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And I had my reason: despite the challenges & insecurities we were facing, we succeeded in traveling first with a baby. Then now with a toddler. I wanted to deliberately show that YOU CAN too. My page only radiated alacrity - the joy you can experience as a family on the road. For that reason this is going to be the same from now on, my overall orientation will not change! 🙂

Undoubtedly I’m well aware there are more than enough pages/accounts where motherhood, or parenthood in general is like a caricature & spiced up with wry humor. And I get that. I even like those myself. But just because I rather share our happy moments doesn’t take away the „real-ness” of us.

In total we traveled:

• 4 times aboard including 1 flying & 1700 km road trip
• did 5 mini road trips in Hungary
• visited approximately 50 places in Hungary
• discovered more than 60 places in Budapest

For the first time I also share our JUSTdiariesTravel MyMaps where I collect all our spots we have visited.

That being said let’s meet our retired & current insecurities:

As I said, traveling is challenging with a baby/toddler on board. First things first, let’s start with the most obvious, widely discussed & yet most horrifying one. In the first months Nara was crying a lot. She wasn’t a good sleeper & even if she had been, most probably I would have been still emotionally & physically drained after the trinity of being in labor, giving birth & dealing with 4th trimester.

For first timers, it was hard. Boy, have I thought about traveling? Probably walking her in the stroller to the next island. Sidewalk island. 🙂 Although we heard the ’she’ll sleep once she's in the stroller’ phrase way too many times, the sad reality was that she didn’t. No matter how or when we tried, I think I can count on my 2 hands how many times we had a pleasant 1 hour walk with the stroller. Hence, my biggest fear was that if she starts crying helplessly, I will not be able to comfort her. What mother am I if I can’t do that? I had proper fear of going out from time to time.

Can you imagine how disappointed I felt sometimes by thinking about bringing Nara somewhere (let it be a restaurant, a nearby place, the next city or just a doctor appointment). Let alone travel somewhere? Not to mention I saw my beloved passion for traveling as a family getting farther & farther away.

What helped?

• Surprisingly that’s when the power of social media kicked in. Thanks to IG, I started to gather beautiful families around me who happens to be really love traveling. In fact, likeminded people gave me boost, that it’s possible. We have to experiment, we have to have trials & errors, but it’s something we can do if we want.
• Secondly, obviously with time we also changed our mindset about crying. (Who am I fooling? It was all me! 🙂 ) Does it bother me today if my child starts to sob in public? – Totally. But I also learnt that the most important thing is to be there for her. 99% of the chance the people who are staring, or giving looks for the show, will even forget it happened 10 minutes later. (At least this is what I keep telling myself). 🙂
• Finally, starting little. Our first half day trip was only after 6 months to a nearby city. Between the “traveling-across-the-globe-all-the-time-starting-at-few-weeks-old” and the “casually-traveling-here-and-there” families I always like to navigate in between. Every small trip is traveling. You don’t have to fly to a different country to label yourself as a traveling family.

The next course on the ‘traveling is challenging with a baby/toddler on board’ menu is eating. Since the ‘having a nap in the stroller while mommy & daddy are having a date in the restaurant’ was not on the plate anymore, we were about to involve Nara in all the dining experiences we have encountered. Sometimes it was like a well-oiled machine. Well, sometimes an epic fail. Luckily, we never forgot her milk/water, but we forgot basically everything else at least for once: her plate, cutlery, coverups (we used swaddles when it was needed), snacks, wet wipes, toys…

Most of the time she was prone to tantrums, refused to stay still, she was unhappy with the culinary delight she was invited to. At least in the first few months when we tried. Of course I was quite stressed balancing to entertain her, make her behave – whatever this ideal phrase means -, feed her and eat my food, while we want to have basic interactions with my husband. Up until today we usually divide who is paying more attention to her while we eat so at least the other parent can have a decent meal.

What helped?

• Creativity. I do must say, after 2,5 years we mastered the little tricks we have learnt how to be resourceful, when we have to reach for alternatives.
• Practice. I hate when someone says this cliché, but I also totally get it why they say it. The more you try the more you feel comfortable with situations which are not specifically comfortable.

