Archive for the ‘traveling’ Category

Returning to an Old Flame?

April 27th, 2011

Well, we have now been in Seattle for just over a week.

It’s been sort of strange being here this trip because we aren’t just here for a normal visit. Normally our visits in the Seattle area are relatively short and we try and cram as much family time and friend time in as we can. This time is different. This time we are here for two months, and we know we’ll be back for another month or two in the fall. There isn’t as much need to rush or cram.

This trip is also different because we are considering whether or not we want to move back to the Seattle area. In many ways we are taking the next two months as a sort of exploratory trip, to re-evaluate our future and see if we can imagine living here again. At least that’s the intention (we haven’t really done much exploration, re-evaluation, or even talked much at all about it so far, but there’s time).

As I’ve thought about this trip a little bit this week I’ve had the weird feeling that it’s sort of like I’m trying to decide wether or not to get back together with an old flame. Deciding wether or not to move back to a city you’ve lived in before is sort of like that. You still remember all the things you loved about them, you notice new things to love about them, but you also still remember all the reasons why it didn’t work out before. I’ve thought about that off and on this week. There’s a lot I remember loving about Seattle. There’s a lot that I could see myself loving about Seattle now. But, there’s also things that I remember not loving, things that helped inspire our move. Some of those things aren’t issues as much now at this stage in life, but some of them are still very real and still very present. Do I want to go back to those things? Would it be the same if I went back, or would it be different? Am I different enough to make it different this time around?

As I wrote before, I have been feeling burned out on Prague, but I don’t want to just rush into a move just because of burn out. I want Bryan and I together to be intentional about evaluating where the best place for us is at this time. So, of course I made a list ;) Yes, I’m one of those list makers. I made a list of questions for us to ask ourselves as we consider wether or not we should move to Seattle. Really these are questions to ask yourself whenever you are considering any sort of move. Here they are:

1. Can we picture ourselves living there?
2. What is the overall culture there and do we feel like adding those cultural characteristics to our lives would be a good thing?
3. What kinds of opportunities would exist there for us and our children?
4. What areas of our lives would benefit most through our living there?
5. What areas of our lives might suffer from living there?
6. How well could our social needs be met there?
7. What sort of a support system would we have there?
8. What is the realistic cost of living?
9. What would be potentially difficult about living there?
10. What future goals could we meet by living there?
11. Are there any future goals that would be harder to meet because of living there?
12. How might moving there effect our health and the health of our children?
13. How might moving there effect us spiritually and emotionally?
14. What do we like about the area?
15. What don’t we like about the area?
16. What expectations do we have about living there and how realistic are they?
17. What do people who know us well think and say about us moving there?

These are the things we want to be talking through this next two months as we evaluate a posible move back to Seattle. These are the questions I want to keep in mind as we consider getting back together again with our own “old flame”.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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Why We Moved to Prague: We are Existential Migrants

October 7th, 2010

People often ask us, “What brought you to Prague?” or “Why did you move to Prague?” or something like that and I usually struggle with the answer. I laugh and say, “Honestly, I don’t know.” Or I shrug my shoulders and say, “I guess we just liked Prague.” Or sometimes if I want to get into it more I might say, “We could work from anywhere at the time and decided we wanted a bit of adventure and to experience something new, so we decided to move to Europe.” But, really all of these answers fall short. They may be true, but at best they only touch briefly on our reasons for moving here.

I’ve really never known how to define all of the subtle motivations that led us to pick up and move our entire lives overseas.

Recently I read Andrew Jones’ beautiful thoughts on global nomads. Andrew and his family have chosen a much more radical life then just moving overseas like Bryan and I did, they are, as he put it “serial travelers.” But, there was a lot in his poem that I could relate to or that at least stirred longing within me.  As I read through his post I came across a new term, a term that intrigued me and then shook me. A term that really helped me to shed light on our own decision to move. The term is existential migrants.

Here’s how this article defined existential migration:

existential migration is “conceived as a chosen attempt to express something fundamental about existence by leaving one’s homeland and becoming a foreigner.” It is different from “economic migration, simple wanderlust, exile, or variations of forced migration” in that it is a chosen move, not driven by economic or political needs.

This is definitely our story. We did not need to move to Prague, or anywhere else, for external reasons (such as economic or political reasons), but very early in our marriage we realized that we did need to leave. We needed to leave for internal reasons… existential reasons. We needed to leave so that we could grow and reach our potential. We needed to leave so that we could really start our own life together instead of living under the shadows of the previous lives we had experienced as single individuals. We needed to leave in order to become the creative, experienced, interesting, cultured, open-minded people that we wanted to become.

