• When Victoria Lamson's son was 10 months old, she took him on a trip to Ireland, the UK, and France.
• She and her husband planned ahead, investing in a sturdy stroller and calling hotels in advance.
• For the most part, they felt Europe was more child-friendly than the US.

When my husband and I first announced that we were bringing our 10-month-old son with us on a two-week European vacation, we got very mixed reviews.

Some friends and family said our timing was perfect: Deacon wasn't walking or talking yet, so it'd be easier to travel with him. Others thought it was a big mistake. Lugging around a stroller and dealing with tantrums — all while navigating unfamiliar cities — seemed miserable to them. Plus, they told us, Deacon would be too young to remember any of it. What was the point?

But even before I became pregnant, Mike and I agreed that we didn't want to isolate ourselves like so many newborn parents do. While we didn't know what to expect with our first child, we wanted to include him in our normal travel plans rather than living a strictly child-focused lifestyle.

We started small. One of our first excursions was a road trip from our home in San Francisco to visit family in LA when Deacon was two months old. As he got a little older, we saw that Deacon is a very chill individual. He rarely fussed and easily napped in his stroller.

So in 2019, we planned a trip to Ireland, the UK, and France. While it required a little more planning and was slower-paced than vacations before parenthood, it became one of our favorite ones.

A little prep made the trip smoother

When we went on our LA road trip, we invested in a Babyzen Yoyo stroller, made by a French brand. While it cost around $450, which is on the pricey end, it was worth it: it smoothly rolls over cobblestone streets and easily fits into an overhead bin. Six years later, we still use it with our second baby.

To set us up for success, I called some services in advance. Most long-haul flights offer limited bassinets for babies in rows with extra space, but those seats usually need to be reserved ahead of time. I also reached out to our hotels to make sure they had cribs they could bring out, and a car service in Dublin — our first destination — provided us with a car seat suitable for an infant.

The only unexpected snag was using my breast pump abroad. Because Deacon was older and already eating solid foods, my milk supply was lower and I didn't really need the pump as much. Still, as a first-time mom, I brought it because it's recommended by pediatricians to continue pumping for a full year and I wanted to do everything right.

I had a European outlet adapter, but I forgot about the wattage differences. When I plugged the pump in, it got completely fried. Luckily, I had Deacon with me for those few weeks and could make more stops to breastfeed him.

Europe was more child-friendly than home

Overall, Europe was very kid-friendly. London was easy to stroll through and full of parks we could stop at with Deacon.

We also didn't feel out of place bringing a baby to an Irish pub, even on St. Patrick's Day. Culturally, it's more of a norm to bring kids to bars and other "adult" spaces in Europe than it is in the US.

Out of everywhere we went, Paris was the hardest place to navigate; due to the city's style of architecture, we had to climb spiral staircases in bistros and brasseries when changing diapers. Still, the culture made us feel welcome. Our hotel surprised us with a beautiful crib and a teddy bear for Deacon.

It was such a stark difference from San Francisco. More often than not, there isn't a changing table in the bathroom. And when you can find one, it's only in the women's restroom, as if it's not also a father's responsibility to care for his child.

In contrast, we went to a very old restaurant in a small Irish seaside town. When I walked into the tiny bathroom, I was surprised to find fold-away changing tables in all the stalls.

Europe's positive attitude toward children and families is such a big draw. Even slight accommodations make such a huge difference when we travel.

We did everything we wanted

The experience taught us that we don't have to put our lives on hold with kids. When Deacon got sleepy on the trip, we just bundled him up in his stroller and used the opportunity to relax at a cafe.

After Europe, we went to a family timeshare in Tulum, Mexico at the end of 2019 — another wonderful vacation. In 2022, we took Deacon with us on a road trip around Atlanta, Savannah, and Charleston.

While it's tougher to travel with two kids now — our 17-month-old daughter is less easygoing than Deacon was at that age — we still take staycations and go out with our children.

Looking back, going to Europe was more fun because Deacon was with us, not in spite of it. It felt so special to have him with us, and we'll always hold on to those memories of early parenthood very fondly.

• Brennan Schlagbaum and his wife became millionaires in 2022 after paying off debt and investing.
• They set up 529, brokerage, and Roth IRA accounts for each daughter, which they contribute to monthly.
• Their goal is to leave each daughter with over $1 million by the time they are 30.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brennan Schlagbaum, a 32-year-old CPA and founder of Budgetdog, who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My wife and I reached our goal of becoming millionaires in 2022, after five years of paying off over $330,000 in debt — including our house, cars, engagement rings, and student loans — and investing our money, largely in index funds.

We have two daughters — Logan is 3 years old, and Ellie is 1 — and when each of them was born, we set up three accounts which we put money into each month. Assuming 8% interest, their accounts should leave them each with $1,000,000 by the time they're 30. Compound interest is honestly the eighth wonder of the world; time is money.

Our goal with our investments for our daughters is to position them for success and give them opportunities that we may not have had growing up.

