When do you babymoon?

I think it is after one has a baby but many seem to disagree. Most people believe that babymooning is what a couple does before a baby arrives, they go off some place together to spend some special time alone before they just are not alone anymore. This is reasonable and sweet but why call it babymooning?

Honeymooning doesn’t come before the wedding right? It comes after!

Shouldn’t babymooning come after the baby?

 After Your Sweet Baby is Born. What Now?

For many people it goes a bit like this: Your cuddling your sweet little one when everyone you hardly know wants to come over and meet your little baby. You feel like you can’t rest, that you have to host, and it brings more stress than you pictured even if you want to share your new baby with others. One would hope that people that visit would want to bring meals or do dishes but that seems to be rare. Instead they introduce new germs into the house and the next thing you know you and baby are sick. Not to mention baby is always hungry and it can be uncomfortable to nurse at the start and hard to get the right latch, mothers end up torn over nursing in front of people or they try to put baby off, or they give in to others wanting to bottle feed, or they feel rude going to nurse in another room. It is as if new mothers can’t win.

While everyone wants to see new baby, this special time isn’t about them!

So what does babymooning looking like for crunchy parents?

This is the time for a babymoon, this is the time for Mom and Dad and the kids to stay home and bond with baby and learn about their new family. It is a time for Daddy to hold baby so Mom can shower, it is a time for siblings to cuddle baby so Mom can brush her hair. It is time for babywearing, ordering in or pulling meals from the freezer. Forget the phones, the door, the rest of the world and just focus on bonding and healing and relaxing. Let everyone know your babymooning and like a honeymoon, no one else is invited. It isn’t that your being rude, it is about having that special time every family needs to grow and change together without an audience and without added stress.

I am glad my family got to babymoon after my last baby came into the world. It was a very special time.