Feeling Guilty – Our First Overnight Trip Without Mabel

Most of you will know that my lack of posts this past week were due to my in-laws visiting.  I thought it would be nice to try to distance myself from the computer/internet as much as possible and enjoy some family time.

It has been 8 months since Mabel arrived and we’ve only had one night out (to the movies) when my mom was visiting.  Are we crazy?  I’ve had a hard time trying to find a babysitter that I trust and with no family close, we’re limited to when family visits from out of town.  Since we’ve known Hubby’s parents were going to visit months in advance, Hubby and I had it in the works that while they were visiting, we would take a mini vacation for ourselves.  We didn’t want to go far and didn’t want to spend a lot so I figured Ocean City, Maryland would be perfect.  It’s about two hours from where we live and I’m familiar with the area since I grew up in Maryland.  Plus, I had been there a handful of times when I was younger.

And we were long overdue for a getaway that was child-free.

Wow, as I typed that sentence I thought it sounded kind of harsh.  Child-free.  You’d think that when you have kids, in order to be a good mom you need to spend every waking moment with your little one(s)…so I felt almost guilty for wanting some ‘me time’ with the husband.  All of my friends that have kiddos assured me that you need time without the kiddos and it didn’t make me a bad mom.

So…I felt a tad better.

The Hubs and I left on Tuesday…leaving Mabel with her grandparents.  And I was stressed.  Not because I didn’t think his parents wouldn’t do a great job watching her…it’s just that I’ve always had this mentality of: if something can go wrong…it will go wrong.

I’m thinking I need to turn into a glass half full kind of person, lol!

We got to our hotel and I was finally able to let myself relax.

My husband’s parents had already texted us a photo of a happy Mabel and I knew she’d be just fine.  What did people do before cell phones could send photos?

Next thing I knew the Hubs and I were at dinner and he had deemed it a ‘no baby convo’.  And we had done okay but probably 20 minutes into dinner I realized we were talking about Mabel and how she was cutting her top two teeth.  Neither of us had realized we had switched topics.  That little baby somehow managed to ‘be there’ even when she wasn’t.  : )

And over the two nights, Mabel’s grandparents sent us several video clips which my husband and I watched several times over and over.  This helped me to enjoy the vacation even more since I knew she was having a good time.

Who knows, maybe she needed a vacation from us too?

When Thursday morning came around, I was sad to see our vacation was over but very excited to see my baby when we got home.

Now that I’ve had time to reflect on our trip and being away from Mabel for two nights, I realize that I was silly to feel guilty.  Parents need ‘me time’ too.  I think those two days were great for refreshing our relationship and allowing us to relax…to come home and be even better parents to our little girl.

*I’ll leave you with a photo from our vacation.  I’ve always wanted to go into one of those shops that do old timey photos and get dressed up as someone entirely the exact opposite of who I really am.  So enjoy rare image of my husband since you hardly ever see him on here, lol!*

*A click = a vote*