Admittedly, I wasted two hours yesterday morning trying to figure out a way to travel from Los Angeles to Iceland on WOW Air during a flash fare sale. One problem: the baby does not have his passport yet.
Hindsight is 20-20 but I figured we had plenty of time to get little Augustine his passport before our spring trip to Germany. But then a $249 r/t fare to Iceland sprang up — non-stop from Los Angeles — and we were left scrambling. I have yet to see the Northern Lights and the thought of a few days taking in the Northern Lights and relaxing in Icelandic spas was extremely appealing. The Hilton Reykjavik even had a great cash + points offer available. I could fly coach 9hrs for this…
But what about the baby?
Paying a same-day rush fee for the baby’s passport would be idiotic. It would entirely offset the savings of this cheap fare. So I initially reached out to my parents to see if they were interested in taking him for a few days.
My mother, in the nicest way possible, told me to go fly a kite. My parents adore the little one — as long as they can give him back after a few hours. Isn’t that the great thing about being grandparents?
Ultimately, my parents did not refuse, it was just more of a “well, if we have to we will but please don’t make us…” sort of response. My mother “warned” me that when I was eight months old my father dragged her to Disney World in Orlando and left me with Grandma. She claimed she could not enjoy the time away because she worried about me the entire weekend.
So I looked into going later in the year, but a quick trip in May defeats the Northern Lights objective, something my wife also wanted to see. I probably would have booked it anyway, but by that time all the April/May cheap fares had been booked by others.
In the end, I let the fare sale pass. Nothing was booked.
We will return to Germany this summer for a family event and here’s my thought: a scenic return home via Greenland and Iceland. Air Greenland has an A330 from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq each day that would get us to Greenland. After some time in Greenland we could fly to Iceland before flying non-stop back to LAX on WOW Air.
Of course the baby will be with us, but if we take it easy each day it should be manageable. We can go hiking with him strapped on to us! Journeying to the land of the midnight sun is a totally different experience than darkness and Northern Lights, though, and we had talked about traveling in the opposite direction after Germany. This will not be an easy decision unless another cheap fare surfaces.
Traveling Without the Baby
I look forward to trips with my wife without the baby. I think those are not only appropriate, but vital. But a spur of the moment Iceland trip seems just a bit too much a bit too early. He’s only a few months old.
One day Augustine will see the world and I cannot wait to show it to him. At this tender age, he really cannot appreciate it and though he’s still a cheap travel companion (as a lap infant), his company on a vacation would primarily be so that we could properly care for him and avoid placing a burden on others.
I know there must be many of you with families out there. How did you do it? When was the first time you traveled with your spouse alone after the birth of your first child? I’m very curious.
So two comments, having expedited (though not same day service) Infant Passports, it seemed to take about 2 weeks this time of year. But then in both cases already had trips planned before the Babies were born, so we did as soon as we had all the paper work.
We took a 6 month old to New Zealand and Australia and we took a 2 month old (and her by then 2.9 year big brother) to Italy and then Greece.
Pre crawling babies are super easy to travel with. You just strap on and go. Once they want to crawl or walk it gets harder.
We left our son at 10 months for a long weekend, and at 15 months for a 10 day trip with my parents. Both sides enjoyed it. It’s a bit of both ability of the caregiver (grandparents or otherwise) and ability of parents to detach.
Matthew,
What about waiting for this trip until he is old enough to appreciate it? You would get a few benefits:
1. He would get a chance to appreciate it with you and your wife,
2. He’ll be old enough to have his own room (or with his siblings) leaving you and Heidi to be alone, I’m sure you would want that on a trip like this, and
3. It gives you guys a trip to take when he is older, and you won’t have exhausted everything.
Just my take. Good luck.
Just as well. No reason to torture yourself and toddler in WOW economy seats when you could get discounted economy seats on BA and UA for the same price (assuming you want reserved E+ seats and need to check a bag). These airlines work for students and backpackers, but not so good for young families on TATL or TPAC
As new parents ourselves, my wife and I have grand plans to take Ashok all over the world, but we have made the decision that there will be no flying until after the toddler stage for a variety of reasons. That being said, I’d probably suggest waiting at least until Augustine’s feeding intervals get long enough that he can make it through all or most of the flight without needing a bottle (or until he starts eating solids). The single most difficult part of road tripping with Ashok when he was 3 months old was having to get a bottle ready every 4 hours (I’ll have a blog post up about that before too long). It’s going to be a challenge while strapped into an airplane seat, when you may or may not be able to prepare his milk to a temperature of his liking, and where he may decide he doesn’t like eating in that position. My other suggestion is to start off with a shorter set of flights to see how he does, and work up from there. We gradually tried longer and longer drives with Ashok before our first overnight with him. He did really well when we finally did the big one.
Prita and I haven’t taken a trip without the baby yet. Her birthday is in March so we might try a short weekend then. He’ll be just shy of 8 months by then as a point of reference.
Our daughter was 2 the first time we took a long trip on our own. We went to BCN over New Years for a handful of days. We ended up cutting the trip short due to a family emergency at home. Up until then, we were enjoying ourselves and my wife was able to relax even though we didn’t have our little girl with us.
Sorry to say that you won’t really know the “right time” until you try and leave Augustine behind. Good luck!