Living abroad with 6 month old, are we crazy?

[lifepopsicle]

We're thrilled to be expecting our first child in February 2020. My husband and I recently achieved financial independence (hurray!) and we'd like to make use of our freedom over the next few years by living in another country about twice a year for 1-3 months at a time. We're thinking about Vienna, Austria as our first destination for this experiment because it has relatively low cost of living, is very safe, has fantastic infrastructure/healthcare, and is easy to get around and communicate. We're looking at living there for about 6 weeks in July and August.

However, this is all new to us and all of the unknowns are giving us pause! People like to scare you about how much your life will change and how hard having a baby will be (some of our friends have even described weekend trips as torture...) I wanted to post here because I think of this group as both rational and adventurous. I'd love any tips or thoughts you have about traveling abroad as first time parents. Is our fear warranted? Should we wait until after the baby arrives to try to book this trip, even though we might miss out on our preferred living situation by waiting? And what can we do to prepare, both mentally and tactically?

Thanks!

 

[Freedomin5]

First off, congratulations on your first baby and congratulations on reaching FIRE!

Re: traveling abroad. No, your fear is not warranted. Our daughter was born while we were living abroad and completed her first 15-hour non-stop international flight when she was 2 months old. She’s been flying two or three times a year since birth. Your life will change a lot, but it’s not necessarily hard. It’s as hard as you make it. If you insist on traveling with your Peg Perego massive stroller system and only feeding your kid hard-to-find organic specialized formula that is only available from one store in the US and shipping the baby’s high end ergonomic cradle to the vacation destination, then describing travel with a baby as “torture” may not be that far off.

However, if you adopt a minimalistic “make do” approach, and keep your time abroad loosely scheduled, it’s actually not that bad. I will say though that I happily pay a premium for direct flights. I also happily pay a premium to get flights that depart at a decent time and land at a decent time. It’s miserable wearing a baby in a baby sling while dragging a large suitcase at midnight in a new city while trying to find a taxi to take you to your hotel and checking in with all that stuff at 1 AM.

When we travel, we used a cheap umbrella stroller that we didn’t mind getting broken during handling. We had a baby sling, and DD breastfed or ate a watered down mashed up version of whatever we ate. We made a makeshift bed for her out of hotel bed comforters and brought a very simple mosquito net/structure that fit inside a suitcase. It actually only took up 1/4 of the suitcase, so we could also fit a few diapers and all her clothes.

I would probably hold off on booking anything until after the baby’s birth. You never know what complications may arise. If baby or mommy happens to need additional healthcare after birth, you definitely don’t want to skimp or rush the healthcare just because you had a trip booked. Once baby is born and everyone gets a clean bill of health, then book flights and hotels. Or go and book ahead, but book things that can be cancelled without penalty.

[Millennialworkerbee]

Second vote, your life will change but you have more control than you think as to the degree of change.

What popped in my head reading was that you could take a 6 month old, but they very well might be crawling by then. So just keep that in mind when you pick a place (needs to be somewhat baby proofed) if you have mom friends who had babies recently ask them their opinion as you’re looking at listings. The big thing that I’m thinking of right now is that you might not want open stairs.

[Dee18]

I traveled abroad (in Asia) beginning when my daughter was 9 months old.  It was way easier then than when she was 13...an age old enough to have strong preferences (no museums), but too young to explore Paris on her own.  LOL.  I did shift my traveling once I was a parent, moving locations less frequently.  Even as a young child (about 3 years old) she liked to get to know a place, whether it was a campground or a hotel, rather than moving every 2 or 3 days like I might have previously planned.  Now a young adult, she is a great traveler herself.

[Freedomin5]

Even with baby proofing, you can find creative ways to makeshift baby proof a place. Open stairs? Drag some furniture or lay your large heavy suitcase across the top of the stairs to block baby. By the time baby figures out a way to push the suitcase aside or down the stairs it will have made a loud enough noise to alert you or to scare baby into stopping.

[lifepopsicle]

This is very helpful information! Thank you everyone. One other question I have is if you need to take an Uber or Taxi, do you need the car seat and base? Or do people just hold their babies in the car? Or do you just avoid taking car transportation at all costs?

[SimpleCycle]

I think the experience of that first year of parenting is very different for different people, and depends a lot on your baby.  Our first was a super non-sleeper, so we were really sleep deprived, but we still did a lot of things with her.  You're going to have an infant at home or an infant abroad, so the question is just if things are systematically harder abroad.  Which again, depends on the situation but doesn't seem to be the case for your trip.

