Every year, we head to the beach to spend an entire week with my extended family. This year, everyone was able to join, so the house was full with 8 adults, 9 kids between the ages of 1 and 15, and an au pair – a total of 18 people in one house! It’s a week that we look forward to every year and my dad describes as “the best week of his year”. With this many people in a house for a week, especially family, things can get stressful. To add to the stress, traveling with a child with special needs is not the easiest thing to do. However, Courtney and I decided early on that we weren’t going to let that impact our lives, or the lives of our children, including Hayden.
So we packed up the Yukon with the 7 of us (yes, we bought 7 of 18 to the party!) and head to the beach! Packing for a toddler is hard enough, but packing for a toddler with special needs is even more difficult. Not only do you have to get the pack and play, diapers, and some toys to play with, but with Hayden, we have to grab all of her feeding supplies, including her pump, feeding bags, an extra g-button, formula, bottles, etc. In addition, Hayden is on a variety of medicines, including growth hormone therapy, that we can’t forget. Typically, if you forget something at home – no problem, just run to Target and pick it up. However, we don’t have that luxury on a lot of these items that she needs to have. You can’t get a feeding pump at Target.
Fortunately, it was only a 4-hour drive, but long enough that Hayden needed to be fed. One of the benefits of being fed through a feeding tube is you can be fed on the road (we’ve learned to look on the bright side of the challenges of feeding tubes). Once we arrive, the craziness has already started!
By this point in Hayden’s life, she had been to the beach a couple of times with mixed results. While it is still early, Hayden appears has some sensory issues with touching her feet and hands, so we were curious to see how she liked the sand and the waves rolling up on her in the surf. She seemed to enjoy it last year when we were at the beach, but we were curious to see how she enjoyed it this year.
The result? Curious of her surroundings, and we think fun! I don’t blame her, there is no worse feeling than getting sand in your swim trunks. We sat her in the shallow area in the wet sand and let the waves come up on her feet. She loved splashing in the water and playing with shells that drifted up beside her. It was great to see her taking in new experiences and exploring what was around her. As enjoyable was that everyone was enjoying the beach. We even made it to Medieval Times with the entire family. Good times, gotta love Myrtle Beach!
Traveling with kids is tough and sometimes overwhelming. The added element of special needs adds to that stress. However, as I said as I opened this post, we were not going to let her diagnosis and the extra work impact our lives, or the lives of our children. Sitting on the beach and watching ALL of our four beautiful children enjoying themselves alongside their cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents makes it all worth it.
We’ve got this! We can do this! A trip to Denver in October with all the family… that is going to be another level.
With love,
Courtney and Matt