I don't want my kids to have a scarcity mindset

My wife and I both grew up middle class. In 2008, my family lost our house and cars, and I saw my parents change mentally. We still had food on the table and access to education, but I could tell things were tight and I felt a sense of scarcity that has stuck with me.

I don't want my kids to feel that way about money. I grew up being told that if I did a chore, I'd make X dollars. Then, I'd have to put, say, $2 toward saving, $1 toward charity, and could have $2 for spending. It was a good lesson, but it also fed into my scarcity mindset.

I want my daughters to realize that value creation is more important than trading time for money — I learned this when I moved from my 9-to-5 at Deloitte to being an entrepreneur — so I try to get away from the hourly or shift work structure with them and think about how I can help them have an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset.

I want my kids to be trust fund babies who see money as a tool

I'm not of the belief that you should just hand your kids money. I think that creates what most people view as a "trust fund baby" who wastes their family's money, and that's not what I want.

But I do want a trust fund baby in a different way — in the sense that they understand the principles and responsibility that come with money and what they can do with it, treating it as a tool rather than as a god. How someone chooses to use money shows who they are as a person, so we feel that grounding our daughters' characters is essential. We think charity is really important, for example, and we want that to all be included in our daughters' understanding of money.

I think it's a really good idea for my kids to understand how much I make and how much we spend. They're young right now, so they don't understand the technical elements, but I think it's worth explaining things to them so they can adopt our culture around money.

If Logan came to me and said, "Hey, my friends are going to the park. Can I have 10 bucks?", I'd have a conversation with her about what she needs the money for and teach her not to spend it recklessly. I'd ask her to think about whether she values what she's spending it on.

Here are the three accounts we have for our daughters

We typically put a total of around $500 a month into each child's accounts and plan to increase our monthly contributions to $1,333 a month for each child when they turn 7 as we pay them more for helping with my business.

529 plan

The 529 plan is for their education. My wife and I want to contribute 60% of the cost of a four-year public in-state college and to have them take accountability and cover the other 40%, whether it be through scholarships, working, or other methods. Using Vanguard's college cost calculator, we decided to put $250 a month into each of the girls' 529 accounts.

But we also don't want them to get a college degree just because we saved up money for them. I went to college totally clueless because my parents told me to, and I don't want my children to repeat that same cycle. We want them to ask themselves, What do I want to get out of life?

Also, our older daughter was diagnosed with Dravet syndrome when she was five months old, so we don't know whether college will be on the table for her. Because of that, we decided to switch to putting all $500 a month into her brokerage account until we better understand what her future will look like.

Taxable brokerage account

The second type of account we have for both of our daughters is a taxable brokerage account. They're both in my wife's and my names, but we'll be able to give the money to our kids when the opportunities arise.

According to the IRS's gift tax law for 2025, we're allowed to gift up to $19,000 per spouse per kid without paying taxes, so we could technically give them each $38,000 a year from this investment account. Currently, we put $250 a month for Ellie and $500 for Logan. If they receive money from grandparents or family for holidays, I typically deposit that amount as a lump sum into their brokerage accounts as well.

We want to let the money that's being invested for them grow for quite some time, so they probably won't touch the brokerage account money until they're 22 and fully in the adult world.

Roth IRA

The Roth IRA is for retirement purposes and requires earned income. Our daughters are young and don't have much income, but I pay them for the photoshoots they do for my business. It's nothing crazy — maybe $200 to $400 a year. Logan has $1,200 in her Roth IRA at the age of three and Ellie has $200.

Many parents think, "Well, my kids are too young to work, and they don't have earned income, so we can't set up a Roth IRA for them." The only requirement is to have earned income, and there are a number of ways they can do so.

I'd rather give my kids now than wait until I die

I think it's silly to wait to give our kids money. If someone gets a big lump sum when their mom or dad passes away, they often look at it as this big gift, almost like winning the lottery. They often don't treat it as a tool and instead live on a yacht and party and do nothing.

Instead, I think it's better to give it to our kids now, so that we can teach them how to treat money and how saving and investing has given them opportunities.

If you'd like to share the steps you're taking to prepare for your children's financial futures, email Jane Zhang at [email protected].

• A new study found that postpartum depression rates doubled over the past decade.
• Mothers interviewed by Business Insider shared a range of symptoms, including anxiety and OCD.
• Researchers say early intervention is key, but some are scared to share their symptoms.

When Bri Ramos was pregnant with her second child, she was already worried about the symptoms she experienced with her first. The lack of motivation or excitement. The severe anxiety that, up until having her first child, she never dealt with before.

Then, she started having panic attacks in her second pregnancy.

"I was like, 'Oh, here it goes again,'" Ramos, 36, told Business Insider. Her doctor saw Ramos "walking right into some bad postpartum" and took a proactive approach: prescribing Ramos Zoloft shortly after she gave birth.

Ramos is one of the many mothers diagnosed with postpartum depression. A new study from JAMA found that postpartum depression diagnoses have doubled in the last decade.

