“A babymoon is a vacation you take with your spouse before you have your baby – usually in the second trimester. It’s the last hurrah before baby enters your world”
I get the idea of the babymoon, right destination and more importantly timing during the pregnancy could make for a most relaxing holiday before a baby comes along to rock your world!
However I’ve never had a babymoon even though I’m on my 4th pregnancy.
We did try before my 1st to do a last adults holiday. We saved hard once we decided we were going to start a family to get ourselves on an all inclusive holiday to Mexico. I fell pregnant right before. Trimester 1 symptoms the whole time, no alcohol, no appetite and some very early nights were how we spent that holiday! Not exactly what we had planned.
Pregnancy no.2 we had a baby already and I wasn’t ready to leave her.
By pregnancy no.3 we had actually done a few adult only mini breaks thanks to family helping with the girls and didn’t feel the need to do a ‘babymoon’.
Pregnancy no.4 I would have loved a babymoon but we were starting from scratch with buying baby items and paying for healthcare this time round so did not plan anything.
Thanks to help from family though with baby items and a work bonus for me we did manage to get enough cash together for a family holiday in the North Carolina Mountains. I wanted a break for the kids from the pools and the heat before they headed back for another school year.
What I didn’t realise was this would end up being our babymoon! A Hill family babymoon.
On the journey up to the mountains the kids happily played tablets, listened to podcasts, read and coloured for 6 hours. Leo did some particularly entertaining karaoke from the back seat!
I started to think how this journey wouldn’t be possible for at least another year once the baby was born. From past experience road trips much over 2 hours were a no go with screaming babies and feeding schedules to contend with.
As the weekend went on we were doing more & more activities that we won’t be doing again for a while.
Our 1st full day on holiday is a great example – 12 hours of activity with just a quick pit stop to change to swimwear and back again.
We went blueberry picking and gem mining in the morning then popped into a local town to look round the shops and have a nosey at the model railway. You know with a baby this would all take double the time once you’ve added in feeding and changing breaks.
Then a 1st for us all – river tubing. Kids have to be at least 42inches to do this. So a 5 year wait until we do this again as a family. The particular river we tubed down was not the lazy river we expected but more a combination of lazy and rapids. The kids were actually pretty terrified by the end of it 😂
When I mentioned it was good we’d tried it as would be our last chance for a while, the kids all agreed they would much rather have a baby brother than do that again! I also will be happy bot doing that again as I managed to get stuck on a rock bruising my tailbone in the process!
We then went on to a horse show with pony riding, a carousel and a very late dinner in a noisy 50s diner. It could be done with a baby but obviously would involve lots of feeding breaks and the potential for that dreaded over tiredness when baby is taken out of their routine.
The whole weekend the kids were all acting grown up. Sleeping when they were told to, dressing and feeding themselves, occupying each other allowing Rob and I a break too. We were doing simple things that I know will become more difficult again for a moment of time – eating in a restaurant without tears, a quick run into the supermarket, a late evening dip in the water.
I didn’t intentionally plan for this but kept getting this feeling that I should enjoy these moments now because it will all change. A good change I know, but still as with my previous pregnancies there is that fear of throwing the current routine and lifestyle out the window to carve ourselves a new one.
I talked to the kids about how things will be different once the baby is born. The unanimous response is we look forward to it in exchange for another baby boy!
This last minute holiday will definitely be a special set of memories for me. Our last one with our 3 kids before we move onto the Adventures as a family of 6.
Brummie mummy stateside 