Leave the Baby for a Work Trip
It is ok to leave your baby behind and travel for work. But your baby must be able to feed and be calm when away from you for the period that you will be traveling. So if your baby can bottle feed or is already weaned, then they will just fine when you travel and need to leave them at home.
Both local and international trips are reasonable when leaving your child at home. You only need to have a reliable childcare plan, possibly with a backup option to ensure everything goes well.
However, you need to consider how far you are travelling and length of the trip. Mostly frequent and longer trips will be harder on you and your child than a few local spread-out business trips. If your baby is already used to you being away at work, they can easily adjust to you traveling for work for a few days.
You will feel so much guilt when you have to leave your baby for work trips. It will be hard and you will probably break down every time you leave. But all this does not mean it is the wrong choice. Being a working mom requires a lot of trade-offs.
How to Cope with Leaving Baby for First Time for Work Trip
If your trip is long and you feel that your baby may not be able to handle it, you may consider traveling with your baby. Traveling for work with a small baby is 100% doable and nothing to feel guilty about.
Read How to Make a Business Trip with a Small Baby a Success
Tips on Travelling For Work and Leaving Baby at Home
1. Get a Reliable Childcare Plan
You will need a reliable child care plan for your child at home as you travel away for work. To feel confident and at peace, you need someone you can trust and rely on to meet the needs of your baby while you are away on this trip.
You can still get reliable childcare to leave your child with and travel for work. Some options include nannies, babysitters, and 24/7 day-cares. Your partner, family members, and friends can also offer reliable child care.
Read: Childcare Options for Moms who Travel for Work
2. Get Support from Husband/Partner
If you have a partner who totally supports your work, then it will be easy to leave everything under them and go on a business trip. Your partner should be able to totally take over parenting to ensure that your baby’s needs are met. They should also handle other home tasks as well when you are away.
It will really help if your husband is staying at home dad or has a flexible job and hence can manage to do chores such as daycare drop off, pick ups, feedings, etc.
3. Keep in Touch with Baby
Every time you travel for work, you must keep the thoughts of your baby with you. Ensure that you talk to your baby regularly to find out what they are doing. Do a quick voice or video call whenever you can so that your baby can still feel your presence.
However, you need to consider the other side of video calls. The calls may end in meltdowns for your kids and may turn out not to be worth it. Therefore consider your specific context before you video call your babies. Do not video-call if you think it will make everything worse.
4. Make the Trips Fun for Kids Too
Think about ways to make the trip fun for them. Ensure that you Skype, video calls, etc. as often as you can. Ensure that you get them souvenirs whenever you can. Buy something you can bring back for the kids, usually monumental that is a reminder of the destination or the trip you had.
Take as many videos and pictures as you can and share them with your kids. Take your kids on a video tour of your hotel room and see how excited they become. Leave behind small notes that your kids can go through to kill time before you get back.
Such small fun things and moments will make it easier for you and your kids every time you have to travel away for work.
5. Travel with Baby on Some Trips
To minimize any negative effect that traveling for work may have on you as a mom, the baby, or family can travel with your child or entire family sometimes. If your baby is old enough and can travel, there is no harm in taking them on some of the business trips.
If the nature of your work and your employer allows, consider traveling with them. You only need to have a childcare option at your destination to allow you to work during the day and be with your baby at night.
Having your family tag along is quite great as you can make a weekend trip out of it. You can go ahead to do work stuff, and over the last few days, your partner and the kids can travel to meet you.
6. Limit/Balance the Work Trips
If you hope to meet the needs of your baby you should strike a balance between the business trips and the time you are staying at home. Physical presence for your child is very important and hence you should limit the amount of time you are spending away on business trips.
Depending on how old your child is, set a limit of business trips that you can take in a month or annually and stick to that. Traveling too frequently for work will affect you as a mom and what you have with your baby.
Read: How Much Work Travel is too Much
7. Maximize Time you Spend with Baby when not Travelling
If you travel a lot and spend a considerable amount of time away, then maximize the time you spend with your baby when you are not on trips. Ensure you get quality time with your baby before and after you travel for work. Make your time at the home count and be present.
Do daycare drops off and pick-ups whenever you can. Take your kids out and do small things with them. Ensure that dinner time is a family time when you are home and those weekends you spend almost all day with your kids.
Such memories are quite good and count when you have to spend a few days away from your babies on a business trip.
Things to do before Leaving Baby for Work Trips
- Have a standard routine and always keep the routine the same when you are away. Let your partner or the person offering childcare know the drill and replicate it when you are traveling for work so that your kids know what to expect.
- If possible automate some of the things you do such as shopping. It helps avoid making extra burdens for the husband/partner or the person offering childcare.
- Give your partner “time off” once you get home. It may be too hard for you as you just got off the trip and getting resettled, but your partner needs time to decompress.
- Let go of what happens at home when you aren’t there and let your partner or your childcare manage it their own way.
- If you can, have more flexibility by scheduling your own travel. This way you will be able to keep track of your travel, frequency, and other details.
