Once you have had a baby your expectations for a holiday change. Or perhaps I should say that they NEED to change and it takes a little while to process and accept this as a new parent. Once you have had a baby, your requirements as a family change so completely that your old concept of what made a holiday great needs to be radically reconsidered. Our mistakes as mothers comes, I think, from still expecting that a holiday should be a break for us from our every day lives. Frankly, (and I hate to be the one who may be breaking this to you) it just isn’t.
A really great annual summer holiday to me, in my twenties, was a week or two at a beach with friends; that was pretty much all I needed, and it refreshed me sufficiently to enable me to face the coming year with a smile on my face. As a married couple before kids, my husband and I did pretty much the same thing. Camping, skiing, travelling, you name it, taking in a museum or art gallery or just lying on a beach, we were very good at holidays. Once we had kids, we foolishly believed that mantra that nothing needed to change and tried to do the same things and quickly learnt that what used to be a really restful or exciting holiday was no longer going to fit the bill.
As a mother, especially, you learn that when the kids are happy, you are happy. You learn that flying any great distance with kids is pretty hideous, from the packing (they always need far more than you ever did even when you packed a case covering every eventuality including being invited to an impromptu ball) to the airport (try entertaining two active toddlers in a crowded airport for the hour before you board, or stopping them from running through the queues at the security check) to the actual plane itself (just watch as the harried mother, smeared with vomit and chocolate chases her small renegades down the aisles begging them to go to sleep in the middle of the night whilst everyone else tuts and sighs). And once you get to your destination, you learn that all you really need is a kitchen and a washing machine and a bath and possibly a nanny… and frequently you find none of these things. Having self-catered (and let’s face it, only a very few of us can afford the Mark Warner style hols where you really get a break) many times and washed socks in the sinks for a week or two, there is no anger like that provoked in a mother when she sees her children running outside in white socks she has to scrub by hand in a sink…
A holiday suddenly becomes more of the same stuff you do every day but in a different, possibly worse equipped, home, with fewer toys and none of your friends. Kids still get up at 6am on holiday, but chances are you stayed up late with your husband and had a few drinks instead of also collapsing in to bed at 7pm. Husbands also have a horrible ability of enjoying a holiday without realising that you are still going to the supermarket (trying to find nutella and the only brand of brioche your son eats for breakfast whilst figuring out that you have to weigh all the fruit and veg before proceeding to the check out, that you need a specific coin to get a trolley and that you should have brought your own bags), cooking the meals, cleaning and tidying and washing the laundry and entertaining the children not to mention removing the nits which can still be caught (to my horror) on holiday. You still have to do all these things only you don’t have all the things you had at home to make that job just a little easier. The illusion of a holiday is quickly dispelled and I hope that you, like me, quickly reassess the merits of places like Centre Parcs (oh the horror) because your kids will have a lovely time there. I am also now deeply in favour of Kids Clubs and would book a camping holiday in a place that offers them, because although your children will always make friends at the pool, you still have to watch them to make sure they don’t drown and that is not possible whilst reading the book you optimistically packed. Kids Clubs are a way of palming your kids off with other kids for an hour or two (so you do get a rest – or in my case get to go to the supermarket without the kids) and frequently run by nubile teenagers who will babysit for extra dosh, so you can go out with your husband and have a conversation. I also generally recommend camping as a cheap holiday you can drive to (thereby avoiding the airport and the stress of travelling on a plane with small people, and enable you to pack everything you need – I once packed the microwave in the car for a two month break in France so I could sterilise bottles and defrost frozen baby puree, where we stayed in a house with no bathroom, but that is another story), as it is much more acceptable to go out to the local restaurant with filthy socks, stained beyond recognition, from a campsite than from a nice villa somewhere. Kids love camping, frequently turn quite feral there and it is a pretty easy and cheap holiday once you get the hang of it, but I’m afraid for mother, it’s not exactly restful. You can sometimes find a gaggle of like-minded people with similar aged children and take it in turns to cook meals and watch the little darlings commune stylie, but that is the pinnacle of a break for mother in my experience. We had got living in a tent down to a fine art, putting the kids to bed and sitting outside the tent with a bottle of wine and a pack of cards, huddled over the table and the lantern until midnight, sniggering like teenagers trying not to wake the little monsters…
But let this be a salutary lesson to you all: kids grow up. This summer for the first time ever, we took with us kids who no longer nap and who don’t go to bed early either (I tried to face them out a couple of times, but they have greater stamina than me and would stay up until midnight every night if we let them)… of course they go to bed at 7:30 when they are told to in term time, but on holiday you feel cruel sending a 7 and 9 year old off when they are not tired and don’t want to read (and the pay off of them sleeping in until 8 am is irresistible) but consequently you get no time to yourselves. We were never without our kids, and much that I love them, I would love just a little time alone with my husband more. By the end of three weeks, I was getting desperate for just an evening to spend with him talking without someone small telling a funny story which lasts an hour. I suppose I should be grateful that my children still want to spend time with us and that we have yet to graduate to being really embarrassing and not cool enough to be seen with. But I wasn’t sad to come home at the end of our holiday. Back to my home with the fully equipped kitchen and the washing machine and the lovely neighbours who can watch your kids for half an hour if you need to pop out, and school in the morning which means they have to go to bed and I can spend some time cuddled up on the sofa with my other half. But My Friend Sally says that pretty soon, they don’t go to bed early in term time, either, and you never get to spend time alone with your husband… make the most of it, ladies!!!
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