This weekend will mark the first, of what I assume will be more to come, weekend away from our precious little. He will be less than a week away from his half birthday and we will be going out of town. Now if you know my husband and I, you’ll know we were never afraid of going on date nights and getting a sitter for him since he was born. Even when he was in the NICU. Yes we were at the hospital everyday, twice a day, but we were also heavily encouraged by our doctors to still enjoy our married lives. So now, I do truly wonder how we will experience being away from him for more than 24 hours, and not the simple couple hour getaway.

As I shared this with one of my mom friends she told me how great she thought we were for getting away. She was very close to her littles, never getting to leisurely leave them early on, and I think that happens to a lot of parents. We may feel as though our children cannot survive without us, but that’s simply not true. We must give ourselves a chance to live and be who we were before children sometimes. And that in no way, shape or form means we forget about our babies. It just means that if you liked to have date nights before birth, keep up with date nights after. Maybe you won’t be able to have so many, but you’ll have them.

The same thing applies to friend dates, vacations, and other outings. We love our kids, but we must take care of self as well. It’s kind of like when I returned to work after my maternity leave, and I didn’t realize how much I missed daily adult interaction with different people. Our children won’t love us any less for getting out to do fun things, and it certainly does not mean you stopped loving them either.

I’ll soon share with you all how our trip went, and if we survived being away with our crying everyday. My one hope and prayer from this blog post is that another mama or papa is encouraged to take time for them and have a little fun! Lastly, don’t ever (ever, ever, ever) let another parent make you feel bad for your parenting style and choices you make regarding your child(ren). If they are well taken care of, loved, clothed and the list goes on, you’re doing a great job! You will hear this from me a lot, so you know I really mean it.

Hugs, mamas and papas. XO