re: Passport for a newborn question

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Do not take a 2 month old on a plane that I am on. Thank you.

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Can you imagine that misery when that crotchspawn starts screaming fifteen minutes into an international flight?

My oldest was born on Halloween and on Christmas Day flew to London...I had to put my cold hand on her belly to get her to open her eyes....

As I recall it was actually pretty easy to get her passport

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As I recall it was actually pretty easy to get her passport

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There is a backlog due to COVID now.

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Volunteer to stay home with the kid?

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This.

Obviously your wife can’t miss this wedding and is being unreasonable about bringing an infant to a destination wedding.

Bring a picture of the ultrasound and see if they’ll give you the passport now

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We took a six week old to Costa Rica. The passport came via UPS as we were ready to walk out the door. You’ll need to pay for expediting at every turn and it should still be close, depending on when in august and October. This was 2015 when we did it. The trip was also very challenging.

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In normal operations, getting a passport in time would be no problem.

We are not under normal times.

The US State Department is still under “Phase 2” Covid restrictions. There are NO 24 hr walk-thru appointments. Expedited service time is now 12 weeks. Non-expedited service is 18 weeks.

Passport processing centers are operating with skeleton crews. The only true fast processing they are working are for deaths and critical emergencies.

Things *may* get back to normal in the next 3 weeks… but I don’t think that is realistic.

All that said, I hope your wife is doing research on where she will take your infant if there happens to be a medical emergency. I can’t imagine trying to negotiate Mexico health care with an infant during these trying times.

But hey, I guess if you keep repeating “It will be fine.” enough times then you have nothing to worry about.

I’m not on board with people calling your wife selfish. No indication to support that thinking. I do believe she is being incredibly naive. And she seems to be making some important decisions based on emotion and not logical… not an uncommon thing at all for a woman in her last trimester.


ETA: anyone thinking getting passport is easy right now, I encourage you to call the National Passport Agency customer service line posted on the State department website and wait to talk to an actual human. You will be on hold for hours. And when you do finally talk to someone, you will quickly realize I’ve provided a very optimistic outlook on the current passport process.

I would never travel internationally - or on a plane in general - with a newborn.

Goodness a lot of nancies in her. I agree it’s not a great idea OP, I agree your wife needs to have a serious talk with her sister she won’t be able to make it. Assuming this is your first kid, there’s no freaking way the wife is going to leave the kid for 2-3 days at 2 months.

So your wife’s not going to the wedding given the times with Covid and passports. That’s the reality, I’d accept that now and make other plans.

But traveling to Mexico with a newborn isn’t a big deal at all. People that married a foreign National or work abroad travel home with little kids all the time. I don’t think that’s a big deal, but yeah you may be F’d with a passport that fast.