Dr. Nehaa Khadka, a maternal and child health epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente Southern California and lead researcher on the study, told Business Insider her team was surprised by how high the rise was.

While it could be partly due to increased awareness and screening, there seems to be more at play.

Rates of depression and loneliness are on the rise, and were turbocharged during the pandemic. Emerging cultural pressures to return to work quickly or to be the perfect parent can play a role too, therapists say.

Behind the research, many mothers with PPD say they still feel misunderstood, left in the dark, and lacking resources.

Working mothers are forced to slow down

Ramos, the founder and creative director of an ad agency, said one of the hardest postpartum adjustments for her was accepting a "new season" of her life.

"So many women go through an identity crisis because it's like, 'I've been this high-achieving career woman, and now I am at home for the next six or 12 months taking care of a child,'" she said. She had to take time to figure out who she was as a mother, separate from her usual work routine.

Not every working mom has the ability to take time off and transition into motherhood. There is no national paid maternity leave in the US; full-time working moms have to rely on their employers' individual policies. This puts mothers in a precarious position: if they can't take more time off to recover, their depressive symptoms can impact their productivity, putting their jobs on the line.

When Stephanie Fornaro had her second child at 33, she had "just an overwhelming feeling of doom and sadness." She also felt resentment toward her husband when he went to work, leaving her fully in charge of their son.

Because her symptoms were physically debilitating, she quit her software sales job for two years. Not working contributed to her depression, too.

"When you're accustomed to a demanding job and 'performing' and then you go to a slower pace, and solitude, it's a major adjustment that I think many underestimate," Fornaro, 39, said.

Plowing ahead, potentially ignoring postpartum depression symptoms, can lead to quicker burnout — and leaving a career entirely.

Justine Sterling Converse runs a women-owned event strategy and management company in Texas. She remembers many of her close friends in the industry jumping back into full-time work after taking three months of maternity leave. They all quit shortly after, unable to balance motherhood with working long hours and weekends.

Once she started having children of her own, Converse realized how hard it was to return to full-time work so soon. "12 weeks is just when you're starting to have a routine with your baby," Converse, 40, and a mother of four, told BI.

It was harder with postpartum symptoms. Converse was diagnosed with postpartum OCD, something she hadn't heard of before. In her office of 10 full-time workers, she said about 75% of them have experienced postpartum depression, anxiety, or OCD.

It's partly why her company policy includes 16 weeks of maternity leave and a 50% "transition" month for mothers to ease back into working full-time. Converse, who recently gave birth, is in a transition month herself and said it's been a huge help.

"I willed myself to not go through postpartum again," Converse said. "And I still did."

Postpartum depression can be hard to identify

Symptoms of postpartum depression range from intense mood swings to thoughts of harming your baby. While it's common to feel "baby blues" when you first give birth, PPD is much more severe and can last for weeks or months.

Still, it's one thing to know about postpartum depression. It's another thing to identify it in yourself when you experience new symptoms.

"As a new mom, you're in survival mode," Fornaro said. She knew something was off, but didn't have the space and time to take stock of it all and see it for what it was. "Now, I can reflect and go, 'Wow, I really was struggling.'"

Fear of judgment has kept some new parents from reporting their PPD, said Dr. Clayton Shuman, who led a 2022 study on how the pandemic influenced a rise in postpartum depression rates. He said patients might hold back on sharing their symptoms like being unable to bond with their baby, "to avoid the stigma and guilt."

Ramos believes more openness around the subject is helping.

Out of her tight-knit friend group, four out of five women have had kids. All of them have had postpartum depression or anxiety, and openly discuss their symptoms. While Ramos experienced a lack of joy, a friend had intrusive thoughts about her newborn's health.

In contrast, when Ramos' older sisters experienced PPD nearly two decades ago, one of them "just sat in her closet and cried." She thought her depressive symptoms were normal and, at the time, told no one.

In other countries, maternity leave is different

Postpartum symptoms can last for years, much longer than the three to four months of maternity leave many US full-time employees get.

In contrast, European countries like Greece and Iceland offer 26 weeks of leave or more. Some, like North Macedonia, allow parents to take additional leave if they need to, without fearing for their job security.

For American mothers without as many federal safety nets, extra help makes all the difference. Fornaro's husband worried about her postpartum depression and offered to pay for a nanny, which she initially refused. "It took a lot of convincing and setting aside my pride," she said.

Looking back, she said hiring extra help was the "best decision" for her family. Her nanny not only made every day more manageable, she offered crucial emotional support and helped Fornaro bounce back.

In Ramos' experience, even the smallest interventions can radically change postpartum symptoms. She said she is grateful her doctor was so quick to diagnose her and prescribe medication; it made for a much smoother experience with her second child.

"I'm just so thankful that I got to enjoy him being a baby and having fun with him," she said, remembering how overwhelmed she was when she had her daughter four years earlier. "I was just in a completely different state of mind."