Getaways before the kids

Before the stork arrives, oh, the places you can go for a babymoon to treasure. When we asked our obstetrician about them, he gave us a polite, perplexed look that only deepened as we rambled on. Finally, he said, "What, exactly, is a babymoon?" It's one last vacation for expectant parents before the baby arrives, we explained to his relief. He thought a babymoon had something to do with a child's astrological sign. Reassured, he confirmed that it's generally safe for pregnant women to travel during the second trimester, as long as they take sensible precautions. In 1969, the Blessos decided they wanted what Jacqueline calls "one last fling" before their first child arrived. They'd been to Jamaica for their honeymoon, but wanted a destination a little nearer to their New Jersey home, so they spent a week in the Bahamian town of Freeport. "We just wanted someplace warm to relax and take it easy," Frank says. "Nobody did that in those days. I think we were trendsetters," Jacqueline adds. "We wanted . . . somewhere you can relax and enjoy each other . . . before you're faced with a new set of responsibilities." Today the idea is big business, with hotels and resorts worldwide offering babymoon packages ranging from the uber-luxurious - a five-night stay at Cayo Espanto, a private island resort off the coast of Belize, including three meals each day prepared by your personal houseman - to the more quotidian pleasures of the pedicure and facial for the mom-to-be. According to a recent survey by the Liberty Travel agency and babycenter.com, a website for new and expecting parents, nearly 60 percent of parents-to-be take an overnight trip before the baby arrives, adding up to more than 2 million babymoons in the United States each year. "Anecdotally, from knowing 25 pregnant women in one year, almost every single one of them took a babymoon. What we're seeing is that the all-inclusive trend is very big," says Mary Jo Lipman, a spokeswoman for the travel website Orbitz.com. Lipman cites Cancún, the Caribbean, and the Dominican Republic as popular babymoon destinations. "What's interesting in this whole all-inclusive trend is that it's really creating this experience where you don't have to leave [the hotel or resort] because there's so much - or so little - to do," says Lipman. Lipman's colleague Jim Cohn says he and his wife took a four-day drive to Savannah, Ga., before the birth of their first child five years ago. "One of the reasons we went was we had so many friends who kind of warned us, 'What you should do [before the baby's born] is go to a movie every weekend.' We were almost scared. We thought that was kind of our last hurrah. . . . We have very, very fond memories of our babymoon," Cohn says, adding that he and his wife celebrated their 10th anniversary in March with their first getaway without the kids since their babymoon.