It helps if you stop thinking of it as leaving her alone. After all, it’s not like you’re putting down an extra bowl of kibble and having the neighbors look in every couple of days to make sure she’s not dead. She’d be with the two people who, after you and your husband, love her most in the world. Letting her spend special no-parent time with them will be good for all five of you. You guys get time to focus on your relationship, they get to spend more time with her, and Baby Bead gets that special bonding with her grandparents that just doesn’t happen when Mom and Dad are around.
That last one is, I think, really important. The people I know who have good relationships with their grandparents as actual people rather than just their grandparents…those relationships didn’t form during family visits, but during one on one time. It’s when Mommy’s not around that Grandma stands you up in a chair and lets you bake cookies (and lick the beaters right before lunch), lets you grub around in the garden without fussing about you getting dirty, and teaches you how to tie your shoes. That’s when Grandpa drills some holes in the top of a jar and helps you catch lightning bugs, shows you what the steering wheel and gearshift in the car do, and gives you an old tie he doesn’t wear any more to cut up and make saddle blankets for your Barbie horse. A lot of my acquaintances have kids growing up who don’t have those sorts of memories of their grandparents because Mommy can’t bear to leave them “alone” for any length of time, and it makes me sad. I feel like those kids are being cheated out of something precious.
It’s hard leaving them the first time or two, but putting that time off doesn’t make it any easier. Besides, gritting your teeth and doing what’s best for her even when it hurts is what being a good parent is all about. There will be many, many things down the road that you’ll have to either do or stand back and do nothing because it’s best for her that will be much harder than this. This leaving her overnight thing, think of it as practice.
And it probably would help if you did practice with a few single-night outings before your trip. It won’t make any real difference to her, most likely, as she’s still at that age where they accept whatever’s there as just how things are. But I think it would make you feel a lot better. And if it’s any comfort, my niece has spent every other Saturday night since she was 2 months old with my parents–by the time she was a year old, she was trying to pack her own suitcase on Saturday mornings.
Just make sure your in-laws have a video camera handy, in case she takes her first steps while you’re thousands of miles away.
I kid, I kid! My wife and I did practically the same thing when our oldest was a year old - went to the Bahamas for a week and left her to be spoiled by her grandparents. All five people involved had a wonderful time.
So why on Earth is “Rio by Duran Duran” the 4th related video on your youtube link?
In seventeen or eighteen years, she will be out of your house. Your spouse, on the other hand, will not (if all goes well). Ir never hurts to keep in practice for those times.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - If you decide not to go, can I have the ticket?
My parents have been watching the kids (and the grandbeagle) while we go on couples vacations since the babies were born. The girls are now 17 and 15. In fact, they watched them all in January when we went away to St. John for a week. Woo hoo! They are much closer to their grandparents than I was or there cousins are. And we have a ridiculously good time getting away.
I’d test drive leaving her with Grandma for a night first, if you haven’t already.
And, of course, don’t forget to leave a notarized Authorization for Minor’s Medical Treatment or Limited Medical POA with your parents since you’ll be out of the country. (Yeah, I know you’re a lawyer.) My aunt and uncle went out of the country and their son (age 17) was involved in an accident. They’d left a signed note authorizing treatment, but the hospital wouldn’t accept it because it wasn’t notarized. It wasn’t pretty. The hospital saved his life, of course, but wouldn’t set his broken thigh bone until they were able to fax the necessary paperwork.
Um, maybe regarding an older kid, but regarding a one year old, this is total, unmitigated bullshit.
Drain Bead, I’m not telling you not to go. As long as you do some practice visits to wean her from having you around all the time, I’m sure you’ll all be fine.
However, let me be the lone voice giving you permission not to go. I know that I would not feel comfortable going in such a situation, as much as it would kill me to give up the free trip. I would be worried and miserable, and it is OK and normal to feel that way when you are mothering an infant. Biology does not intend for us to separate from a baby that young, and that it causes a lot of stress is not unreasonable. Don’t let other people tell you you shouldn’t feel that way or you need to get over it. If you want to get over it, that is fine - your baby will miss you but will recover. But it is perfectly valid, not neurotic or smothering, to say, “Thanks, but I don’t feel comfortable leaving my baby.”
Sorry for the rant, but I see so many new moms whose relatives or friends put enormous pressure on them to distance themselves from their babies in some way, and they are really distressed because they absolutely don’t want to, but feel like they are wrong or mental for feeling that way.
By all means, go if you want to. I think at age 1, a weekend-long separation will be OK, if you are feeling up to it. But if you’re not feeling up to it, that’s cool too. I do get tired of seeing people say things like, “You need to take a weekend away from your baby.” No, you don’t. If you want to, fine. But you don’t need to.
Definitely regarding an older kid, because of all the times a parent has to bite her tongue, sit on her hands, and let a child fail or succeed on her own. Parents who can’t separate themselves from the kid can’t manage that one, and it’s a bad deal.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not wanting to distance yourself from an infant, per se, but my personal experience is that people either start spending the occasional night away from their kid well before that clingy, mommymommymommy stage starts around 20 months or so, or they wait until the kid is school-aged. There doesn’t seem to be anything in between, at least not that I’ve seen in real life. My concern is that in the families who leave it till school age, that first few nights seems to be infinitely harder on everybody.
There may be some other common factor at work with the various families, something that would make the separation easier for some families even if they left it later and harder for others even if they did it sooner. But even as a kid I could tell which of my friends never spent the night/weekend with grandparents or other family–they were the ones who wanted the light left on, wanted to call their parents multiple times, or started crying in the middle of the night wanting to go home. I always felt really bad for them.
I actually never would have thought of the POA. These are the things that don’t occur to you when you’re new at the whole parenting thing. We have our wills, living and otherwise, but the whole authorization for emergency medical care never crossed my mind. Thanks!
After all, it’s not like you’re putting down an extra bowl of kibble and having the neighbors look in every couple of days to make sure she’s not dead. She’d be with the two people who, after you and your husband, love her most in the world. Letting her spend special no-parent time with them will be good for all five of you. You guys get time to focus on your relationship, they get to spend more time with her, and Baby Bead gets that special bonding with her grandparents that just doesn’t happen when Mom and Dad are around.