The trials of taking a toddler on vacation

It should have been a dream assignment: Head off with my son, Charlie, on a week's vacation to the family-friendly resort of my choice—someplace that would take all the work out of traveling with a 16-month-old. It ended up being my most harrowing trip ever. And believe me, there's competition: I've slept in mosquito-infested dumps in Laos, biked through downtown Beijing at rush hour, and driven around the West Bank and Israel in a car with Palestinian plates. For sheer physical distress and anxiety, however, nothing beats my latest challenge: the Club Med in Ixtapa, Mexico.

"You could go anywhere and you chose Club Med?!" is probably your stunned reaction. It would have been mine too...before I became a parent. But what I needed was a resort with an activity program for toddlers where I could drop Charlie off and pick him up again at my whim, depending on whether I felt like spending the afternoon alone with a novel or building sand castles with him on the beach. Day care was key not just because my assignment was to relax but also because (1) my husband couldn't join us on this trip, and (2) I was pregnant and physically incapable of running after my exceptionally fast and fearless toddler all day long.

As I researched resorts, I found to my astonishment that very few—except Club Med—have an activity program for children under age three. So I booked a seven-night vacation package for $2,210, including airfare. My big mistake? Trusting that the presence of a day-care program meant that the resort would be baby-friendly in other ways.

The first bombshell came when we boarded our flight from New York to Houston, where we were to connect to Ixtapa. I don't normally fly Continental, but that's the airline Club Med put us on. Our FAA-approved car seat did not fit into Charlie's 16.2-inch plane seat with the armrest down, so the flight attendant made me gate-check it. There was no way to keep Charlie strapped in, which meant he spent the entire flight jumping up and down on his seat and trying to climb over anyone and everyone to get out.

Club Med had given us a mere 41 minutes in Houston to connect to our international flight, and our plane from New York had arrived 20 minutes late. So I ran, stroller and Charlie and carry-ons in tow, from Terminal E to Terminal B. When we got there, the gate was closed, our assigned seats had been given away, and there were no more seats together. Thank God Continental took pity on us, opened the gate, and retrieved our adjoining seats, but the car seat was once again gate-checked.

Eleven napless hours after leaving home, we got to the resort, which proved even more potentially hazardous to a 16-month-old than standing on a seat in a Continental Express regional jet in turbulence. The resort had concrete stairs all over—no elevators, no carpets—and smack in the middle was an enormous unfenced adult pool with no stairs or shallow end. And the distances I had to travel at this 850-guest complex were huge. The trek from our room to the front desk—where I was forced to go several times daily to get service screwups fixed—was 437 paces, including 76 stairs. My pregnant body had to walk this in 100-degree heat and 95 percent humidity, carrying a 27-pound wiggle worm, because if I put him down for an instant he would run off, potentially to catapult down the stairs or jump into the pool. It was 355 paces, including 46 stairs, from our room to the restaurant. To top it off, Charlie and I could not hang out for long on the beach or at the pool, given the broiling August sun, the absence of beach umbrellas or a shaded part of the pool, and the scorching sand.