is not the danger you were talking about. What danger were you referring to?
Crowds and germs happen everywhere, not just on vacation. Some parents trust themselves to keep their baby safe even in unfamiliar surroundings.
Okay, I’ll grant you that - I am not you and therefore I can’t ever really know how you feel about your pets. By the same token, you are not those parents who are taking their kids on vacation and you can’t really know how THEY feel about their children.
But you found a way to have them cared for in your absence. My point is that it is likely to be very difficult for parents, unless they have loving extended family nearby, to find extended care for an infant.
Anecdotally, one of my buddies just bombarded my facebook with a bunch of pictures of his 8-month-old sleeping next to her reading mom under a beach umbrella next to a pile of sand and a dirty kiddie shovel. Having the kidlet along is certainly making HIS memories better.
This is very well said. Really, little babies aren’t going to remember anything you do with them, so why not just keep 'em in a cardboard box til they’re 6 and then you can start doing stuff with them to build up those fun, happy memories.
When my youngest was around a year, I took the kids to the beach for the afternoon. The 4-year-old made a friend and was building sandcastles, and the little one and I had a fabulous giggly time chasing and splashing at the edge of the water. He fell exhausted and content into my arms for a cuddle at one point and gave me an extra squeeze, and the mom of my daughter’s sandcastle buddy remarked, “You know, he won’t remember this day, but part if him will always remember these moments where he feels perfectly happy and loved and alive.” I think that is very true. Yes, I think those moments more often than not are the everyday peekaboo in the kitchen, stories in bed, tickles in the grocery cart, but I also think that being part of a family that is active, curious, and vital also plays a part in building a foundation of security and happiness. Of course I don’t mean there’s a need to take your kid to exotic locales (and certainly I don’t think they get any kind of cultural education from museum exhibits or the opera) but the notion that something is only beneficial to a kid if they will have clear memories of it later is silly.
I know that wasn’t really the OP’s point, more why spend the money on something neither the kid or the parents will fully enjoy, but I think those families are getting more out of it than you think.
That’s a bit different than going to somewhere expensive (are the Virgin Islands expensive?), staying in a hotel or condo and doing touristy things. What you describe sounds like a very nice vacation not only for the kids but for the moms too, with that built in babysitting.
Ah. Brand new babies are more aware of their surroundings than I thought. Are they also aware that they are in someplace completely different and do they get anything out of it?
Well, flying from one US state to another is not international - as I understand those laws, I can’t even take my service dog in the cabin. No, the danger that I would see taking a cat on a vacation is the possibility of losing it, since cats don’t tend to come when they are called, particularly if they get outdoors. I wasn’t saying that the dangers to a cat on vacation are the same as those to a baby.
So, those parents that insist on hand sanitizers and all that for a normal baby are overreacting?
And, I addressed this either in my OP or right after. I get that the mother may not want to leave her kid(s) behind while she goes on vacation. What I didn’t get was taking a new baby all the way to Hawai’i.
OK. But it still doesn’t seem to explain why they needed to take these babies right then. OTOH, some people have said that the bitty baby stage is probably easier than, say, when they are toddlers but even then the Hawai’i part confused me. I suppose it’s possible that every couple I saw with a tiny baby had enough money that going there wasn’t as big a deal to them as it was to me.
Look, if you want to be sarcastic, fine, but be consistent. Sometimes you seem to be saying “it is stupid to take a baby on vacation because babies aren’t aware of their surroundings” and sometimes you seem to be saying “one reason it is stupid to take babies on vacation is because the change in routine will upset them.”
As it happens, yes, I think the literature supports the contention that from a very young age babies are aware of whether they are with a consistent primary caregiver or not. This is one of the reasons for taking a baby along on a vacation.
I have never said that babies “get something out of” going on vacation, though I commend Elret’s beautiful and persuasive post in that regard. For me, it is more about the parents. If a couple can afford a trip to Hawaii and will benefit from the R&R, more power to them. If that couple has an infant, chances are it will be much easier and less stressful for everyone involved to bring the baby along, for reasons that have already been well discussed upthread. You say people should wait, but why? What if they plan to have 3 or 4 kids? Are you saying they should forgo vacations for a decade? Parents don’t become automatons when they have kids: they still have ideas, feelings, and the ability to appreciate life.
That blanket statement, like so many blanket statements, is not true. The correct answer is long, but the short version is: it depends on the airline, the destination, how many animals are scheduled for the flight in question, and the animal import laws.
