twinutero

We recently traveled (moved actually) from Canada to South Africa with three children under four years old. Here are ten tidbits of wisdom I learned along the way:

1. Start paper work early. Everyone needs a passport now, from newborns up. That means getting passport quality photos and that means, realistically, several trips to the photographer. Small children don’t like to perch on a high stool and have a flash go off in their face. Getting photos that the passport office will accept is therefore a chore. We also needed visas – a different form, a different office and more photos. Get at least four copies of ID photos and leave plenty of time for the bureaucracy to do its work.

2. Get proof of custody. In Canada there are “long form” and “short form” birth certificates. Only the long forms include names of parents. We needed the long form to get visas – an extra step that took time and money. (Ontario guarantees delivery of a birth certificate within five business days if you pay $65 and choose their “premium online delivery” option. Otherwise, the process can take months.) On the topic of custody, you might also check the Government of Canada’s publication International Child Abductions. Just in case….

3. Get vaccinated – expect trauma. My GP was unable to tell us what vaccinations we needed to travel to Cape Town so we consulted a travel doctor. He advised Hepatitis A/B and rabies shots. Hep A/B is a series of three needles, as is rabies. That’s six needles per child, times three children – eighteen needles. It has not been fun. It has not been cheap either. Medical treatment for traveling purposes is not covered by our provincial medical plan. Rabies shots are particularly expensive, about $180 per needle. Also, Hepatitis vaccinations are given over a six month period, so plan ahead.

4. Get an international driver’s license. Foreign licenses may be valid for a time, but they eventually expire and getting your license renewed from abroad can be a real pain. I’ve also been advised by the Canadian consulate in South Africa that insurance companies aren’t partial to foreign licenses and might try to avoid payment if you’re in an accident without a local or international license.

5. Travel by night. We took two overnight flights: Halifax to London; then London to Cape Town. It was the most direct route we could find, but was still over thirty hours of travel. We left at midnight, with the kids in their PJs, hoping they’d act like any other night and sleep. That flight was brutal, I have to say. We got a day room at an airport hotel in London. While it was expensive, it allowed everyone to shower and sleep. It was worth it. The next flight, twelve hours long, was a breeze in comparison. The kids slept most of the way and arrived in South Africa ready to go. Based on other, shorter trips we have done, traveling by night was the right choice.

6. Sedate the children. Okay, I didn’t tell the whole story in #5. We gave Gravol to Alex and Thomas on the second flight. Just one shot – the recommended dose. I don’t know if it was necessary since Jon slept for nine straight hours without any meds and I’m reluctant to give sedation my wholesale recommendation. But this time, for us, it worked.

7. Travel light. Check your luggage all the way through to your destination, otherwise you’ll be traipsing through airports with cranky kids and toppling stacks of suitcases. Our carry-on bags were also as compact and simple as possible. The kids carried their own backpacks with their blankets, snacks and water. My carry-on was full of wipes, diapers, extra plastic bags, lollipops for take-off and landing, and a few surprise toys to distract when things got raucous. Best travel toys are silent and have few moving parts. We brought books, stickers, magnets (in a tin) and drawing boards. And we watched the in-flight movies – several times.

8. Get a good moving company. I’ve moved many times – and I’ve never found a moving company I like. This move was no exception. Their cost estimate was off by 50% and the shipping took a month longer than predicted. It seems impossible to avoid these little surprises, so I would now expect them. Expect to pay more and wait longer. That means finding an interim place to stay that will accommodate kids, and that kids will accommodate.

9. Share your plans. We started talking about our move as soon as it was confirmed. Thomas knew that we were going “to Africa” and that we’d take a plane to get there. He knew he wouldn’t see his toys for a while, and wouldn’t see his friends for a longer while. Jon and Alex were included in these conversations but were too young to respond. I still don’t know how much they understood, but each transition (house to hotel; hotel to airport etc) went smoothly, as if they knew what we were doing. In any case, it just seems fair to let your kids know if you’re going to travel across the world.

10. Don’t do it for fun. I wouldn’t include international travel with small children as part of a fun family holiday. It’s costly, it’s stressful, and it increases your ecological footprint by several sizes.

This question has been on my mind since I started reading mommy-blogs – more so since I started my own.

What is the difference between showing cute photos of your children to relatives, friends, or even acquaintances met on airplanes, and posting those same photos to a blog? In my mind, a big difference.

Sharing pictures and guess-what-my-kid-did-today stories with relatives deepens a personal and hopefully enduring connection. Same for friends. Sharing with strangers and acquaintances strengthens your connection with that person, but does little for your kids.

In all of those circumstances, though, you have control over who sees the photos and hears the stories, and more often than not you get direct feedback, so you know whether you want to continue sharing with this person.

Not so with a blog, of course. That photo of your baby breastfeeding, your toddler in diapers or your preschooler sleeping are out there for anyone with an internet connection to see.

Call me paranoid, Luddite, introverted (I may indeed be all of those) but I have a problem with posting intimate moments of my child’s life to the world. It is, after all, their life.

“Your children are not your children,” as Kahil Gibran famously wrote and Sweet Honey in the Rock beautifully sang.

That photo, now cataloged on the internet, is a fragment of a life that will expand in a million directions to form a complex adult with a very real and personal past. We’d think twice about posting a candid bedroom shot of our spouse or an entertaining faux pas of a sibling. I don’t think children are different.

Informed consent and benefit-sharing are two basic ethical principles drilled into every student of moral philosophy. It’s generally acknowledged that receiving informed consent from a young child is impossible. As for sharing benefits? Well, why do we blog? To share our “lessons learned” with a community of peers; to see our writing and photography published; to be heard; to gain a following; to earn money….

Few of these benefits go directly (if at all) to the main subjects of the blog, our children. Yet they carry a fair share of the risks, mainly loss of privacy although one could imagine worse.

So where do you draw the line? Have I already crossed it, despite attempts to respect my family’s privacy? Are all memoirs – and blogs are memoirs of a kind – exploitative? As with most ethical issues, debate is open and sometimes the best criterion is “I know it when I see it.”

I’ve seen plenty of insightful, respectful mommy- and daddy-blogs. I’ve also seen many where my sole thought is, “Are those kids going to be pissed….”