Postcard from Casa de Campo

"You said it would take a long time!" my husband, Jason, wailed when I got pregnant pretty much immediately after our wedding (and before any sort of bucket-list honeymoon could be had). Which is how I find myself at the shmancy Casa de Campo resort in the Dominican Republic for a Valentine’s Day getaway, and at a romantic dinner where one of the three of us doesn’t even look up from the cartoons playing on his tablet as he puts in his cocktail order.

“Milk!” “Milk please,” I say. “Milk peez,” says our almost-two-year-old Benjamin. If you can’t beat ’em — bring them with you. So what if we spent our chic couple’s getaway sleeping with a toddler lying on our heads? That’s love, baby.

A version of this article appeared in our February 2013 issue with the headline "Casa de Campo," p. 18.

Try the Organic Pharmacy Treatment at the spa, which starts with a full-body exfoliation with Dominican coffee and ends with you wrapped up like a piece of tropical fruit sushi.

Take the free shuttle for a visit to nearby Altos de Chavon, a slightly random, yet charming, replica of a Renaissance Mediterranean village, complete with cobblestoned streets and an amphitheatre.

Arts and crafts inside, or the playground outside, at the daycare.

Two words: Pancake. Bar.

We’ve quickly learned that a vacation with a little kid isn’t quite as relaxing as our getaways of years gone by. Which is Phowhy we were excited by Casa’s range of child-care options. A lot of kids’ clubs won’t accept the under-three’s, but here the Toddlers ‘N’ Casa program, which starts at age one (there’s also programs geared towards kids four to seven, tweens and teens), kept Ben busy at the indoor-outdoor daycare when we needed a break. You can also book a nanny to entertain your kids with you (a.k.a. you read your magazine by the pool while someone else chases him around said pool) or a babysitter for the night while you traipse off for a grown-ups-only evening.

-That the Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with the nation of Haiti?

-That Leah’s father-in-law likes to brag that he has golfed on the famous Teeth of the Dog course at Casa de Campo, ranked as the number one course in the Caribbean?