You compared taking a baby on vacation to taking a cat on vacation. I said “it’s not the same thing at all.” Glad we agree.
Yes. Did you see lots of frantic hand-sanitizing occuring around vacationing babies in Hawaii? Because if you want to shake your head in dismay at them, I’ll gladly join in with you.
Possibly. Or maybe they have friends/relatives in Hawaii. (By random chance, I personally have both, believe it or not.) Or maybe they just don’t find traveling with babies to be all that difficult.(*) Or maybe dad was just diagnosed with a progressive illness and if they wait until the kid is older to travel, he’ll be too sick to go. Or maybe mom won airline tickets in a raffle, but the offer expires in three months. Or … maybe just anything. You as an outsider can’t really know.
(*) You mentioned that you saw moms looking harassed, and that is a point that I think bears addressing. First of all, being a parent involves a certain amount of being stressed out/tired/uncomfortable. Staying home vs. visiting Hawaii doesn’t change this. It is entirely possible that mom (or dad) would rather be stressed and harassed in Hawaii for a couple of weeks in winter than in Maine. At least she’ll be warm, enjoying the scenery, and having nice meals out.
I think you are reading far more into what I’ve posted than what is there.
However, they should still modify their lives to provide well for their children, and I wasn’t aware that one could take a new baby on a flight for several hours, to a completely new place, doing things that most likely disrupt it’s schedule daily, for a week or so and it wouldn’t have any problem, or much of one. I was given to believe that new babies are delicate that needed familiarity and routine.
Also, my questions are not in regard to babies on vacation in general, they are on babies in Hawai’i in particular. Taking a baby there is much more involved than, say, taking it camping.
Well, yes, there are some times that it doesn’t apply, but given that I care for my cat do you really think I’d be on an airplane that required I put her in cargo? The short version is, if one cares and plans at all, the cat rides in the passenger compartment.
Actually, no.
There didn’t seem to be near as much hand-sanitizing in Hawai’i in general as there is here.
Yes, and I mentioned this early on, in my OP if I remember right. However, given the sheer number of babies I saw while there I really doubt that even a majority of them fell under any of these scenarios.
It wasn’t winter and Hawai’i costs a hell of a lot more than going out to dinner in Maine. (Actually, that is one place I don’t remember seeing babies, but we tend to go to dinner late, not that it matters at home.) This is why I don’t get it - why spend all that money and effort when it’s a given that you are going to be stressed out/tired/uncomfortable? Perhaps because I wasn’t able to get there myself until age 53, I am placing more importance on a trip to Hawai’i than most folks do.
A lot of parents I know go on holiday when the babies are quite young because the mother is still on maternity leave. Babies also don’t cost extra on planes and in hotels or almost anywhere else. Many people have also got used to going on holiday every year, so aren’t going to stop just because they have a baby.
Small babies are pretty portable, anyway. You can take them to a lot of places that aren’t suitable for toddlers and children, especially if they’re the type of baby who’ll sleep happily in a stroller. Yes, babies do benefit from a routine, but you can keep a lot of that routine going even when you’re in a different place, because the core of their routine is you.
Newborns require constant care and attention and, in particular, feeding, but they don’t particularly care where it’s delivered. They can sleep pretty well any time, in any environment. It’s when they get a bit older that kids get picky about sleeping at just the right time, and start to care about the environment beyond the arms of their carer.
It wasn’t until our daughter was a toddler that we started adapting our holidays and travel to meet her needs. And it was a while later again before that impacted us to the point of influencing our choice of holiday destinations.
If you want to go to Hawai’i, and you have a newborn, there’s no reason why that would make you choose to go somewhere else instead.
Well, based on many answers in this thread, it appears you’ve been misinformed. In fact, you can indeed take new babies on a flight for several hours, to a completely new place, doing things that most likely disrupt their daily schedule for a week or so, and they won’t have any problem. Not counting the anecdotal support offered by many in this thread, I know this to be true from three sources: (a) the extensive reading I have done about child care; (b) witnessing my many friends who have traveled successfully with tiny children; and (c) traveling myself with our infant. My son had taken over 100 plane flights by the time he was 5. He’s now 13 and shows no signs of having been harmed by the experience.
Are there families whose infants don’t adapt well to travel while they are small? I’m sure there are, and I hope and expect that most parents recognize this and don’t attempt elaborate vacations with their infants. But for many families, it works just fine.
