I had very very big plans for my 28th birthday.
I spent a month in South America and for my birthday we would be hiking the W circuit in Torres del Paine National Park.
This is a 80 km (50 mile) hike through a really incredible National Park in the Chilean region of Patagonia.
Patagonia is a hiker’s dream.
I made a 40 page 8 pt font Google Doc with all of our plans for hiking the W.
It included our flight itineraries, public transportation and rental cars, bus times and tickets, accomodation details, where we would rent our gear, what gear we needed, what food to pack and where to buy it when we arrived, a detailed itinerary of our trek day-to-day, what to bring, where we would be camping each night, and so much more.
I spent months and a few hundred hours planning the trip.
We saved money and worked really hard to make it all happen.
I counted down the days. I couldn’t wait.
Things did not start off well. This was the first trip we decided to not bring Beckham’s pack-n-play.
We backpacked Guatemala with a pack-n-play and it was just too much.
We decided it was time to move on, and Beckham could sleep in a bed/sleeping bag with us.
This was a very bad decision. Well, really we had no option because we couldn’t hike with a crib haha, but it made things SO rough.
Beckham goes to bed at 7 PM every night in Costa Rica. It gets dark by 5:15 PM every night.
In Chile, the sun is up until 9:30 PM in November.
And normally I would love that, but Beckham also loved it. Too much.
The sun, mixed with how stoked Beckham was to be in a bed with mom and dad made it so Beckham wasn’t falling asleep until around 11 PM every night (4 hours later than normal).
He was not okay.
And we didn’t get our 3 hours of alone time every night.
We were not okay.
Beckham was still up by 5 AM every morning.
We wanted to cry. It was so exhausting.
I felt like I was in boot camp with the whistle blowing in my ear, prepping me for my morning beat down.
The snowball effect of Beckham’s lack of sleep turned him into a radioactive monster.
Although it’s awesome taking turns eating at restaurants while the other parent waits outside with Beckham, or shoving food down our throats so we can get out quick, it’s also not as fun as it sounds.
But, it’s often how traveling goes, and we are pretty used to it. If I get a few good cries in, and we are able to take some pictures/videos, I’m usually good haha.
We were officially ready to begin our trek.
We finally made it from Santiago>Punta Arenas> Puerto Natales >Torres del Paine National Park.
On the first day, we bused in. We made it to the park but missed the first ferry to begin our trek. So we waited for 90 minutes next to the river. Beckham “lost privileges” several times when he threw rocks at people or tried to throw himself down the ravine into the water.
We never saw another toddler in the park while we were there. I can’t imagine why haha.
We don’t tend to get too many family pictures anymore, so this was our attempt haha. Stilllll waititng for the ferry.
Beckham cried about 80% of every day on our trip, it felt like haha. I think he was upset here because Dan said he wasn’t allowed to blugeon me with a rock.
Maybe it would have been better if I could have been blugeoned with a rock. Too far? haha
We made it to the starting point of our W trek and I was SO pumped!!! We had it all worked out so I would carry all of the gear (35 lbs) and Dan would carry Beckham and his things (over 60 lbs).
I was so proud for getting all of our camping/living supplies for 3 people (including 20 diapers) into one pack.
We started the W trek, which is a 80km/50 mile hike through Torres del Paine. Our first destination was Grey Glacier.
Beckham screamed the whole time. Like…..the whole time.
We had read about the wind, but it was unlike anything I have ever experienced. People say it was unusually windy and cold.
It wasn’t just the wind. Soon it turned into needle-like hail and freezing temperatures. It was something Dan and I could handle and suffer through, but Beckham was not okay.
Beckham’s body was warm, but we couldn’t keep the fierce winds and sleet/hail from getting in his face, no matter how many times we stuffed the stupid blanket in the front of his carrier.
See the plastic bag on his foot? Beckham’s shoe fell off. I ended up running 5k WITH my backpack to go back and find it. Dan found it.
Everyone watched me yelling at Dan (and probably thought, “Wow, I’m glad I’m not in that family!!)
A little background context about Beckham: This last year he has had so many weird health issues that range from a seizure and dangerous fevers to erupted eardrums and violent coughing.
He has been to the doctor and hospital way too many times and been on more types of medicine than I could count. At this point, his doctor was considering a possible surgery that he may need in the future.
We knew we just couldn’t keep Beckham in the cold. It just wasn’t fair.
So Dan headed back to the campsite, and I went on to try to make it at least to Grey Glacier, less than 1 km ahead.
I was so sad because literally 3 minutes after Dan turned around, I reached the lookout for Grey Glacier.
It was incredible.
I stood up at the peak alone, waiting for the clouds to go away, and I thought.
I thought about how much we have to give up as parents.
I thought about how the activities I love most are so hard to do with a little kid.
I thought about how badly I wanted to experiences all of these things with my family, and not by myself.
But I thought about my sweet husband who wants nothing more than to protect our family.
I thought of my innocent toddler who didn’t deserve to get sick, and just wants to play and feel safe.
And so I turned back.
I ended up running back along the path to catch up with Dan and Beckham. Beckham was still screaming haha.
We made it back to the campsite and got Beckham some hot chocolate from the store to warm his little body.
He was so happy. It made me happy.
We camped that night at the first site-Grey campsite. We were cold the whole time.
And the sun didn’t set until 9, so we had no idea what to do with Beckham for 5 hours. I hadn’t planned on hanging out at the campsite all afternoon, but the weather was just too harsh for Beckham up in the mountains.
