Driving Halfway Across the Country to Have a Baby

By ANNA BAHNEY

OCTOBER 14, 2014 11:12 AM

The road to Omaha.Credit Anna Bahney

Seated on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night with my vomiting 4-year-old son, I started to wonder if I was trying to do too much. When his 2-year-old brother caught exactly the same stomach bug a couple days later - a day before we planned to push to Omaha from Washington, D. C. - I felt my solve weaken even more.

I want to give birth in a place that is comfortable and supporting. For me that is Omaha. But is this elaborate plan worth the effort? Is it reasonable to my family?

Tummy bug or not, we stumbled through the week. The males were moody and cranky. My husband, a federal government employee, frantically wrapped upward his work before our departure placed him in a constellation of holiday, sick leave and telecommuting days. I became convinced that I would get the insect too, and went to Google for “stomach flu pregnancy when to go to the medical center. ”

But my focus remained on the heavy to-do list that came along with uprooting my family for a month. I had to arrange for the transfer of care among midwives. Find substitutes for my days in the classroom at my children’s cooperative kindergarten. Negotiate with health providers about our in-network insurance. Clean the house, group the car and travel 1, 200 miles with two children over two days.

Certainly, this isn’t for everyone. And it doesn’t come without moments of doubt.

The biggest concern was for my two sons. I planned to take all of them out of an incredible preschool they adore for a month. The choice weighed on me personally, especially as they became sick. Was I pushing them too hard? Was this particular all too confusing? It was a nonissue last time, since my oldest had been only 16 months old then.

The transition to welcoming a new friend is already a major shift in the world of a preschooler. I worried about how this time aside would affect their relationships with friends and the routines that they rely on. Knew they would miss the fall field trip to a farm, and their class photos would be taken without them. But what else was I making harder for them?

Their own devoted teachers and other parents helped me realize that I was over thinking it. In 4 and 2 years old, time with their parents and grandparents was just going to be helpful for them. My husband and I worked to make the time away from Washington as brief as possible. (Last time we were away two months). I hoped that the sons would be resilient enough, and frankly take comfort in each other’s company, to handle the actual transition to a new baby through a cross-country adventure.

But the question remained: Was I which resilient?

Trying to convince myself that I was, I moved on to my following task: breaking up with my midwife. After I did (in an appointment that experienced me trapped in a small windowless room with my sons’ explosive energy to have an hour and a half while we waited for her, further vindicating my desire to leave), I felt myself gaining momentum.

Anna Bahney

Packing arrived easily even though we were traveling to a place where we would gain another person (throw within the Pack ‘n’ Play and car seat), face the possibility of three seasons (in go the shorts, sweaters and stocking caps) and celebrate my children’s favorite holiday (the robot, pirate, astronaut and football player costumes tend to be coming along). The anxiety of forgetting something that I usually felt when venturing out on a big trip was washed away by my steadily growing require.

By departure day, everyone was not only feeling healthy, but was also packed with excitement. The boys told anyone who would listen about the road trip to their grandparents’ house. My husband researched fun places for us to stop on the way.

Our wonderful buddies and teachers at their school sent us off with a “Big Brother” party for each of the boys. We jostled out of Washington in rush-hour visitors, driving into the Maryland hills that were dripping with early fall colors as well as onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike as the full hunter’s moon rose above us like a beacon. We were getting closer to the big sky I was searching for as we rolled throughout congested Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, stopping regularly for the boys to run as well as my legs to stretch.

By the time we were careening through cornfields of Grand rapids amid the red tail light glow of tractor-trailers that blended along with the wide sunset, I was gaining strength like a parched fish swimming once again in her life-giving sea.

Anna Bahney

My mother would still be up and waiting for us when we pulled into her driveway at two a. m., ready with hugs and banana bread. Even as we found Omaha for our own life moment (to have a baby) the full force to be near family rushed to greet us with other life events. The day after all of us arrived we had both a family wedding and a family funeral. My dad attended the actual funeral and the rest of us went to the wedding.

Arriving at the reception, I calm into the warm embrace of the family fold. Later, as I did the cha-cha slide with my husband and children, all of us laughing and spinning around, between my aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, I finally felt I can put the lists down. I had arrived and I was ready to have our child.

Will this be worth it? I won’t know for a long time. But right after that, I was where I wanted to be. Baby, you can join us any time.

Anna Bahney is a writer based in Washington, D. C. She has been on staff in the New York Times, USA Today and Columbia Journalism Review, and now writes the column on the personal finance of parenting for Forbes. com. Follow the girl at www.annabahney.com or on Twitter: @annabahney. Her diary of her moves to her childhood home in the Midwest to deliver her third child will be chronicled here weekly through October.

View the original article here