Why do you refuse to believe that it is possible/preferable to go on vacation (to Hawaii or anywhere else) with babies in tow, when people who are in a position to know (the PARENTS) tell you that it is true? You correctly pointed out that I cannot really know what your feelings are with respect to your pets - I backed away from my assumptions in that regard. Can you not back down yourself and understand that the families involved know more than YOU do about what works for them? Or do you really think that you, an outsider and apparently one who has never raised a child, know more about how to take care of an infant than the people who are actually the caregivers know?
Actually, I would find it much tougher to go camping with an infant than it would be to hop a flight and stay in a nice hotel on Oahu or Maui, but that’s just me. I’d prefer to have modern plumbing, refrigeration, convenient diaper disposal, and ready access to a drugstore selling diapers and talcum powder. If other parents find camping trips with infants to be manageable, they can certainly do it, and I’m not going to second guess them.
Let’s forget about the darn cargo compartment, shall we - I raised a question about it because it seemed at the time it might be pertinent. Your answer suggested that it is not. I’ll admit I kept talking about it because I couldn’t resist the opportunity to point out that you, like all of us, can conceivably be misinformed from time to time. But even if one or both of us understands every last airline regulation, quarantine law, and pet transport procedure for every country in the world, it is proving irrelevant to this thread. We don’t want to put babies or cats into the cargo hold, we can agree on that much.
You question has been throughly answered. We know you “don’t get it.” Some logical explanations have been attempted, and you apparently don’t find them valid. Fine - you don’t understand why people would vacation in Hawaii with a baby. Now, if you want to come out and say “these people are bad parents, they have no business going to Hawaii with an infant,” please come out and say so and I’m sure plenty of posters will be glad to discuss that proposition.
If, on the other hand, all you have to say is that you are still simply mystified, then I think we’ve arrived at the point in this thread where it is clear that you won’t ever understand. You were given the real, true answers, and they did not make sense to you. Which is fine - people do stuff I don’t get all the time! - but just live and let live, y’know?
Yes, exactly, it was a very nice vacation for the kids and the moms (and the dads).
I’ve never been to Hawaii, so maybe I’m completely off base comparing the two, but I was assuming that beach vacations are similar wherever you go. The touristy things we did included going to the beach, snorkeling, swimming in the pool, hiking in a national park, shopping, eating in restaurants and visiting a tourist attraction or two.
Renting a house in St. John for a week costs about $3,000, then you have car rentals, food expenses, flights, etc. I imagine Hawaii is a lot more expensive, but if people have the money or the opportunity or the family to visit, as we did, why not go?
This is probably the crux of it. I know more than a few middle class couples who deliberately drive ancient cars or choke down public transit specifically so they can afford to go to Hawai’i (or the equivalent) every year or two. From my hometown, a week hotel stay and airfare in October is $1500/person right now without even shopping around (I just punched it into Orbitz), so basically if I didn’t have a new car I could afford to do that once a year and still have a few thousand left over.
If that’s where you go every year, then it might not seem like a huge deal to add an infant to your travel plans.
I’m late to the game, but it sounds like your family was comprised for four kids, two adults? I can kind of understand why your parents may have thought leaving you (or a couple of you at a time) at home might have been easier, depending on how close in age you were. Meeting everyone’s needs can be difficult at home; meeting everyone’s needs when your kids are out of sorts and may have to wait for attention can be exponentially moreso.
That said, I’m all for vacations with young kids. I know they won’t get as much out of it as I will, but I enjoy a change of pace every once in a while and would prefer not to have to wait 7 years to get one. Plus, my mom is an alcoholic, my dad is uninvolved with my family (my five year old has seen him all of four times in his life) and the rest of our family is overseas. So leaving them with someone isn’t an option.
Additionally, my son has about 3.5 years on his sister. There are some kid-friendly things I’d like him to have an opportunity to do sooner rather than later before he’s more involved in academics and things like summer sports and activities of his own, and I don’t want his sister’s age to prevent him from doing them. Since I can’t leave her with relatives, she’s part of the package. Parts of traveling with them aren’t fun, airplane landings especially, but on the whole it’s worth it and I’m glad I do. It’d be nice sometimes to leave them and travel with my husband alone, but again, not an option.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, I’m 35 and my mom never took a vacation without me and my sister. The only time I can remember mom having us spend the night at a grandparents’ house without staying was when I was visiting my dad and his parents as part of their custody arrangement or if she was going to be out really late at night (which was extremely rare) and couldn’t find a sitter and didn’t want to wake us up by dragging us out of bed to take us home.
