A Wedding Weekend to Remember

A few weeks back, I had to fly to Boston for a few days with one of my clients.  We stayed downtown at a newly remodeled W Hotel.  The freshness of the hotel, mixed with the view of downtown Boston and Fenway Park, solicited a strong desire for a weekend getaway for me and Meg.  We needed a new "weekend to remember."

Having three babies in the hospital pretty much crushed any near-term ability to travel easily, or at all, especially knowing that our girls could begin coming home at any point in the next couple of weeks.  Still, we needed to do something romantic and fun together.  I called her from the hotel and talked about getting away for a day or two.  The girls would be in great hands with the nurses in the NICU and, frankly, how many more opportunities like this would we get.  She loved the idea and immediately decided that we should take advantage of the time and reverse our "decline" invitation to our close friend's, Sarah and Zac's, wedding.  Fortunately, it wasn't too difficult to add ourselves late as attendees, so we bought our plane tickets, booked our hotel room, and prepared for the logistics of traveling to DC while needing to pump along the way (it's harder than it may seem).

By the way, I never realized how consuming and controlling a pumping schedule could be on a new mom's (and dad's) life.  Every hour of each day needed to be planned so we could figure out where we were going to be and if it would be suitable for pumping.

We flew out on Saturday morning, but not before stopping by the NICU to see our girls.  The next several hours were a whirlwind of driving, flying, getting to the hotel, showering, getting ready, and getting lost on the way to the ceremony on Saturday evening.  When we got out of the cab and finally exhaled, we were greeted by smiling faces and a beautiful afternoon that was obviously designed specifically for Sarah and Zac's wedding.

After a beautiful ceremony, we got our dance on and spent a truly wonderful evening with some really great friends, all in the presence of true love.



And just like that, the wedding was over.  I almost forgot how fast they fly by.  Ours seemed like it only lasted an hour, but the pictures prove otherwise.

We wrapped up our trip with a long, scrumptious breakfast at Eggspectations, where we got to soak in some good friend time with our peeps that we hadn't seen since our move to Chicago.

It was a great weekend escape.  We were missing the girls pretty badly when we first landed, but we made it through.  Sometimes, I just need to dance with my wife.

I'll leave you with some parting advice if you plan on traveling while pumping.

#1 - While on the plane, using the hand pump and staying in your seat is way more sanitary than squeezing in the small airplane bathroom to get your milk.  Who cares if the passenger sitting next to you looks at you funny.  At least you won't have 30 people asking "are you ok in there?" when you're hogging the bathroom.

#2 - Be prepared to answer the question "What's in your bag ma'am?  Do you mind if we do a bag check?" when going through airport security with your big breast pump.  Apparently, it looks lethal when going through the x-ray machine and the TSA folks are completely dumbfounded when trying to decipher what it could possibly be.