We've done a decent amount of travel with our kids, including camping when they were young infants, Spain and Morocco with a 15 month old and Cuba with an 11 month old.  I totally agree with @Freedomin5, a lot depends on your style of travel and how hard you make it.  Traveling light and minimizing the baby-specific gear goes a long way toward making things easier.  In Spain and Morocco we didn't bring a stroller at all, just a baby carrier, and it worked out fine.  Cuba we brought a travel stroller and it was more useful for the 3 year old than the 11 month old.

At six months, you'll be introducing solid foods, but they don't eat much at that age and we did baby-led weaning so we fed them chunks of real food rather than pureed baby food.  And if you want to feed pureed food it should be readily available.

For car seats, it depends a lot on the country and the situation.  In Spain we avoided taxis and just took public transit.  In Morocco we arrived after the airport bus had stopped running, so we took a cab and held her in our lap.  Cuba was...well Cuba was interesting.  We didn't bring a car seat and held him in our laps because seat belts are rare in Cuban cabs, especially the old classic cars.  But we chose to take a long distance bus over a taxi when we had one long highway trip, because buses are generally safer without car seats than cars.  In Vienna with a six month old, I'd use a infant car seat and no base - just use the seat belt to install in taxis, and use public transit most of the time.

The other thing I'd consider is the timing of well visits and vaccines.  Ideally you'll get baby their 6 month vaccines before traveling, and then you don't have to worry about vaccines again until the 12 month visit.  But if the timing doesn't work out, talk to your pediatrician and they can figure something out.

Finally, see if you can make some local connections and find a babysitter to get some alone time with your spouse and explore things that aren't baby friendly.  Parenting is sort of an "always on" proposition, and it's nice to have a break once in a while.

[lifepopsicle]

Thank you for your message on living abroad with a baby. Your response is so incredibly helpful, and I appreciate you taking the time to write it!

One other question, what have you done for sleeping when traveling abroad? Do you bring a travel crib with you? Purchase one there? Or something else?

Thanks again!

[Freedomin5]

We used a baby mosquito net tent (picture below). It's like a tent made of mosquito netting. We traveled to a lot of subtropical locations, so there were lots of mosquitos, but we also found it handy to keep baby in one space. We would put it on the floor between the bed and wall (sometimes pushing the bed closer to the wall so that the tent would fit snugly between the wall and bed, and fold over a thick comforter to make a "mattress". DD didn't know how to get out of it, so it worked for us.

It's easy to disassemble and reassemble, and because it's made of netting, it is easy to pack and doesn't take up much space. It comes in different sizes so we bought one that fit in her crib and used it at home to ward off the mosquitos when we were not traveling.

[Linea_Norway]

In what country will you be living officially? That is the place where you have your health insurance, I suppose.
Just make sure that if you want to be allowed to use the Austrian health system, that they want to cover your expenses som way or another. Either through your American insurance, or through your Austrian green card and whatever health system they have over there.

[former player]

First time I've ever heard Vienna described as "low cost"- the euro must have devalued more than I thought.

Babies are born and brought up all over the world, including Vienna, you will be fine.  For a six week stay in Vienna you will need travel health insurance, unless you have EU citizenship and it entitles you to coverage as a visitor rather than resident.

When booking accommodation, some will already have cribs or will be able to provide them at a small fee.  You might want to choose based on the chance that your baby is a screamer - pissed off neighbours, or the fear of pissed off neighbours, would not be conducive to a pleasant holiday.  Also, it's a long flight and a screaming baby would mean a plane full of pissed off fellow travellers, so it might be worth investigating solutions for that.

[lifepopsicle]

Ha! You're right @former player. I should clarify that I mean low cost *for western Europe.* In my research on housing, I found it to be about a quarter of the cost of living in Geneva or anywhere in Switzerland, and about half the cost of Amsterdam or Munich. I was pretty surprised to find that you can get a decent two bedroom apartment for $1500 per month on AirBNB in Vienna!

I've looked more into healthcare and it looks like my US health insurance through BCBS will cover us abroad, and they have a network of affiliated providers there.

You guys are making me feel more confident. Thank you!

[acepedro45]

You can do it! Our family spent 4.5 months in France with a 8 to 12-month-old. It was a wonderful time. Hey, you're going to turn your life upside down no matter what, you might as well get an awesome experience in another country out of the deal.

