Packing your newborn infant and your bandaged body into the car for a trip to the post office outside the city to get your baby's first passport is particularly unsettling. You're not taking your baby to the pediatrician for their first checkup. But I was aware that I needed to move quickly if I wanted to benefit from this summer, which would be the only few weeks of my life during which my new family of four would have a parent (myself) who was not working but receiving an income.

how to use maternity leave It is unusual, to say the least, to travel with a baby, especially outside of the country. As the only developed country without a federally mandated parental leave policy, the United States, a 14-week employer-paid leave is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. And with the awareness that I only had a certain amount of free-but-paid time remaining in my life, what did my freshly postpartum, slightly deranged self want to do? In addition to taking this leave as an adventure in and of itself, I intended to use it as a trial run for a lifetime of traveling with my two children.

I reasoned that if I could successfully leave the state and the country with a 6-year-old and a 2-month-old while still wearing the Band-Aid, it would give us all the confidence to do so repeatedly.

I'm one of the regrettably few Americans that earned paid parental leave. With my firstborn, however, I had to learn the hard way that spending that privileged time cooped up at home and attempting to adhere to a rigid baby routine was neither healthy for my mental state nor that of my child. And although many new parents prefer to concentrate on sleep training, I was certain that I wanted to concentrate on travel training.
We opted to seek further south and avoid the lengthy (and expensive) transatlantic flight because my partner, older son, and I had previously been to Europe in the dead of winter when I was almost eight months pregnant. It didn't take long to arrive in Belize; the place is undeveloped but safe, and since July is a rainy season, there will be less of a tourist influx and lower prices. Why not add some howler monkeys to the mix when you're already being awakened at five in the morning by a crying baby?

We left for the first domestic leg of our parental leave journey—a month in Northern California—while we awaited the 5- to 8-week expedited processing window for the infant's passport. This would serve as the family of four's traveling training wheels, I reasoned. I wanted to make sure our first trip was comparatively laid back and, most importantly, reasonably priced because the second half of our leave would be international and more adventurous. Here are the top vacation tips: house sitting and home exchanging.

I created profiles on LoveHomeSwap and TrustedHousesitters: on the latter, which normally costs around $13 per month, we showed our Nashville home to other families looking to trade. On the former, membership costs $129 per year, and we applied to be possible house- and pet-sitters. The best thing is that no cash exchanges hands between homeowners when you set up a swap or sit. We stayed in four separate homes for "free" over the four weeks we were in California with our baby and 6-year-old (minus those memberships). Yes, setting this up required months of planning, but hey, that's what pregnancy insomnia is for.

While I was on leave, I continued to receive my regular pay, and because we weren't yet in the jungles of Belize, my partner was able to continue working remotely as a web developer as usual. We did not require child care because of my leave. Our month of vacation ultimately cost us a couple of hundred dollars for site subscriptions, plus the flights for three people (baby flies for free). The cost of the rest was comparable to staying at home or maybe even less. So that we wouldn't have to transport as much gear across the nation, we hired BabyQuip to rent the baby's gear. This gave us a little extra financial wiggle room. A local mother picked up the baby gear from our last house sit in San Rafael, CA, a month after dropping it off at our first house-sit in Kensington, CA. This was a game-changer.

Although both of those house-sits were lovely, our house swap in Mendocino County was the highlight of our California vacation. From Napa, we traveled north on Highway 1 in a straight line while passing through coastal redwoods. At the Hog Island Oyster Farm in Marshall, we made a pit stop for some fresh oysters (my travel partner's father is an oyster farmer on the Carolina coast, so we frequently mingle with oystermen). The inevitable carsickness our 6-year-old experienced while traveling along that treacherous-looking coastal roadway didn't damper his spirits, though. We were fatigued when we finally arrived at our home swap, but not too exhausted to be in awe of the views of the Pacific Ocean and the waves breaking along Irish Beach right below us. I hoped that in the meantime, back at home, the family residing in our 1940s Nashville home was, if not quite gasping, then at least grinning at the neighbor playing blues guitar and the porch swing that was oh-so-southern.

The baby's passport was waiting when we returned to that southern porch following our weeks spent in the West. It was time to unpack, repack, and fly out of the country for the first time as a family of four when he was two months old. We traveled deep into the Belizean rainforest with our newborn in tow.