With time, it turned out we are more roadtrip kinda family than a flying one. And I think it also has to do something with the fact that we purchased our very first hybrid family car in 2021. For the greatest joy of my husband. 🙂 Obviously, we were super excited to go & explore Hungary. Well, in the first few months we were happy if we were able to make it & visit family 200 km away.

• I clearly remember committing that huge mistake when after 100 km Nara was still half asleep and I said, ‘I think she’s gonna make it’ leaving the rest stop with full speed. She was on breastmilk at that time. She was crying from her heart for the last 20 minutes. It was so emotionally exhausting that my husband called my parents to clear the way when we arrive & instead of hugs & kisses we ran to the room to feed her. Was there any other possible way to handle the situation? Most probably. But it was a mixture of first-time parents meeting exhaustion meeting reckless decision making.
• Also, we learnt the hard way to always put extra clothes not just for the baby, but for adults too. Leaving the highway, we ended up driving on curvy roads & while Nara eased her stomach content, we (especially my husband) ended up wearing most of it on T-shirts… 🙂

What helped?

• “Starting it small” is a golden phrase in my opinion. I began to collect all the fun, interesting places in Hungary to see, what is the palette we can choose from. This is the time when my HUNdiscovered series was born. Lucky thing we are really open people to wander around, so I ended up with having a Hungarian bucket list with more than 200 spots. And we started with the close ones.

After all the crying, bumpy roadtrip trials & some really unsuccessful dining experiences, my husband was a bit reluctant to get on an airplane.

His biggest insecurity was coming from the fact that although with budget airlines, the European destinations usually are 1-2,5 hours away (which is super good), still it requires waaaay more time:

• 0,5 h getting to the airport
• at least 1-2 h for security & check in (but with a newly formed family, our clumsiness might require more)
• another 0,5 for boarding, settling and
• then comes the actual flight (1-2.5 hours or more)
• then another 1 hour to get out of the airport
• then who know how much time to get into the city.

In other words, it’s just 1 hour flying to Milan, but in reality, it’s at least 4+. My husband argument was that he can drive a tight 5 hours and we are on the Croatian seaside. Which is true. Nevertheless, both flights & car ride has their equal share of pros & cons, we waited until we felt secure & well-prepared for the flying – which was 19 months.

What helped?

• Educating yourself. Even if you were a big traveler (flying involved) before having a small companion, still there are a new set of rules, and things you should (& have to) think about. Extra luggage, milk on board, strollers and travel cots, lap infant or car seat etc. I, specifically, watched/read all the ‘flying with baby/toddler’ content on IG I found. Luckily, having so many amazing travel families in my tiny community helped a lot!
• Don’t stretch your comfort zone too much. Wait until you feel ready. Where’s the rush? Travel where you are still at peace. One thing for sure over-worrying yourself while traveling just simply doesn’t worth it. 🙂

Traveling is challenging with a baby/toddler on board and I think all parents’ biggest fear is what if your baby/toddler gets sick during traveling. Firstly, you might not speak the language, secondly you don’t know where the pharmacy or the hospital is etc. Now I think back to this one particular occasion when we went back to Pécs (200 km away from Budapest) & Nara was suddenly started throwing up in the middle of the night. We managed to calm her down, made her drink a bit of water but then again, she threw up 2 hours later. At this point we knew she might have got some virus, but we didn’t know what it was, & we were afraid of dehydration.

In a hurry we ended up in a pharmacy where the lady was very helpful, but right at that moment we really wanted to be at home in our safe place. Although we did have some basic medicine for emergency it turned out we lack a lot.

As a result, the next week our upgraded medical kit was ready & we carry it ever since. Is it a lot? Probably. Is it worth to calm my nerves and keep my fear in check? Absolutely! I put here the link of my IG post about our medical kit.

What helped?

• Other than the upgraded medical kit: be prepared mentally & physically. Yes, we desperately needed that upgrade in our medical kit, but also you have to normalize in your head that your child will get sick from time to time. The more you travel the higher the chance it will be on the road.