work has a field study planned in two other cities in august, four nights away in total. it was scheduled before he was born and i'm the one who designed it. care is arranged on paper. a caregiver, plus family as backup. still, i keep looking at the dates and feeling odd about it. i don't have a clear question. did anyone travel for work this early, and was it fine, or do you wish you'd pushed back?
I did a field study when my daughter was about two months old, a long time ago now. Logistically it was fine. Emotionally it was harder than I expected, mostly on the second night. One thing that helped was asking a colleague to run the evening debriefs so I could call home at a fixed time each day. Could you hand off part of the schedule without giving up the study?
I travel for demos and went on my first trip when my son was around three months. What I'd check is the boring routine rather than the plan: who does the 2 am feed on the third night if the caregiver is off, and who takes him to the doctor if he gets a fever while you're away. If both of those have a name next to them, four nights is manageable.
This. The plan always covers the normal days. It's the fever that tests it.
I went back to school when my son was very small and had a residential workshop in the first term. Three nights. By the second evening I wanted to come home early, and there was no way to. If you can, build in a way to cut it short by a day if you need to.
A shorter option is sensible. I've made two short trips since our daughter started daycare, and the one with a flexible return felt very different from the fixed one, even though I didn't use it.
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