Friday, March 30, 2012

Babymoon: Great idea, terrible name

I get weekly emails from babycenter.com that remind me how far along I am (which is actually quite helpful…I tend to forget), what size fruit/veggie my baby is comparable to and provide other articles related to pregnancy. Some of these articles are good and give me great information or drive me to do further research. Others are scary or dumb. Dumb would be the ten essential maternity clothing items I need or something like that. Nearly every example was from a high-end store that cost $70-$200. Liz Lange has a great line at Target that I highly recommend, and I didn’t pay more than $20 for any single piece of clothing. (Thrift stores are also encouraged.)

Many of these emails had links to articles about what is known is a “babymoon.” I Googled the term and found this information on Wikipedia to share with you:

Babymoon has several meanings. The original meaning is a period of time that parents spend bonding with a recently-born baby.

More recently the term has come to be used to describe a vacation taken by a couple that is expecting a baby in order to allow the couple to enjoy a final trip together before the many sleepless nights that usually accompany a newborn baby. Babymoons usually take place at a resort that offers appropriate services like prenatal massage.

Babymoon can also be used for a trip taken by a couple even before they get pregnant. As long as the trip is intended to be a final romantic fling before venturing into parenthood, the term babymoon applies.

Before my search I never knew the first definition. That doesn’t really matter as none of the famed baby sites use it that way. Even before reading these articles, Andrew and I decided we would go somewhere for a few days to have one final vacation sans baby. Not that we won’t take a trip ever again without children—we will, and if you play your cards right, you might be able to baby-sit for us!

Anyway, we sort of pushed the envelope and went when I was 30-31 weeks pregnant. Ideally, you take this trip in the second trimester: no more sickness, more energy and no huge belly. We didn’t have the money at that point or the time (plus I didn’t regain energy until really close to my third trimester, only to find it disappearing once again). And while I would’ve loved to go somewhere warm, the budget dictated we could take three nights away somewhere nearby.

We headed to Vermont for a long weekend, which worked out just fine. We stayed in Huntington at a place called Windekind Farms in a studio apartment above a barn. The place was great, the owners extremely helpful and we had time to rest. We did some hiking (not enough snow this winter to snowshoe…even in Vermont), lots of being lazy and Andrew skied at Sugarbush one day. We visited one of our fave towns—Burlington—where we ate at the Skinny Pancake (yummy crepes!) and hit up some other favorite places in the small towns of Warren and Waitsfield.

So while I think the term “babymoon” is a little dumb, I definitely support taking one if you have the time/money. We even took an extra day and just stayed home with no agenda. 

Andrew enjoys seeing what objects will fit on my belly shelf...sometimes I humor him :)

some of our studio apartment: the closet on the left made me feel like I was in 
Alice in Wonderland!



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