This article discussing existential migration really resonated with me. It says this about the existential migrant (emphasis mine):

These individuals move cross-culturally, sometimes repeatedly, in search of self- understanding and adventure. Such people are actually seeking to resolve deeper ‘existential’ questions such as ‘who am I’, ‘how can I fulfill my potential?’, ‘where do I belong?’, ‘how can I feel at home?’… The study generated impressively consistent themes including the importance of independence, the need to live fully, the need for freedom within belonging, the value of experiences of difference and foreignness as a stimulus to personal awareness. Among these migrants there is a marked preference for the strange and foreign and a consistent contempt for the conventional and easy life of the settled community.

This is why Bryan and I moved to Prague. We are existential migrants. And in some ways, no matter where we end up, perhaps always will be.

More on these thoughts later…

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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Traveling With a 9 Month Old: In the End

July 5th, 2010

In the end, no matter how well you prepare for your trip things will go wrong. You can prepare for traveling with a baby only up to a certain point and then after that you eventually just have to accept whatever happens with open hands.

44 hours after leaving our home in Prague my husband and baby and I arrived in Hawaii a bit dirty and extremely exhausted. Our trip was difficult. We were prepared, but we still forgot things (like the power converters for our computer). We were prepared, but we still found we ran out of food on the flight and had to eat some airport food. We were prepared, but our son still got tried of all the toys we had and fussed for something new to do and space to crawl around. We were prepared, but we still didn’t sleep much and got a bit jet lagged.

Like many other things about having a baby, traveling with a 9 month old is a lesson in letting go and accepting whatever happens. Nina Planck has this quote in Real Food for Mother and Baby (which I finally started reading this week):

“The best preparation for pregnancy, birth, and mothering – even better than real food – is an open mind. Perhaps your life and work are well planned, orderly. Perhaps you find that satisfying. (I did.) Let go. Having a baby is stupendously wonderful, but things may not go as planned. If you have no fixed expectations, nothing can surprise or disappoint you. The ideal stance is a kind of gentle wonder, now and again brimming over into radical amazement, as your story unfolds.”

I think this can also be applied well to traveling with a baby. Hold your expectations lightly. You can only control so much and after a point you just have to accept your reality, whatever that reality may be. My reality was 44 hours of traveling with a baby and the reality of it was that it was incredibly difficult and trying.

There were moments while traveling when I truly wondered if it was worth it. Maybe it would be better to just not travel at all for a while now that we have a baby. But, if we didn’t travel with our baby we would miss out on spending time with so many of the people we love who are spread all over the world and we would miss out on introducing our child to new cultures and new experiences at a precious and fleetingly flexible time in his development. And when I really think about it, I don’t want my life to revolve entirely around my child. I also don’t really want to shy away from difficult things and just take the easy way.

So, just as we traveled when our son was 9 months, we’ll be traveling with him when he’s 10 months, and 12 months, and 18 months and 33 months and on and on his whole childhood and life. Some flights and trips will be hard, some may even be harder than this last one, but others will be easier and they will all be worth it.

Rejoicing in the journey-
Bethany Stedman

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Traveling with a 9 month old: Dealing with Jet Lag

July 3rd, 2010

Ok, so anyone who’s ever traveled overseas knows that it can be painful and slow to recover from jet lag. Most people advice that you plan on taking 1 day to acclimate to each time zone crossed. So, for us flying from Prague to Hawaii this time, we’ll cross 11 time zones and should plan on it taking at least a week for us to adjust.

After three and a half years of living in Prague and flying from Europe to the states twice a year each year (not to mention countless other long haul flights before we moved here) my husband and I have learned a few things about jet lag. Today I want to share with you our normal tricks for dealing with jet lag and a few things we will be doing differently or in addition to our normal tricks this time since we will also be traveling with a 9 month old baby.

How to Deal with Jet Lag as a Parent with a Traveling Baby:

  1. Stay Hydrated. Flying can be very dehydrating, so plan to make sure that you drink plenty of hydrating liquids.

    Dehydration can reduce a nursing mama’s milk supply, and it can also take your body a while to adjust to producing milk on the new schedule. Because of this it’s important for nursing mama’s to be especially careful to stay hydrated while traveling. One little thing I plan to do to help with hydration is to make my own electrolyte drink to drink on the plane. I will mix a little bit of unrefined sea salt with a little bit of unrefined organic cane sugar in an empty water bottle. Once we get past security I will fill this water bottle with water from a drinking fountain and have this as a mineral rich drink during the flight.

  2. Avoid alcohol and caffeine. It’s tempting to drink these things on long haul flights – the caffeine to help keep you awake or the alcohol to help you sleep on the plane, but it really is best to avoid both of these substances when flying. Both caffeine and alcohol can dehydrate your body more and put stress on your adrenal glands, which will make adjusting to the time change at your destination harder in the long run.

    Obviously my baby won’t be having caffeine or alcohol, but since I’m nursing it’s all the more important that I don’t have these things as being dehydrated could affect my milk while traveling.

