Originally published in Glamour

We Could All Use a “Momcation”

Motherhood is filled with guilt, which was amplified when I decided I wanted to take a trip away for some me time.

Before I had a baby, I was a frequent and spontaneous traveler. I lived for girls' weekends and anniversary trips with my husband. I saw travel as one of my (many) forms of self-care—more luxurious than a bubble bath or a face mask, but if my budget allowed and I could take the time off, I found a way to make it happen.

When my daughter was born, I took 12 months of maternity leave (I’m Canadian, and our federal government offers generous paid maternity leave benefits, assuming you’ve been employed prior to giving birth) and assumed a new full-time job as a mom. It was both the most amazing job I’ve ever had and the most emotional, physical, and exhausting one. After a year I was extremely ready for a vacation. Just me, a good book, and a few days of freedom from mom duties. The thought of a diaper-free weekend filled with uninterrupted sleep sounded blissful.

Enter the “momcation” into our lexicon, a new type of travel with more than 53,000 posts on Instagram and counting. Defined as a trip a mother takes without her husband and kids, it could be solo or with girlfriends, but the goal is the same—to get relief from the demands of parenting.

“My husband travels for work and I do most of the childcare,” says Vanessa Milne, a 37-year-old journalist from Toronto, who has two children, ages 5 and 19 months. About a year after her first was born, a friend invited her to Montreal to celebrate her 40th birthday. At first she hesitated. She was worried about leaving her baby, but then she decided if she was able to take care of her child alone, her husband was more than capable too. “The trip was amazing,” she tells me. “It was nice to go out and know 100% you can sleep in the next morning.”

I was scared to even suggest the idea of taking a momcation to my husband—not because he wasn’t capable of staying at home with our daughter but because the desire to even want time away made me feel incredibly guilty. Our culture celebrates mothers who cheerfully embrace the sacrifices of motherhood and harshly judges any woman who deviates from this norm. It felt defiant to openly want a break from parenting duties.

It’s one of the great ironies of motherhood: You desperately want time for yourself, but as soon as you get it, you feel guilty.

“The mom guilt is on a whole other level,” admits Kathy Larson, 42, a work-from-home mom from Sleepy Creek, North Carolina, with three children, ages 6, 8, and 11. “There’s social media, my mom, my mother-in-law, and my friends.” Larson was also worried to ask her husband about taking time away for a trip to the Caribbean with her best friend with whom she had regularly traveled before they had children. The two shared the same birthday and wanted to go away to celebrate their 40th. “I was afraid to ask him,” she says, but was pleasantly surprised when he was more than supportive.

My internal debate got even more complicated when I started to do the math on my trip. Even though I was back at work, I was now contending with the reality of living in a city with astronomical childcare costs. A getaway I could have afforded pre-kid now felt irresponsible.

Cost is a concern for a lot of moms including Larson, who initially said no to the 40th-birthday trip over cost concerns. I briefly entertained the idea of putting it on a credit card, but I already felt guilty about leaving—and extending our tight budget for something that would benefit only me added to it. Other moms told me they used credit cards more strategically. Rhiannon Giles, a 38-year-old mother of two from Durham, North Carolina, managed to take a solo momcation to Puerto Rico by doing some “creative credit card juggling ending up with travel reward points that offset the cost considerably.”

I decided to save the big-ticket trip for the future and made a new plan to stay at a family cottage for free. With two nights planned, it would be the longest stretch of alone time I’d had since giving birth. As I kissed my daughter goodbye, she waved and went back to playing with her toys. I thought she would be more upset to see me go, but she was content. I immediately felt relieved, then unsure: Was she not going to miss me?

Hours after my arrival at the cottage, texts from my husband started to pour in: updates on the activities they were doing, what she had eaten, her nap duration, her mood. I pleaded for photos. I video-chatted in for her dinner. After all the longing for a vacation, it was more difficult to disconnect from mom life than I thought it would be.

Of course, not all moms feel this way. “I thought I was going to miss them a lot, but I didn’t struggle at all,” says Larson. Milne said they were so busy throughout her weekend away there was hardly time to check in. Giles felt the trip empowered her. “I love my kids. I would die for my kids,” she says. “But I’m an introvert with two very strong-willed children—time off makes me a better parent.”

What every mom I spoke to did agree on when it came to momcations was the sleep: the blissful, uninterrupted, best-sleep-of-your-life sleep. No baby monitor casting a stream of light in the bedroom. No middle-of-the-night shrieks. No early feeding. Two nights of this was almost enough to undo months of sleep debt. Almost.

Taking time away for myself made me realize there is absolutely no reason to feel guilty for prioritizing yourself. It’s not just a “nice” to do; it’s essential. Without recharging yourself on a regular basis, you can’t be the fully present parent you want to be. Although Milne and Larson haven’t taken a second momcation, both women said they’d like to do it again. “Before I did it I judged other moms,” says Larson “But then when I did it, I was like, Why didn’t I do it sooner?” Despite the initial guilt, I relished the uninterrupted time alone, freedom from the demands of a toddler, and the ability to pee without being barged in on.

I tell my daughter I love her more than anything, and I really do. I love being a mom. But I love myself too. Enough to take a vacation.