Dave and I were fairly committed to keep traveling even once Bean was born. Or, a big fear was that I’d no longer even leave our apartment, or house if we had to leave the city. Related to that was a fear that we’d no longer travel anywhere either.

This fear and apprehension is something I’ve heard from a lot of child-free, childless, and first-time-pregnant people.

So, I want to tell you it can be done. I think we’ve been on 9 or 10 trips with Bean at this point, and each trip was well worth it and an absolute blast. With some (lots of) caveats of course…

The biggest catch is that you’re no longer traveling like you may have traveled before. Day-long outings and hikes become an exercise in logistics and timing. Nap, bottle, nursing, snack, and bedtime schedules must be stuck to. SO, you can go on that day-long excursions or hikes, but you’ll be pausing nearly every hour to accommodate a nap, or snack, or meal, or bottle/nursing.

If you have an easy-going kid, this is just like, “Let’s stop at this bench and have a banana” or “Ok, I’m going to recline your stroller, have a good nap.” And then you resume your stroll.

If your kid needs to be in a crib for naps or is particular about how/what snacks she eats, then you’ll be heading back to the hotel 1 or 2 (or 3) times a day. This, obviously, makes it difficult to spend an entire day at the Met. You’ll be spending maybe an hour at the Met before you need to head back to the hotel.

And bedtime. Bedtime is either great or miserable, depending on how you look at it and what your kid is like. I’ve talked about Bean’s sleep woes before, and we have to stick to a hard bedtime for life to run smoothly. Which means we’re always back at the hotel by 6pm. And then we’re in for the night. So, not only are we stopping to accommodate snacks and naps throughout the day, our day is over by 6pm.

Finally, your kid also will just go bonkers at some point and will no longer be game for looking at Renaissance paintings in hushed voices in an art gallery. We always add in a lot of child-centric activities now, even though Bean won’t remember any of it. The thing is, she needs to blow off steam and do things she thinks are fun too. So, yes, we are paying that ridiculous entry fee for ASObono! in Tokyo. And, yes, we did just spend an entire day of our vacation, in an exciting, international city … sitting at a local park and playing with leaves.

So, the main caveat is that you might be traveling, but you may not get to see all of those tourist attractions or eat at the restaurants you read about or hang out on a beach for hours on end. Actually, you may not see any tourist attractions or eat at any restaurant you’ve read about and only spend an hour on the beach every day before baby needs to go back inside. Your vacation may resemble a week at home, with lots of time spent in your hotel and otherwise spent pushing a swing at the playground.

Which brings us to: and this is worth it?

For us, oh hell yeah.

Traveling with a kid is very fun. It gets you an automatic “in” with the locals. It turns out “So, how old is your baby?” is universally accepted small talk, and can even be mimed if you don’t speak the same language. And toddlers interact no matter what the language barrier. Even though you’re at playground just like the playground at home, you’re suddenly interacting with and learning about a whole new culture, and isn’t that the entire point of traveling?

Also, you get to do things you’d never get to do if you didn’t have a kid. Adults need a kid to get into ASObono! and if we didn’t have Bean, we would have never known the moving and swirling LSD trip that is a visit to ASObono!

We also lucked out with a baby and now toddler who can nap in her stroller. So, we still get hours of quiet grown-up time to check out museums and go to restaurants. It’s the closest we ever get to recreating the ease and feel of our child-free days.

And that bedtime thing? It turns out packing it in at 6pm can be wonderful. Dave and I have an entire ritual now that involves accumulating fancy cheeses and desserts throughout the day, with plans to luxuriate in front of a TV or lounge on a balcony for the rest of the evening, laughing and chatting away while the baby sleeps. Or, we go super decadent and call room service to bring up ice cream. We actually relax on our vacations now.

Finally, experiencing things with your kid is really fun. I know that she won’t remember any of this, but I will. I’ll remember the way she scrunched her nose the first time she felt the Pacific Ocean air, her laughing gasps looking at train cars in Sacramento, her wide-eyed shock and awe at the National Aquarium or the first time she saw dolphins, and her delight throwing leaves in the air under fire-red Japanese maples.

If any of this sounds like fun too, do it. It is so worth it.