  3. Eat light, fresh meals that are easy to digest and don’t tax the body to much.

    I plan on bringing our own healthy snacks and meals made from real food. This will be helpful for my husband and I, but also for our baby. Thaddeus has just started solids and is still nursing a lot, but I will bring a few veggies and healthy finger food snacks for him on the plane.

  4. Eat more protein dense foods. The stress of travel may slightly increase the body’s need for protein.  Eating protein rich meals can also provide your body with the nutrients needed in order for it to produce melatonin and serotonin, both important hormones for healthy sleep.

    This time I’m making my own protein bars to take on the flight for my husband and myself. I am also planning on trying to make some quinoa teething cookies for my baby. I may also bring a little bit of meat such as chicken that he can snack on during the flight. You can read more about my plan for eating real food while traveling HERE.

  5. Upon arriving at your destination, eat at the local meal times - even if you don’t feel very hungry.

    This might be hard to get a baby to eat on a new schedule based on the local destination. I won’t worry about this too much with him, but will instead offer him food and breast milk as often as possible and let him eat when he wants.

  6. A relatively new study suggests fasting for about 16 hours before your flight can help elevate jet lag.

    We personally will NOT be trying this. Fasting is NOT a good idea for babies and definitely not for breastfeeding mama’s either, so this is one option for dealing with jet lag that I will be avoiding and I don’t recommend for parents traveling with infants. However it is worth noting as an option for healthy adults.

  7. Keep your feet warm. Ok, so I’ve never tried this before, but I read something recently (sorry I can’t remember where) that said that wearing socks to bed and keeping your feet warm can help people to fall asleep and stay asleep. The logic behind it has to do with blood flow and circulation as well as how heat is distributed in the body before and during sleep. I thought this was interesting and worth a try.

    I will be sure to put socks on myself and my baby during the flight, since we are taking a red-eye and want to be sure we sleep. And I will also try putting socks on my baby’s feet for sleep once we arrive in our destination (even though it will be plenty warm there for him to go barefoot). I figure it won’t hurt anything to try out this technique.

  8. Practice yoga. I always like to do a little yoga before flights and during layovers. I hate the stiff feeling that my body feels during and after flying so I like to stretch and warm my muscles up a little bit. I was recently reading that there are a few yoga practices and poses in particular that can help with jet lag. Sun salutations and shoulder stand can be particularly helpful for reviving, balancing, and rejuvenating the body during and after travel. Alternate nostril breathing is also a yoga practice that can help to balance the endocrine system and bring balance to the body after experiencing the stress of time change.

    These are all things I plan on doing during this upcoming trip. My baby can’t really do Sun Salutations or alternate nostril breathing or anything like that, but I can do some gentle baby yoga with him. Pumping his legs and giving him a little baby massage will probably be among a few things I try to do with him during our travels.

  9. Exercise in general can help your body to adjust to the time change. Get out and take along walk, or go for a run (if that’s your thing).

    I plan on walking up and down the aisle on the plane at least a few times to keep my body limber during the flight and to help entertain my baby. Since he’s just starting to pull himself up and walk when holding on to our fingers Thaddeus will also probably enjoy walking the aisles with me. I will also give him lots of time to crawl and move around once we get to our destination. Physical activity like that will help wear him out so that hopefully he will sleep better.

  10. Some people recommend changing the sleep schedule by an hour a day for the few days before traveling. This can be a good technique if you are only crossing a few time zones, but when crossing a larger number of time zones this technique becomes less effective.

    I personally feel it is better for us and our baby to be well rested before we go. I will keep our schedule and my baby’s schedule the same as normal up until the time we leave so as to disturb him (and us) as little as possible before the dramatic change of the trip.

  11. Sleep at appropriate times for the local destination. Keep yourself awake until a normal bed time for your destination and wake yourself up in the morning at an appropriate time.

    Although this seems to help us adjust very quickly, this is one things that I won’t hold to as much this trip. With a baby I feel like it is more important that we all stay well rested and healthy then that we adjust quickly. I will try and give my child naps and put him down for the night at appropriate times for the destination. But, if Thad is exhausted I’m not going to force him to stay awake. I know some people would recommend keeping a baby from taking naps during the day in the hopes that they will sleep better at night, but I know from experience that this rarely works and often it will just leave you with a child who’s immune system get’s run down resulting in a sick, cranky, overtired little one.

    I also will allow myself a bit more flexibility. Normally I wouldn’t let myself nap when trying to adjust to jet lag, but would keep myself up until bed time at the destination, but with a baby I may allow myself to sleep when he’s sleeping. It’s more important that have the energy to deal with Thaddeus when he wakes up in the middle of the night then that I adjust quickly. We will be in the states for 6 weeks and have plenty of time to allow ourselves the whole first week to adjust slowly if necessary.

