Why travel with a baby?

A lot of people have said that we were brave to travel so far with Kitale, when we recently visited Australia, Vietnam and Cambodia. We definitely wouldn’t call ourselves brave, as travelling is second nature to us. However people ask us why we do it, comment on how hard it must be and say they couldn’t/wouldn’t do it with their children. Yes the trip was hard sometimes and definitely different to our travels previously but that aside, it was bloody fun and frickin amazing and I can’t wait until our next trip! Anyway here a few reasons why I think you should travel with a baby.

• Quality time as a family. With no work distractions, day to day routine, computers, TV’s and in some places phone reception, we actually all focus on each other. I find that I am much more ‘present’ and give Kitale my full attention (not watching notifications ping up on my phone every few minutes) and feel we bond even more.

• Kitale made it easier to meet new people and travelling with her broke down a lot of barriers. It didn’t matter that we didn’t have a common language, one smile from Kit and they were sold. We had countless conversations on public transport and markets that we would have missed without Kit. We even got upgraded in a two of our hotels because of Kit and airport security whizzed us through the express lanes.

• I hope that we are helping Kitale adapt to new situations and also become more social. Things like staying in different places means she learns to adapt to different surroundings. As we continue to travel, I hope this gives her the patience to deal with different situations when she is older. Kitale has never been shy and in Vietnam and Cambodia that definitely wasn’t an option. Kit met so many people, from different cultures and walks of life and she absolutely loved it. In fact she found it harder when we got home as she only had Jon and I at home to entertain her!

• Seeing the wonders of Angkor Wat and cruising around Halong Bay was amazing but what was even more magical was seeing Kitale’s reaction to everything around her. Seeing her touch a stone column that is more than 900 hundreds years old and watching her mesmerised by the wake of the boat, are things that I will never forget and will love telling her about when she is older.

• Some may think us selfish, but Jon and I still want to see the world and its even better now that Kitale is here to experience it with us. When we were pregnant our biggest fear was not about sleep, it was whether we would be able to travel with a baby!