Summer 2022 Week 1

Like running a marathon, traveling with an infant overseas is definitely a one-time thing (guess we’ll have to stay in Europe forever—it’s too much work to go back at this point). 

I have a fellowship from the Freie Universität to spend the summer working on my dissertation in Berlin and thought I would share some travel highlights for friends and family wanting to follow along. 

Our first few days were, perhaps unsurprisingly, pretty rough. Teddy did great for the flights here, sleeping almost the entire way from Newark to Berlin in the airplane bassinet (what a gift that was). We landed around 8am and headed toward our hotel. We are renting an apartment in Gesundbrunnen for the summer, but can’t move in until May 20th, so we thought we would get adjusted to the time zone and take a little trip in Europe before coming back to Berlin.

The first difficulty was getting from the airport to our hotel, in that I accidentally had us get off a stop too soon. Which meant we got to walk through a park (Tierpark). It would have been fine, except that we had three suitcases, three backpacks, a duffle bag, and a baby to drag through that damn park. 

We showed up at our hotel and it took a while to check in and then we tried to give our very droopy baby time to nap, but he was so disoriented and tired that he just cried for three hours instead. I took him for a little swim at our hotel, after which he managed to fall asleep for a bit. We met up with the people we’re renting our apartment from later in the afternoon and had dinner with them (+met their dachshunds we’ll be taking care of!), which was nice but we were all POOPED. 

We got back to our hotel around 7:30pm and by the time I’d nursed Teddy and put him to bed (he fell asleep immediately), Dallin had also fallen asleep. I didn’t want to miss out on all the sleeping fun, so I also went to bed. I got up around 5am and went running in the Tierpark (much nicer without suitcases), while Teddy slept until 9:30am. We visited church (where I randomly ran into one of my BYU professors there with a study abroad group) and then we came home for more naps for all of us. The rest of the day was resting and recovering–sleeping, swimming, breathing the like. 

It was a much needed rest day because Monday wrecked me. 

On Sunday night, my right breast started aching. When I examined it, I found a clogged milk duct. Or rather, ANOTHER clogged milk duct because I was already on antibiotics from a clogged milk duct in my left breast from the previous week (my THIRD time getting mastitis since breastfeeding). Clearly the breast milk goddesses are angry with me. I panicked a bit about that but didn’t know exactly what to do and had a hard time sleeping with the pain. 

Monday morning came along and we packed up our stuff to take a train to Prague. Except on our way to the train station I suddenly couldn't find my phone. We had magnificently overpacked for our trip (I dropped two of the suitcases off at our Berlin apartment but kept everything else for some reason+added a few extra bags). My arms were aching from the heavy suitcase+two backpacks and two bags I’m navigating–all of which I’ve looked through twice because I literally JUST had my phone. 

I tried really hard not to panic except that EVERYTHING IS ON MY PHONE. 

Our train tickets. 

9000 pictures of Teddy. 

Etc.

I ran up and down the street a few times frantically looking for my phone knowing that our train departure time is getting closer and closer. Finally we decided to lug all our stuff back to the hotel so I could do a “find my iPhone” search from my laptop. I checked with the hotel staff first to see if anyone had found a phone in the last 20 minutes and PRAISE THE LORD someone spotted it outside and brought it in. 

I grabbed it and ran while screaming my gratitude because our train was supposed to leave in 18 minutes and we were 16 minutes away according to Google maps. We went as fast as pack mules can, but my arms were threatening to snap off (what do I even lift weights for if they don’t help me in these situations?!) and I was also generally having trouble breathing. 

We finally made it to the station and had to run up a staircase except that I was broken and did not have the strength to carry my suitcase. Some kind passerby noticed and immediately carried my suitcase up for me and threw it on the L-train with us. 

There I sat. 

Soaked with sweat. 

Visibility shaking arms and legs. 

Aching breast. 

Unable to take in any breaths.

On the verge of tears. 

I didn’t quite manage to calm myself down before we needed to get off at the main train station and once again race like the pack mules we were to get to the correct platform.

We made it with about one minute to spare. 

It was all I could do to not collapse on the dirty train floor and weep in relief. 

Instead, I remained standing and started crying, willing myself to breathe. 

I cannot explain how terrible this morning made me feel. It exposed my weakness of always losing my phone and somehow mentally escalated to the end of the world and me ruining Teddy’s life if we missed the train and had to wait around for several more hours. Teddy was, however, very chill about the whole situation, and seemed to enjoy our 4 hour train ride. Dallin was also remarkably cool-headed about the whole thing and a stabilizing force in my universe.

We made it to Prague and walked around and got food and then tried to put Teddy to bed. However, Teddy was disoriented and tired and not fond of trying to sleep in a new place so he cried for several hours, which broke my poor little mama heart because at home he has been an awesome sleeper and usually falls to sleep without making much of a fuss. 

And then during/after the baby screaming, I examined my right breast again and noticed the area with the clogged duct had grown more angry and red throughout the day. I had stopped by a pharmacy while still in Germany to ask about what to do about a second plugged duct while already on medication for mastitis and they recommended rubbing quark on it (the equivalent recommendation of cabbage in the US I suppose?). I called my US doctor that night and she said if the clog didn’t improve within 24 hours it might be an abscess and I should take medical attention to get it drained. 

I know, everyone wants an unexpected medical procedure in another country.

I was up until 2am reading about abscesses and trying to massage the duct away, also debating if I should return to Germany for medical care there or keep going on our trip as planned.

I fed Teddy as often as he stirred during the night and by the morning, I thought the clog felt a little smaller so we could press forward with the original plan. 

We lugged our belongings back to the Prague train station in the morning to catch our 9:12am train to Budapest. Except when we arrived at 8:52am, we saw there was no 9:12am train to Budapest–only one at 8:56am. Our printed tickets didn’t have a time on them, so we weren’t sure where the myth of the 9:12am train came from–turns out they had changed the time a few days before. Fortunately for us the 8:56am train was delayed 10 minutes so we did make it after all–needing to only panic for about 10 minutes total. 

The train from Prague to Budapest was about 7.5 hours and it was a pretty good time. Teddy napped just fine (he hadn’t fallen asleep in our arms/on us since about 3 months, so I was delighted he adapted to sleeping on trains so well). He also met some train-grandparents–an older American couple was in our car and kept making eyes at him. We ended up sitting with them for most of the trip and they loved holding and playing with Teddy, which was a big help to us. 

Dallin kept insisting as soon as we made it to Budapest, everything would be fine. Turns out he was right. 

Clogged duct? Almost gone, meaning it’s not an abscess and I don’t need to get it medically drained. 

We’ve also just generally had a great couple days taking Teddy around Budapest. He is also the most popular baby in the city by far–it seems like every demographic has wanted to make faces at him, hold his hand, etc. Old women, old men, men in their 20s and 30s, teenage girls–everyone is obsessed. We have been left wondering if Teddy is exceptionally cute (which of course we think he is) or if people just don’t get to see that many babies these days. 

A little part of me hopes that the same women who yelled at me for wearing flip flops in March 2019 are the ones going wild for Teddy. 

A museum curator wished Teddy that he will meet many kind people in the world, because there are so few kind people anymore. Another woman told us how happy and inquisitive he was, another that he had an angelic face, another that he had smiley eyes, and an old man congratulated me on my baby. #Teddyforbudapestpromking