The hidden cost of travel

Yes, the fee for your checked bags is a hidden cost of travel.

Yes, the roaming charges on your cell phone is a hidden cost of travel.

Yes, the extra $10 a day to let your husband legally drive the rental car is a hidden cost of travel.

I am not talking about money though. It is something more - more costly and more difficult to simply accept as the price of travel. Here it is: no where you go with a new baby will ever be relaxing and rejuvenating unless you go with a full-time babysitter, cook, chauffeur and perhaps maid. Scratch that, not perhaps, maid for sure.

Here is why: your schedule stays at home as does absolutely everything that is familiar to your little one which makes for sleepless nights and discombobulated days. For your little inquisitive nugget, the guestroom at your best friend's house might as well be Disneyland.

And flying - well, that is just unnecessary with a baby, even if you have a baby who smiles adoringly at security, the jaded flight attendants and the older couple who is silently thinking "Please don't let that baby be sitting near us" .

Don't get me wrong - I would not have given up this past weekend in Denver with my two favorite mamas for the sake of an undisturbed schedule, but after getting up at 5am this morning, walking the nugget to sleep in the terminal because our flight was delayed for 2 hours and arriving home in the the first torrential rainstorm of the season, we realized all we wanted to do was crawl into bed and wake up a week later.

And so we slept. And rested from our vacation.