Traveling with a baby as a first-time dad
Nobody tells you having a baby changes how you travel. It’s less planned in some ways, yet more freeing and meaningful in others.
Elie found that out in Japan, seven months into fatherhood. "You meet yourself again in a form you didn't know you had," he says. Having his baby by his side means adapting and opening up to things he’d never have considered before. He stopped trying to manage it all and started letting it happen. "To move slow, so you can go further," he says.
Nobody moves the ocean. You don't hold it, you don't hurry it. You go in, and you let it carry you.
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Zach had that same realization on the English coast, in the small town of Rye. He and his wife had been traveling for work for years, and some of the wonder had started to lose its magic. Then his son Sully came along. "Getting to see all these beautiful places through a fresh pair of eyes has brought the joy back tenfold," he says.
These days, the family favors slowing down over ticking off new destinations. They pack light, chase natural beauty over city sights, and Zach films almost everything for a future family archive.
It's as if I'm seeing and experiencing everything for the first time again.
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Their new family member hasn't made travel simpler, exactly. But both dads describe finding something better – a reason to slow down, to stop optimizing the trip and just be in it.
