Six Tips for Working Mothers (And Frequent Travelers) to Help Make Time on the Road Easier  

There was a time early in my career when the mere idea of a business trip made my eyes light up.  A trip meant I was important enough to for my company to spend valuable resources on me —  like visa fees, airplane tickets, hotel rooms, and a meal allowance.  And if I was lucky, I would explore a new place I’ve been longing to visit.  Before I had children, I volunteered for any travel opportunity that presented itself.  I circled the globe, sometimes spending weeks on end in exotic locales like Sao Paulo, Rome, and Singapore. Weekends didn’t matter.  Why spend them at home when I could spend them in a cool new city?

But when I returned to work after the birth of my first child, I realized everything had changed.  Meetings and seminars that involved an overnight stay had lost their luster. Re-jigging the delicate operational balance of home needs and work needs was too stressful to consider.  Nursing and long haul flights were not compatible.  Weekend travel was out of the question.  However, I had an international job, and while late night and early morning calls sufficed at first, business trips were not indefinitely avoidable.

You see it coming, try to circle around it, and pretend that it’s not necessary, but then it is: it’s time to head out on the road.  And here are a few tips to help make it easier.

Set Your Boundaries with your manager and your business partners.  Decide what you’re willing to do if you have to be away from home. For me, that meant no weekend travel unless absolutely necessary, and never more than one weekend away from home in a month.  Have I had to miss a meeting or two because I couldn’t to fly out on a Saturday, or had to leave for home early on Friday?  Yes, but I also know that I wasn’t going to miss any more moments at home with my family than I had to.  So it’s important to talk through these boundaries as well with your significant other or caregivers.  Committing to boundaries that work with your support system is crucial.

Plan Like Crazy.  Why the last tip is so important: your significant other or caregivers may have to take over some things while you’re out. So a clear list of activities and appointments with timings and addresses will go a long way.  Keep a list of emergency contacts, including medical information and releases, and your hotel contact information handy.  If you have the chance, talk through the details, and answer as many questions as you can before you leave.

Pick Flights that Work with Your Schedule. I’d rather take flights that are after bedtime or in the middle of the day; for me, morning and dinnertime flights are tough to coordinate since they interfere with the “before daycare” or evening childcare routine.  Sometimes, it’s easier to fly home early Saturday morning after a good night’s sleep than it is to arrive late at night on Friday while recovering from jetlag and adjusting back to a home routine right away.

Give Yourself Your Time Back.  If you do travel over a weekend, or are gone for a whole week, give yourself some time back.  If you can, travel back on a Thursday evening, and spend Friday working from home to catch up on household needs, and recover from a discombobulated internal clock, if you crossed time zones. A good rule of thumb: for every weekend day you travel or are working, take a day back when you come home. You may have to be available remotely, but it’s important to recoup time with your family and to catch up on the other parts of your life that you had to put on hold to travel.

Decide if You Are Willing to Travel While Nursing.  (I’ve done it once and would never do it again.) It’s not easy, and if you don’t have to, I don’t recommend it.  Research airports to know what mother’s facilities are available.  Plan to go through extra checks at security, since you’ll be traveling with a breast pump or expressed milk. Talk to your manager about shipping milk home.  Some companies offer this service to nursing employees.

Find a Way to Reward Yourself.  Traveling is stressful.  Use the time away from home to catch up on sleep, give thought to projects at work that you haven’t been able to tackle sufficiently, or just to relax.  I generally don’t work when on board an airplane unless something is pressing.  As a working mother, an opportunity to be alone and focus on your own thoughts is a rarity.  Take advantage of it while you can. You’ll be back home before you know it!