My grand ambition is to be a travel writer. I live to travel, so it’d be sweet for travel to pay me back by, well, paying me. Maybe someday. Accordingly, here is my first attempt at travel writing.
My parents’ fortieth anniversary was this year, which is a remarkable achievement for our time. Actually, it’s a remarkable achievement for any time, since not so long ago people would just die instead.
We celebrated by treating ourselves to a vacation, a four-day cruise to the Bahamas. We took my parents too. Which is why it was only four days, and on the Motel 6 of cruise lines. I may be impressed by my parents’ record-breaking marriage, but they didn’t exactly raise me to be a real estate tycoon. And I don’t travel well with my parents. My mother is a bit, I dunno, unobservant, so I’m constantly telling her where to go so she doesn’t get lost. Not a role I enjoy. My dad wavers between taking control and sitting back to let you take over — which means when he’s not calling the shots, he’s judging. Always, always judging. So four days seemed like a perfectly manageable stretch of time.
But I am a warm-weather whore: I’ll do anything to be in the sun, near a beach, wrapped in a blanket of hot, steamy air. So I foolishly suggested we stay in Fort Lauderdale for a week after the cruise. Or so I thought (that it was foolish, I mean). And then Cookie got sick.My mom’s a nurse, which means that she’s bitter and jaded, and that all throughout my childhood, whenever I hurt myself, all she’d do is say, “You’ll live.” But it also means that when your precious child is sick for the first time ever and you’re stuck in the middle of the ocean and you’re hesitant to test the limits of your health insurance by engaging the $150/hour cruise nurse, she’s handy to have around. If only to tell you, “She’ll live.”
Cookie’s first puke ever! And second…and, well, twelfth. Moments of characteristic vitality and joy in between. Then the dehydration kicked in, and she started to fade. She quickly learned that anything that went in came out, so she refused to eat or drink anything, including Pedialyte. The only thing she would touch was trusty old Mum. And so I nursed, and nursed, and nursed. And by the time we were back on land, she was back to normal. (I, on the other hand, puked on the beach in Nassau, and then Cookie’s dad got sick, and then my mom got sick, but fortunately it was only a 24-hour bug for us adults.)
But by then, my hard-fought three-a-day nursing schedule (morning, Coronation Street, bedtime) was toast. Any time she wanted it, she’d scream bloody murder until she got it. Including in the middle of the night, at least twice. (Yay, back to sleep training. And directing evil thoughts towards Cookie’s dad as he snores through her 4 o’clock screamfest.) She’s 18 months old, for crying out loud. I can’t go back to every three hours. Ha, every three hours—what a joke…
A couple of weeks after our adventure on the high seas, we headed to Cancun for a wedding. Health had been restored, nursing had tailed off a bit…and then a new tooth began to make its appearance. After we booked the day-long excursion to Chichen Itza: a 2-hour drive, plus stops for shopping and swimming, there and back, and a 2-hour stroll in the blazing sun. But I was so excited to be getting off the resort, I didn’t care.
A friend of mine once flew to Vancouver with her son, who was under one year at the time, and he nursed the whole way there. A five-hour flight from Toronto, I believe? I don’t remember; I used to be able to zone out on flights. Cookie is an experienced and relatively well-behaved flier, but I am now counting down the minutes on every flight. Anyways, I didn’t believe it was possible to breastfeed for five hours straight, but trust me, it is. Cookie nursed all the way to Chichen Itza, between every little stop we made, and all the way back. And then all evening. Agonizing nipple pain, not enough food in the buffet (which I couldn’t get to anyway), desperation when I ran dry. Where had we been again? Oh right, one of the seven wonders of the world. Whatever, ancient Mayans. My heart is ripped out of my chest every day.
Travel Lessons Learned
* You can find Pedialyte anywhere. They even sold it at the resort in Cancun. (Apparently they know more than they’re letting on.) But that doesn’t mean your kid will take it.
* If you’re going to take your sulky, teething toddler to see the wonders of the Mayan world, go to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, where you can make a quick getaway if you need to (even better if you happen to live in Ottawa), and the single guy next to you in the van isn’t going to cram his headphones into his ears and hunch down into the seat, making you feel needlessly guilty when your kid makes the slightest peep.
* Breastfeeding is your best travel friend. I’ll probably continue until Cookie is two or she decides she’s done, whichever comes first, but I definitely was continuing it until we got through these two trips. The only way I get any peace on the plane is to nurse Cookie into sweet sleep, and it works almost every time. Those poor suckers who look heartbroken when they realize they’re stuck beside the baby end up loving us both by the end of the flight. And if it weren’t for breastfeeding, Chichen Itza would have been even more torturous and brutal. So if you can, I heartily recommend breastfeeding for travel, or any, purposes. If you can’t, I totally understand. Don’t listen to the haters.
-East End Mama
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