Camping with Baby Series - Blog Post #2
Ever heard of the phrase “The worry of a mother”? If you haven’t, it’s an overwhelming force that plagues many of us mommas before our baby is even earthside. According to my mom, it doesn’t stop until you die. Ha!
In my anxious thoughts surrounding camping trips with my daughter, I STILL have nightmares of my husband and I casually setting up the tent, only to turn around and she’s nowhere to be found.
With that said, I’m assuming you might have some of these same fears and be wondering how the heck you are going to be able to set a tent up, make a fire, or cook food. The good news is, it's pretty simple when your baby isn’t mobile yet. You can baby wear, set baby on a quilt, or in a portable crib where they are contained. Once the tent is set up, you can toss in your inflated sleeping pads and have a place to contain baby safely while you get other things done. Things might move a bit slower, but that’s just a fact of life once you add kiddos into the picture.
When your little one starts crawling/walking, it takes a new set of tactics but it is totally figure-out-able. In our family, my husband and I have made a pact that we will verbally communicate (including while making eye contact) who has responsibility for herding our daughter, which is as leisurely as herding cats, while the other person completes a task. For the person that has eyes on the kiddo, this is their top priority over everything else. For the other person, they still are watching with their peripherals, but have the comfort of knowing the other parent has the main responsibility of baby entertaining while they can freely focus on doing things like getting dinner going.
We take turns on responsibilities, and if we have a task that takes both of us, we put our baby in our Boba 4GS to keep her contained while we complete that task. My go to solution to getting things done is to babywear. Once they are getting into toddler stages, you have the magical option to wear them on your back. Game changing!
There is a lot of what would seem to be over the top communication, but we always know that one person is watching her like a hawk and our kid isn’t going to swallow a rock or wander by a creekside without us.
Along with communication, we have learned to expect everything to take much longer to do than it did camping without a baby. Swapping roles, sometimes doing part of set up alone, and stopping to care for baby will probably all slow you down somewhat. All of this took a lot of practice for us until we got the hang of it. Our daughter is now 3 ½ and loves to help with everything. I’m excited to include her in set up this year, while also knowing it’s going to slow us down quite a bit. She’s already asking to go camping, which warms our hearts and shows us it’s all well worth the effort.
So plan ahead and take your time,
Sharon