  12. Take magnesium and or melatonin the first few nights at your destination. Melatonin can be a bit controversial, but we have used it in the past and feel like it does help.  Magnesium is a simple thing to find and take with no side effects (although you may have some loose stools if you take too much of it).

    Melatonin should NOT be taken by nursing mothers or given to babies. I don’t think any of us will take it this time.

    Magnesium is safe for nursing though so I will take a bit of magnesium the first few nights to help me relax and sleep. I won’t give any to Thaddeus though since I’m not sure about how his little body would handle it, or whether it’s ok to give to babies, but I figure if I take it he’ll probably get a little extra magnesium boost in my milk, right?

  13. Use your normal routines and habits. Staying with your regular routines as much as possible can help you adjust from jet lag. These routines can be subtle cues for your body about what is about to happen and can help your body figure out its new schedule.

    Routines and habits help young babies to understand the world around them. Since we always read a story and sing a specific song to Thaddeus before putting him down for the night we will continue to do that at our destination and while traveling. I also have a little rhyme I say to him while I’m changing his diaper, and a song that I almost always sing when he first wakes up from naps. All of these things will help him to know what is going on when in a strange environment and it will be important to continue these things.

  14. Upon arriving at our destination spend as much time in the sunlight as possible, as soon as possible. This is perhaps the most important thing you can do to help your body adjust from jet lag. The pineal gland, which is responsible for regulating your sleep wake cycles is very significantly affected by sunlight, so spending time in the sun shine can help your body to shift its natural cycles to your new time zone.

    This trick works with babies and with adults, so we will all be making sure to get lots of sunshine, which won’t be hard since we’ll be at the beach our first week in the states. At night time we will also try and keep the lights low, the curtains closed, and have little to no TV or internet time at night, which can both effect sleep cycles.

If you are interested in more info about flying with a baby I recommend that you check out Delicious Baby. It’s a great site packed with information about traveling with babies, toddlers, and kids. Here is her wonderful article about Jet Lag with Babies, Toddlers, and Kids.

Well, even with all those tips and tricks I’m still super nervous about how my son will do with jet lag, but I’m hopeful that some of this stuff will help him and us.

Do any of you have any additional advice for dealing with jet lag? How about for dealing with a baby who is jet lagged? I’d love to hear your suggestions!

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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Traveling with a 9 Month Old: Staying Healthy

July 2nd, 2010

IMG_5275One of the things that make me most nervous about traveling with a baby is staying healthy. Being packed onto a plane with recycled air and tons of people for more than 12 hours seems like a sure fire way to catch something if you ask me. So, I like to pull out all the stops and do whatever I can to stay healthy while traveling. This time I want to be even more cautious and prepared since I am traveling with my precious baby.

Here is my strategy for staying healthy while flying transatlantic flights:

  • Make sure you are well rested before your trip begins.
  • Stay hydrated! Planes can be very dry and dehydrating, so make sure you drink plenty of liquid and that your baby is also drinking often. Side note: having your baby drink can help with the pressure in their ears when flying as well.
  • Wash your hands frequently. And if necessary use an Anti-bacterial hand sanitizer (I usually avoid using anti-bacterial stuff, but I think a long flight like this is one time when a little anti-bacterial sanitizer might be a good idea).
  • Use natural wipes to wipe down surfaces (like the tray table in front of your baby on the airplane).
  • Take your probiotics. Whether it’s a pill form or just drinking lots of Kefir making sure that you are filling your body with good bacteria can go a long way to helping you stay healthy while traveling and fighting off little bugs you may come into contact with. Breastfeeding your baby can provide them with good probiotics, as can giving them a little bit of yogurt (if they are old enough and tolerate milk alright).
  • Eat well. Don’t succumb to the allure of fast food and junk food just because you are on vacation or traveling. Make good healthy choices. Enjoy your food. Have dessert – but keep things in moderation and don’t go overboard. Make sure you are still getting lots of vegetables and fruits and good healthy fats.
  • Have an emergency care kit handy with some things to help you if you do get sick. Mine includes Echinacea, Zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, and Super Silver.
  • Spend some time outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Sunshine can help readjust your body’s clock if you are dealing with jet lag, it can also provide your body with vitamin D which supports your immune system. And who knows what good things are in fresh air. I recently read a report of a study that showed that there are beneficial bacteria on trees and plants that make people feel good.

Well, those are the things that we do when we travel. Here is a wonderful and thorough post about natural remedies for staying healthy while traveling. It’s another great resource that I know I will keep in mind and reverence while traveling this summer.

What do you do to stay healthy while traveling? How do you keep your children healthy while traveling? Do you have any additional bits of advice?

Rejoicing in the journey -
Bethany Stedman

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