When traveling, especially with children, things rarely go as planned, thus our connecting flight was delayed. Our third "flying" of the day ended up being a lengthy drive into Belize's interior, almost to the Guatemalan border, because we missed our prop plane into the bush by the time we landed in Belize City, the country's main hub and former capital. We set up camp at Falling Leaves Lodge, a charming, family-run jungle lodge outside of San Ignacio.

Here, the benefits of traveling abroad with a newborn started to sink in. Nobody could resist baby Sunny's toothless smile, not the lodge employees, not our tour guides, and not random women on the dusty streets. Talk about a great icebreaker! Everyone we passed gave my kids a similar grin as they questioned how old they were and expressed wonder at how someone so small could travel so successfully.

And like the rest of us, infant Sunny adapted to life in the forest fairly quickly. Every morning we awoke in our thatched-roof hut, surrounded by toucans and agoutis that were free to roam. We had the finest guava I've ever had for breakfast, along with beans and Belizean fried jacks, both of which are surprisingly kid-friendly dishes. On one occasion, the famed Belizean band The Garifuna Collective was in rehearsal for an international tour as we poked around an old hospital that had been converted into a shabby artists' space. Another day, during the "undesirable" wet season, we went through the quiet pyramids of the Cahal Pech Maya site, which dates back to 12000 B.C.E. I was surprised to see that we had the mysterious ruins to ourselves.

Baby iguanas climbed all over us at the Green Iguana Conservation Project, which is located on the grounds of the San Ignacio Resort Hotel. We stood among a whirling crowd of Blue Morpho butterflies at the Chaa Creek Butterfly Farm, farther into the jungle, while they gradually realized we weren't a threat and started to land one by one on our heads and shoulders. Who among the four of us, as blue iridescent wings gently encircled us, seemed to be truly at peace? The newborn.

But it wasn't all mangos and sunlight. The phrase "nap schedule" started to seem ridiculous, we were hot, and while we were in the forest, I surprised everyone by getting my first postpartum period. The worst part was when we realized that our infant was going to quickly consume the numerous cans of formula we had brought along with us; we started searching different stores for more but to no avail. In the aisle of a seaside grocery shop, I found myself sobbing in relief when I finally spotted a can.

But in all honesty, I learned in that aisle (as a few worried Belizean grandmothers watched me) that terrible challenges like nearly running out of your baby's primary food supply aren't only common during travel; they're common when parenthood. And if parenting has taught me anything, it's how to be resourceful under pressure, how to roll with the punches, and how to recognize that whatever stage you're in right now is only passing. These are, strangely enough, also the three most crucial things that my 20 years of travel have taught me.

Travel is undoubtedly a tremendous privilege. However, many people are prevented from looking for alternatives that make travel less expensive, whether that be home swapping, house-sitting, snagging deals for the "undesirable" rainy season, or simply tacking vacation onto the more important work or family obligations for which you're already traveling.

The issue of priorities is another. I am aware that many parents do not wish to clothe their children exclusively in hand-me-downs, as I do. Many people don't want to commute around town in an old, damaged Ford as I do. I've never enrolled my 6-year-old in pricey flute lessons or a chess club, and I never will. But he also created and performed his pan flute in collaboration with a musician and mythologist we met in Santorini, and in the souks of Marrakech, he defeated a rug dealer at chess. He enjoys how we live, and I've seen how being exposed to various cultures has increased his openness, compassion, patience, curiosity, and selflessness. and excellent at learning foreign languages. Of course, I want my second (and last) child to have the same depth of knowledge and experience.

We had planned to spend our final days at Umaya Resort on the Placencia peninsula following the exhilarating experience of our jungle days in Belize's Cayo District. This wasn't a thatched-roof hut; instead, the resort shimmers with understated glitz that's tempered by a laid-back Belizean vibe. But to get there, we had to leave the interior and fly towards the coast in the tiniest propeller plane I've ever ridden in while clinging to our blank plastic boarding permits at a terminal that was more akin to a bus stop. has two children.

But as we took off from the forest, flying above the toucans perched in the treetops, with my infant strapped to me, I realized that overcoming all of the challenges was well worth it. And I was certain that having a two-month-old and a three-month leave wasn't just a coincidence. We could and will manage to have adventures like this as a family of four for the rest of our lives if we put our minds to it. In actuality, we've only just begun.