I know I mentioned back in January that Zach had an awesome first year with Aflac! We were so excited to learn that all his hard work came with a wonderful reward. Each year Aflac has a President’s Club trip where they send the Top 85 agents in the nation and their guests on an all-expense paid vacation to somewhere!
Well guess what? Zach was in the Top 85!!! His trip? A 5 night trip to Paris, France. We were pumped!!! The bad news? The trip fell 6 weeks after my due date! Once we found that out we debated about what to do? We prayed that Aflac would let us take the baby and we made a back up plan if they wouldn’t. That’s why I was sooo worried that Clover would be late because I KNEW I had to store up enough milk to feed the baby while we were away if Aflac wouldn’t allow us to bring him!
Thankfully, Kye came a week early so instead of being 6 weeks old he’s 7 and I had that much extra time to pump and save milk. Aflac won’t let us bring him on the trip or let us reschedule or basically do anything else. It’s go or don’t go. While I feel HORRIBLE and GUILTY for leaving my young baby, who could pass up a free trip to Paris? Not only do we get free plane tickets but we also are staying at a REALLY nice hotel and they are paying for all our meals…which include a welcome dinnner at this famous village called Montmartre, dinner and show at Moulin Rouge, and a dinner cruise down the Seine River! Plus they are taking us on a panoramic tour of the entire city! It’s truly a once in a lifetime opportunity!
My mom has taken the week of from teaching and is coming to keep Kye for us. I’m SO thankful to her for doing this as I don’ t know if there is someone else I’d feel more comfortable with than her! She stayed with us when he was first born and stayed again over her Spring Break so she knows how we do things!
Even though she probably already knows everything we do, I still felt the need to type up a list for her of every little detail she could possibly need to care for my baby! The end result? 33 PAGES! Mom told me she’s been busy this week writing up plans for her substitute teacher and I told her it’s like she’s my “sub mom” since I’m basically doing the same thing she is for her sub teacher!
We leave tomorrow morning and I have pretty much been dreading it. Usually I’m PUMPED for a trip but this, while it will be awesome, is such a hard one! It’s not just like we are going to be away from the baby, we are going to be away for 5 nights in another COUNTRY! Mom can’t just text me or call my cell, I have to call her to check in with a calling card or (we pray the room internet works okay) email.
I feel so bad that Kye will miss me and won’t understand. At this age they don’t know that when you leave you will come back and I am scared he will be crying for ME and I won’t be there. I feel so badly about leaving him but at the same time I think Zach and I really need this chance to reconnect. I would say I’m excited to get to sleep through the night for the first time in 2 months but I don’t even get to do that!!!
In order to keep my milk supply up so I can breastfeed when I get home I have to pump while I’m there…EVERY THREE HOURS!!!! What a pain! So that means I’ll even be whipping out my pump on the airplane…how fun!
I was worried people may judge me for going on the trip (again my insecurities) because I know when, while I was still pregnant, we debated about going if Aflac didn’t let him come people either told me to go because it’s a once in a lifetime chance or they said they wouldn’t be able to leave their baby that soon. When did I get over it? When I realized that most working mother’s go back to work after 6 weeks! So why should anyone judge me? Yes, I’ll be gone multiple days in a row but working mothers can be gone like 8 hours a day so that’s not that much of a difference?
Bottom Line: I’m going. I feel crappy about it and am probably the least excited I’ve ever been about a vacation before. BUT I’m hopeful. I think once we leave it will remind me of the “days before baby” and I will let loose and enjoy myself. I know it will be incredible and I plan to soak in all the culture I can and enjoy my HUSBAND since our lives have been revolving around Kye so much lately!
I’m going to miss my baby so much and have been spending every second I can this week soaking him in. Of course today, the day before I leave, I realize he may have hit a growth spurt so I’m having to adjust my 33 pages to try to offer Mom some help on how to deal with it while I’m having less than 24 hours to figure it out myself before I’m gone! I feel bad leaving him in general, let alone during a time when it’ll be tough for someone else to figure out what to do! But I know it will all be OKAY and that years from now I’ll have all the memories of the trip and will have lloooong forgotten my guilt! 
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