International Travel Tips: The 23 Weeks Pregnant Edition

During my book travel, I posted a series of International Travel Tips. Most of them revolved around how I managed to live out of a tiny green suitcase for up to five weeks and three countries at a time. Now, I'm doing it pregnant. 

For me, traveling pregnant isn't near as difficult as many people imagine. I'm having an insanely easy pregnancy, and the doctor has ordered anyone who wants me to fly across oceans to speak has to fly me business class-- a luxery I've never had before. Still, there are some pregnancy-travel necessities that I've come to appreciate. 

1. COMPRESSION SOCKS. Other than a Passport, this is the only thing that would get me to turn around and drive back to the house mid-airport dash. The only real threat of this kind of travel is the increased risk of bloodclots, and one of the best ways to guard against it is wearing maternity support hose. Blech. I wore them on my flight to Indonesia and was miserable. They're just not comfortable and I look about as cool as a 1980s secretary who's switched her heels for tennis shoes for the commute home. Even the maternity ones squeeze my belly more than my ankles. 

But I picked up these compression foot-less socks at The Nest, a great maternity boutique in San Francisco, earlier this month, and I adore them. Anytime my ankles turn into elephant feet, I throw them on just like I'd put on legwarmers during a flight or in the evenings and the swelling goes down dramatically.  Last week, I wore them under some boots walking all over New York, then caught a flight home in them, and still got home to normal, non-cankles.

They're actually comfortable too. No one minds compression around their ankles-- it's like a massage. It's the full pantyhose pushing on the belly that suck. 

2. ThinkThin Bars and Decaf Green Tea Bags. I discovered ThinkThin bars when I was crashing Benchmark Capital's offices a month ago and fell in love with them. Low on sugar, high on fiber and protein and yummy, they are my new favorite ready-snack. And those are more important to have on hand pregnant, because I can't do two things I do constantly when I travel: Skip meals and then eat anything in sight. 

I've also found that "decaf" doesn't exactly translate in most places. Having some tea bags in my purse at all times makes it easier to turn down coffee when I'm horribly jetlagged. 

3. Maternity Trenchcoat. I got this awesome coat at The Bump, a maternity boutique in Brooklyn that Mr. Lacy discovered while he was working in NYC earlier this year. It's hands-down the best maternity store I've found, and this trench was one of the best things I bought. No jackets button these days-- obviously-- and that's a problem living in windy San Francisco. This trench is great on the road too, because it keeps the wind out, but is incredibly lightweight, packs easily and doesn't wrinkle. It's an instant way to look pulled together-- looking fitted and classic up top, with plenty of room to flare at the belly. 

4. Atlas Visa. Regular readers know the most annoying part of all my book travel was dealing with VISAS. Because my husband and I were bootstrapping this book and strapped for cash, I couldn't afford expediters and spent days at consulates, mostly begging to get documents in the short windows I had between trips. Thankfully, a full-time job has changed that, and the best visa expediter I've worked with is Atlas Visa in Washington DC. They've got great relationships with each consulate and are super efficient.

5. Pinky Ball. For those who don't know the way around a pilates studio, this is a hard pink ball about the size of a fist that rolls out all your tense muscles. It takes up little space, and put it on knots in your back and rock back-and-forth in your seat or against a wall, and you've got an in flight massage.