On Holiday with the Baby

Many couples, before having a child, convince themselves that the baby's presence won't disrupt the rhythms of their daily life and their holidays too much. It is common to think that a baby, having to adapt to the family's rhythms, should be immersed from the very start in everyone else's routines. Real-life situations, or photographs published in various magazines, seem to confirm this view, documenting newborns carried in slings, in strollers, in arms, in all kinds of crowded or busy places (restaurants, shopping malls, stadiums), on every possible means of transport (planes, boats, dinghies, even hot air balloons!!!), or taken to every latitude and exposed to every climate.

While necessity justifies some of these choices, one should not assume they cause no real distress for the baby, who, at least in the first months of life, needs to be surrounded by an environment that is varied but stable, marked above all by repetitive rhythms that help them build stable points of reference. This initial consistency is also very useful for the mother, who, in the absence of too many environmental variables, finds it easier to recognize her baby's reactions, decode their needs, and manage to meet them in a gratifying way. There is little point in worrying or complaining that the baby won't sleep, won't eat, or cries constantly, if they are not offered, at the start, a calm and serene environment, one they can learn to recognize and in which they can therefore learn to adapt. Of course, the mother too is experienced by the baby as part of this environment, in the sense that her serenity and her stability of mood is the main variable among those surrounding the child. It is what softens or intensifies the negative effects of the others, what makes it possible to weather periods of change serenely, what creates continuity when it is otherwise lacking. A mother's psychological stability makes her patient and empathetic toward her baby, and thus leads her to make choices that are attuned to the baby's basic needs. Choices about holidays, for instance, in which the baby's basic needs should come before those of the adults, in an attempt at a compromise that allows the parents too to enjoy the calm and rest that even a holiday «to the baby's scale» can offer.

Here is what Rossella has to say on this subject: «This year, planning the holidays, which I've always experienced as an enjoyable moment with my husband, was a bit more complicated and less relaxed than usual. It wasn't easy to make him understand that it would be absurd, with a daughter only a few months old, to plan the same kind of «on the move» holidays we had started doing again with our older daughter. Remembering what happened to my sister-in-law, stuck for hours with a newborn at the airport because of a strike, I ruled out any far-off destinations, to avoid both flying and long car trips. On the short trips we usually take, the baby usually falls asleep, but sometimes she screams the whole way. Like last week, coming back from the countryside, where I had gone to visit a friend. The pleasantness of that afternoon was wiped out by the anxiety of the drive home: alone, unable to soothe the baby's inconsolable crying, who perhaps had a stomachache. Better the usual quiet (and maybe monotonous) day at the park than what happened that day, which had thrown off her feeding and nap schedule too!

I told myself that if we go somewhere where our little one's routine doesn't change too much, she is calm and content, and we can count on a bit of free time, which lets us spend more time with her older sister, go for a swim, or play a game of tennis. And if there happened to be a grandmother «nearby» willing to watch her for a few hours in the evening… maybe we could even manage to go dancing once, just to remind ourselves that, besides being mom and dad, we're also two young people who still feel like having fun!