I feel like I’ve been a bit of a hermit thus far in my maternity leave. Obviously I didn’t expect to be gallivanting around town without a care in the world with Baby H stuck in her stroller all day, but I also didn’t expect to rarely leave the house. Sometimes I feel like I stare at the same four walls for 24 hours a day, and sometimes it’s for no other reason than the fear of the unknown.

You see, many people have told me that if I just take my baby out and about in her car seat, she’ll just sleep. Apparently when your baby is itty bitty, it’s the best time to go out to lunches and dinner while baby just snoozes away next to you. But Mr. H and I remained fearful that we’d be the ones in the restaurant with the crying screaming baby and absolutely panic while people stared. We have a baby who likes to be held and bouncing all the time.

My heart is so sad when she’s sad!

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While we often talked of getting out for a lunch to see how things went, we hadn’t followed through with it. And then something horrible happened a couple of weeks ago: my grandfather passed away and Baby H and I had a funeral to attend (Mr. H unfortunately had work commitments that he could not get out of so she and I were on our own!). It was now sink or swim time because we had to go completely outside of our comfort zone. In addition to my grief, I had to grapple with attending a funeral service with Baby H, a lunch after the service, 4-hour car rides (where fortunately my sister drove us so I could concentrate on baby!), and a stay in a hotel. Talk about getting out of the house!

I approached the trip with a lot of fear! Baby H hadn’t been further from our house than the 10-minute trip to the pediatrician. She rarely rode in the car and as I shared earlier, we hadn’t taken her to a lot of public places beyond Starbucks and the grocery store. We’re hermits, remember?

My mind is still spinning with how well she did! We were able to sit in the entire funeral service where she slept in my arms. At the lunch after the service, she slept in her car seat for over an hour while I rocked it, and then was angel for all of the family members who couldn’t wait to hold her. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the hotel. She loved it! She didn’t fuss once and loved laying on the big king-sized bed! In a nutshell, Baby H was a dream baby.

It made me realize that keeping her inside due to our own fears of the “what if” weren’t helping her at all. She needs to be seeing new faces, hearing new voices and in general getting away from the same sights and sounds day in and day out. I mean, of course in our general routine we take her for walks in her strollers, but I don’t think that’s enough*. She seemed to thrive on seeing new faces and being in places where there’s the hum of people talking in the background.

After the trip, I of course circled back to the need to bite the bullet and take her to a restaurant for the first time. We live in a very family friendly neighborhood so we had plenty of places to go for our first meal out as a family. We chose a little place by us that has a great outdoor patio and went on a gorgeous day. The patio was half empty when we arrived and almost everyone there had kids. Perfect. Baby H did great in her stroller next to us. I even celebrated by having a beer, my first alcoholic beverage since last summer! I wondered why we hadn’t tried this sooner!

And then the fussing began. The fussing led to crying. The crying led to Mr. H walking around and bouncing her while I ate my lunch, and then him handing off a sleeping baby to me while he ate his lunch. So, just like at home, we ate in shifts!

But, we survived.

It’s hard to say why Baby H could do so well the funeral weekend but struggled with a simple lunch out. I like to think that she sensed everyone’s grief around her and it calmed her to some degree. Or maybe the travel simply tuckered her out. But I do know that I can’t let fear hold us hostage! So what if she cries? Or screams so much we have to get our food to go and head back home? That’s life. On the flip side, our next trip out could result in a perfectly calm baby sleeping at our sides. Who knows? What I do know is that it’s important for all of us right now to just get out of the house from time to time!

And seriously, how could I deprive the world of this adorable face?!

*Of course, this is not to mean that I would let strangers on the street hold her or get too close! She’s a new baby so first and foremost we definitely want to keep her safe.

Have you feared taking your baby to places where he or she might cry and raise eyebrows? What do you do to get over the fear?