You asked about car seats and SimpleCycle and others have given you great advice already...it's definitely best to keep your kid in a car seat, but I think there needs to be some accommodation for practicality somewhere in there. For example, we took a two week trip to Spain at one point. For all of our planning, we had one connection where we would need to take a taxi from the airport to our accommodations late at night. We could have packed the car seat, but it meant dragging it around pointlessly for two weeks, including many times when we planned to take public transit in lieu of car travel. So we did without it, played Russian Roulette with our kid's life, blah blah blah, but it generally was ok. Don't be too hard on yourself and remember that the norm when our parents were growing up included no car seats whatsoever. 

We brought a travel crib and it worked well. If you're Air B&Bing it, many will have some sort of crib they can add to the house.

Other advice....be flexible and realistic in what you can accomplish in a day. Sometimes the mentality of a vacation/long trip like this is that it's once in a lifetime so you have to maximize value of limited time - that way lies sorrow. There can be many happy lazy days spent at home with your infant that could have taken place just as easily in the Good Ole USA, but enjoy them just as much abroad.

Sometimes as we watched our kid crowl around the floors of fabulous museums, we would joke that hopefully the cultural benefits he was getting were outweighing the dirt and germs he was exposing himself to....

Someone else already said this, but we should have been more active in finding babysitting/childcare help. A few times we had friends/family visit and let us out of the house without kids and it was wonderful - we should have done more of that and gotten to trust local childcare arrangements.

[reeshau]

So we did without it, played Russian Roulette with our kid's life, blah blah blah, but it generally was ok. Don't be too hard on yourself and remember that the norm when our parents were growing up included no car seats whatsoever. 

Make sure you understand the legal requirements when making this decision.  In Ireland, a child seat is mandatory in a private car, but not in a taxi.  No uber here to worry about, but if you were renting a car, you would need one.  (of course, you can also rent that)

One other tip:  if you arrange for a taxi ahead of time, you might also be able to request them to have a child seat.  We have a neighbor taxi driver that we use for family to/from the airport, and when he knows we are travelling, he shows up with his child seat in the car.

[AMandM]

Another vote of confidence!  You can totally do this! My middle child was born when we were living in Germany; we took the family on vacation to the South of France when she was five months old and moved back to North America when she was 10 months old. Later we lived in Germany again for 6 months when the youngest was 4-to-10 months old. If you have strong views on how things *have* to be done, you'll be frustrated and miserable. If you're game for a challenge, you'll have a great adventure.

Another practical tip to add: you can get baby equipment at second-hand shops when you arrive and resell it when you leave.

Congrats on the baby!

[ForeignServiceWife]

You can do it! Yes, a lot will depend on your baby’s health and personality, but if you have a healthy baby then travel away! Currently living in Saudi Arabia with a 4.5 year old and soon to be 2 year old. They were 3 years old and 7 months old when we moved here. Our baby’s very first flight at 7 months was 13 hours long. Kid 1 has been on more flights than I can count, long and short. I have flown on multiple transcontinental flights by myself with the two kids. Our situation is a little different since this is our job (husband is a US govt employee), but the same principles apply. Kids thrive on routine, so the best thing that you can do is create a routine that can travel with you to make your baby feel at home wherever you are. Kid 1 traveled so much in her first 18 months that our actual home didn’t even feel like home. Having a routine that traveled with us was a lifesaver. Also, melatonin. Jet lag is real yo (for you, not the baby until he/she is older).

[MsPeacock]

Globe trotted all over w/ my kids when they were little (and now as they are big - 13 and 16 years). I used a little pop--up tent for their bed when we traveled. That way I could put them to sleep and still have use of the room until I was ready to sleep. (Although for longer stays I guess you may be renting an apartment.) I actually found it pretty fun and easy to travel w/ them when they were little. They complain a lot more now and require a constant wifi connection. :P



Tents were like this: https://www.wish.com/product/59f2ea238d2956563802679b?from_ad=goog_shopping&_display_country_code=US&_force_currency_code=USD&pid=googleadwords_int&c=%7BcampaignId%7D&ad_cid=59f2ea238d2956563802679b&ad_cc=US&ad_curr=USD&ad_price=13.00&campaign_id=7203534630&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1LuAwr6O5wIVDm6GCh0shQgSEAkYBiABEgLgAfD_BwE&hide_login_modal=true

[trollwithamustache]

The key thing is you are proposing to go live in that place for 6 months. Kids don't like change the way adults think it is interesting.

we traveled a bunch with a 9 mo old,  strapped into the carrier, super easy. But by a year he was mobile and needed to play and walk ect. Then you really need to be relatively stationary as long travel times in car/busses/planes are very frustrating to the kid.