The thing is, I still think of myself as a backpacker. The same backpacker who would happily sleep in a marijuana-infested youth hostel in Toledo, in a crash-pad in Hong-Kong, on a doormat in Carcassonne. The same backpacker who would fit a fortnight's living into a 4.5kg rucksack.

But suddenly the 4.5 kilograms I drag around with me rest in a baby carrier on my abdomen and they wriggle. Boy, do they wriggle! Occasionally, they scream blue murder. And they require a suitcase of their own, a whole 20 kilograms worth of nappies, towels, medicine, bottles, formula (in case I suddenly lose my breast milk), baby clothes (who would have believed that tiny clothes contribute so significantly to the weight of the luggage?) and toys. Toys that whistle, toys that crackle, toys that get mistaken for terrorist weapons at airports. Then there is baby soap, baby shampoo, baby massage oil, baby ear buds, cotton wool. And to think that my own travel cosmetics bag usually contains nothing but one toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste!

With a change of circumstances in the family comes a change in the style of travel.

That is why we chose a luxurious boat for our holiday instead of the usual budget option: the newness of the situation is stressful enough, we don't want to add to it by being cramped into a bunk-bed cabin. We need our own bathroom, we need a bed large enough to accommodate the three of us (did you know that, on an adult-size double bed, a 10-week old baby can take up three-quarters of the width?), we need floor space to spread out her activity mat (with the above-mentioned toys), we need..

But most of all, we need to dive. Desperately. Scuba diving is forbidden during pregnancy, so we've ended up having a whole year away from our favourite hobby. Now that we're at the renowned Great Barrier Reef, where one does nothing except dive, there is a snag: the baby, of course. Which one of us will look after her first while the other explores the ocean? We already decided that we'd take turns, but I'm the one who's breastfeeding, so if the dives are scheduled to take place while she needs to nurse, I might miss out.

Despite my opulent surroundings, negative thoughts nibble at my composure. Meanwhile, our welcome session to the diving boat continues. They take us through the safety procedures and introduce us to the chef (who wants to know whether she should prepare a special meal for the baby). Then they mention the spa bath. The spa bath? Wow. What next?

"Where are the babysitting facilities?" I quip. This time I am being flippant. Even Club Med doesn't cater for babies under 2 years of age. But I'm in for a pleasant shock: the crew will be happy to look after our infant. Anything to ensure we have a good time.

And a good time we have. We dive, we socialise in the spa pool, we catch up on sleep. It's almost as though we're back to our backpacking days and pre-parental bliss. We hardly recognise our baby. At home, she takes forever to settle down to sleep, yet on the boat, she's an angel: she sleeps when she's supposed to sleep, and she doesn't seem to mind whether it's our bed, the sofa in the lounge or the activity mat on the floor of the dining room. We try to guess at the cause of this good behaviour: the hum of the aircon, the sway of the boat, the fresh sea breeze?

But whatever the reason, the important thing is that our daughter seems unfazed by the idea of flying to exotic places and making friends out of complete strangers. Perhaps our old life is not all lost. Perhaps in a few years' time we'll be travelling with backpacks again, all three or five of us, making fun of the time when we were travel snobs who needed an ensuite bathroom.


But for now, we're back home. Our daughter is back to wailing in the late afternoons. We are still having trouble getting her to sleep. And we want to go back to that boat.