He couldn’t really play outside because he just kept getting all of his clothes wet. All we had was a tiny tent for shelter.
I think this night may be one of the worst nights I have ever had in my life (as far as stress and anxiety go) haha.
Beckham did NOT want to sleep. He jumped around our tiny tent like a wind up toy for an hour, stomping on us and tacking us, wanting to wrestle. Wrestling was the last thing Dan and I wanted to do, as we tried to hang up our frozen wet clothes and find a place to keep our electronics safe from the weather.
The rain and wind were so bad in the middle of the night. Our tent flooded and Beckham was hacking up a lung. He was going to get a fever again.
I couldn’t sleep because I was wet and freezing, and I was so stressed about Beckham getting more sick.
At 11:55 I finally told Dan, “Please go get help. We can’t stay in here.”
Dan came back 10 minutes later and said to follow him. He grabbed our soaking wet sleeping bags and I grabbed our sick toddler and followed him through the freezing rain into the refuge.
The blessing is that the refuge closed at midnight. We were just minutes away from not being able to get in that night.
We had to pay the extremely ridiculous price to sleep in a dorm room, but it was worth it.
I didn’t sleep the entire night. I was so worried about Beckham. He was so sick at this point. I was also afraid he would wake up the other people in our room who had not paid to sleep with a sick toddler.
I knew some changes needed to be made in our plans.
The morning finally came. It was my birthday.
The original plans for my birthday were to start Day 2 of the Torres del Paine trek.
Dan had bought streamers to decorate our tent (which was flooded and a muddy mess).
But we were already a day behind on the trek, and Beckham was so sick and tired.
I knew without a doubt that we would not finish the trek, and we needed to leave.
Beckham screamed that morning while we waited in the rain for the ferry to take us out. We just stood there like empty shells, way too tired and exhausted to even talk.
We waited 2 hours for a bus to take us from the park. After 2 bus rides we finally made it back to Puerto Natales.
Dan and I didn’t talk much on the ferry. We were next level tired. We had just thrown away hundreds of dollars.
I thought about the hundreds of hours I had spent planning flights, campsites, reservations, where to rent gear, what restaurants to eat at, accommodations, etc.
I thought of the money we had spent that we were not going to get back.
I thought of the fact that we probably would never come back to Torres del Paine because it is so expensive and hard to get to.
I thought how it was my 28th birthday and honestly one of the most discouraging and exhausting birthdays I had ever had.
I thought about missed opportunities and things we would never see or do.
The weirdest part about all of it, though, was that it felt okay.
It actually felt kind of good.
When Beckham was first born, I resented him for “taking my life from me”.
My body changed, my personality changed, my abilities and my friend groups changed, my free time and social life changed. I felt like so much had been taken from me.
*I know this sounds terrible. How can you resent an innocent baby? I get that. I loved him with every fiber of me, yet I somehow simultaneously felt resentment for everything that “had been lost”.
I have worked really hard over the last 2.5 years on my relationship with Beckham.
I have worked really hard to learn to sacrifice, be more grateful, have a better perspective, and love unconditionally.
It felt so good to recognize the sacrifices I was making, and be okay with it.
It felt so good to identify everything we were missing out on, yet be so confident in my decision to put Beckham first.
It felt so good to recognize the progress I am making in getting to where I want to be as a mom.
Perspective has always been something I have struggled with. Feeling like something is “the end of the world” or “irrecoverable”. It is something I have been working on so hard, especially since having Beckham. I want it to be one of his strengths.
It felt so good to feel at peace with leaving a situation that I would have loved, that was not a good situation for Beckham.
I put him first.
And sometimes I put myself first. And sometimes I put Dan first. But this time Beckham needed to be first.
Dan let me sit by myself on the bus (which is my go-to for recovery haha).
I put on my headphones and looked out the window, watching all of the scenery pass by of the park that we should have been hiking through.
I thought of all of the incredible scenes I had seen only in pictures, that I would not be seeing.
I thought of the meals that we were supposed to cook around the stove together, that would now be microwaved in a hotel.
I thought of the amazing memories we were not going to make and the pictures I wouldn’t be able to take.
I thought how I was spending my birthday on a bus instead of next to a turqoise lake surrounded by mountains and pine trees.
And it was okay.
I felt so grateful.
I love reading Instagram posts from Humans of New York. A lot of people in those stories live very lonely lives. They have been treated terribly by people that are supposed to protect them. A lot of people feel alone in the world.
How lucky am I to have people in my life that it is so easy to sacrifice for?
Sacrificing is hard, but how amazing is it that I have people in my life that I love enough to give up so much for?
It felt easy to put Beckham first, and that recognition gave me more joy, purpose and sense of accomplishment than any trek could have given me.
The trip was overall still pretty bad.
Beckham was off the wall and we were sleep-deprived, irritated and stressed.
Honestly, I can’t really think about Torres del Paine without feeling a little anxious/sick to my stomach. So much went wrong.
And it still makes me sad that we didn’t ever get to “The Towers” and we never saw the things I had been waiting years to see.
But my perspective is changing.
Not every disappointment has to be life-shattering.
Not every lost opportunity is a closed door.
Not every hard experience is irrecoverable.
And at the end of the day, some things are more important than others.
I will always love traveling. I hope I never lose my thrill for seeing new things, meeting new people and having new experiences.
But my family matters more to me than those things.
And to me, that feels good.