International travel with a baby in the time of Covid

Tests, quarantines, baby puke and more adventures

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We had a plan. They say we plan, God laughs, and Covid has made that feel extremely accurate. I like plans. I like looking ahead, plotting little and big things to get excited about.

Our plan was that my husband Tony’s parents would come to New York City to visit our baby a few weeks after she was born. They live in England, in a town called Solihull, smack in the middle of the country. Tony grew up there, and most of his family live nearby.

The baby was due April 15, 2020. The global pandemic happened, throwing all our plans out the window with it, along with everyone else’s. She was born on April 9. We named her Simone. Our doula couldn’t be with us. We switched hospitals. I had wanted an unmedicated birth and ended up with a scary emergency c-section. Nothing went according to plan, except for having a beautiful, healthy baby. She looked just like her dad, down to her long eyelashes.

I remember thinking in those early days that surely things would go back to normal in a few weeks. By the time summer ended. By Christmas.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. What even is normal?

We made plan Bs and plan Cs. We moved in with my parents in New Jersey for what was going to be a week, then a few weeks, and then ended up being several months.

Meanwhile, Simone was growing up. She had her first smile that wasn’t just from gas. In the early days we were worried she was gaining weight too slowly, but suddenly she was double her birth weight and these perfect thigh rolls. She had her first food (avocado, which she was unimpressed with.) She was sleeping through the night (sometimes.) She was slithering around like a very cute snake.

Still, she hadn’t met her paternal grandparents. Months passed. We FaceTimed a lot. “That’s Granny! That’s Jajja!” we exclaimed. Simone tried to put the phone in her mouth.

We’d planned to visit for Christmas, but the plans were very tentative. After all, things changed so fast these days. We kept waiting to buy our tickets. We didn’t want to get our hearts set on the trip, to jinx it. We didn’t take the decision lightly. We didn’t want to get sick or get anyone else sick. Was it foolish? We went back and forth.

Meanwhile, Tony’s little sister had a baby boy in October. England had a new tier system. Most everything was closed. But we weren’t going to be tourists, we just wanted Simone to meet her grandparents. Such a simple thing made so complicated in these coronavirus times.

Reader, we went. We took lots of precautions. We even bought Simone a little yellow baby hat with a face shield, but no way would she keep that on her head for more than 30 seconds. The day she turned eight months old, Simone met Granny Christine and Jajja Apollo.

In quarantine in England, I walked back and forth in my in-law’s garden to get some steps in and some fresh air. After our negative Covid test, I expanded my range to Tudor Grange Park and Brueton Park. Sometimes I even stopped at the little coffee truck for a latte.

This was before they discovered a new, more contagious strain in the UK and the country went into yet another lockdown. We listened to Boris on TV, Simone chiming in with her “bababababa.” Then, we didn’t leave the house. We could have been anywhere in the world.

There were silver linings, too. We are both working from home, so we stayed with Tony’s parents for more than a month, which we couldn’t have done if Tony needed to be in an office every day. The planes were nearly empty. On the way back, we counted 22 people on an airplane meant for 300-something passengers. This made me feel a little less guilty about our inconsolable baby. She was much too interested by every little thing to sleep.

I changed her in those tiny airplane bathrooms. I threw her poopy onesie in the trash. It was really gross, and I couldn’t bother carrying it around with me.

We did it. Simone learned to crawl at Granny and Jajja’s house, the house where her dad grew up. She drank the fancy European organic formula that is for some reason hard to get here. She started to climb up onto her knees and kneel at their bookshelf, taking out each book and putting it in her mouth. She had her first Christmas, a stocking with her name on it, mouthfuls of. Brussels sprouts and turkey all over the floor and somehow, in her hair. She met her cousins. She started to wave, and to clap. We rang in 2021. We watched an insurrection on CNN as I worked on a puzzle of London and cried.

This weekend, we made it home with our negative Covid test results to show the immigration people and our health forms online for the New York Sherriff’s Office. I had no idea New York even had a sheriff’s office until now. On our first day back, they called me four times and texted me twice, separate phone calls for me and Simone, to make sure we were quarantining. I explained that sure, Simone could come to the phone, but she wouldn’t have much to say. Just “babababa.”

I’ve been up since 4 AM and my brain is mush, but I’m so happy we made the trip. Two quarantines, three rounds of Covid tests, one set of cancelled flights, one sweater soaked with baby puke…it was worth it. Pretty much nothing went as planned. Still, I am immensely grateful to have these two families, one in New Jersey and one in Solihull. I’m grateful Simone has so many people who love her in this deeply crazy, flawed, beautiful world.

Granny and Simone in Solihull last month.

PS Thank you for your requests and ideas! So many juicy things to write about next.

PPS It would mean so much if you pre-ordered my new book Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family. It comes out in September, and pre-orders help show interest and excitement.