Stephanie & Brydon’s Babymoon at Sandals: Love To The Babymoon and Back

Stephanie never forgot the first time she saw a Sandals Resort. She was 12 years old, watching TV late one winter night from her home near Toronto, when her eyes fixed onto a commercial from far, far away.

“Those images from Sandals burned into my brain,” she says. “The bluest water. The whitest sand. The woman on the beach. It looked like another world. I told myself, ‘That’s where I wanted to be someday: paradise.’”

Someday in paradise arrived for Stephanie more than a decade later. There she was, with her husband, Brydon, breathing in a perfect blend of sea air and Jamaican spirit. Mirroring the optimism seen on every face and the gratitude found in every heart. Making footprints on a magical beach, as if leaving proof to future generations that they’d been there.

Every morning, Stephanie and Brydon would walk across that white sand toward two chairs under an umbrella — courtesy of butlers who’d become trusted friends.

“It was like the commercial,” Stephanie says, “except now we were in it, and it was even more beautiful than I remembered.’”

With their feet planted in the cloud-soft beach, Stephanie and Brydon felt the weight of responsibilities drifting away, replaced with the blessing of new opportunities — like being new parents.

“I’d convinced Brydon we needed go to Sandals and carve out time for just the two of us,” Stephanie says, “because soon there will be three of us.”

That’s how her childhood fantasy evolved into a real-life Sandals babymoon.

The babymoon would be the most recent chapter in the Stephanie and Brydon romance. It began in 9th grade, when they’d share lunches and teenage laughs. After Brydon moved away, they’d watch movies over the phone. They dated in college. Became adults. Started careers. During one cold Ontario night, Brydon took Stephanie back to high school, where they warmed up by walking down a few memory lanes before he proposed in the same spot where they first met.

“Spontaneity has been a big part of our relationship,” Brydon says.

For the next three years, they’d take weekend getaways to Niagara Falls and enjoy dinners for two wherever the mood led them. And then … here they were, in the glow of Jamaican sunsets. Stephanie, six months pregnant. Brydon, three months from being a father.

“I thought a babymoon would mark the anticipation of entering a new chapter, while also honoring the one we’re currently in,” Stephanie says.

She told Brydon beforehand it would be like a Caribbean honeymoon. They’d escape work and school and allow themselves to partake in something rare: doing nothing. Brydon heard Stephanie describe the love and hospitality in Jamaica (her mother’s birthplace), and simply said, “OK. I trust you.”

In the weeks leading up to the babymoon, his exuberance heightened to a level he never expected. He heard his son’s heartbeat. He felt him kick. He saw ultrasound images of his little boy sucking his thumb.

“Everything became real,” Brydon says. He would land in Jamaica with the perspective of a loving husband and caring daddy.

Stephanie says Brydon needed this babymoon. He says the same about her. She openly admits, “I’m a busy bee … no, I mean a really busy bee.”

A former traffic reporter for radio and television stations in Canada, she completed an automotive technician course a few years ago and, wanting to empower other women to confidently handle maintenance, launched her own business: She Auto Know. The business blossomed, as did the demands on her.

“I travel a lot, but relaxation is never the focal point,” she says. “That’s what made our Sandals babymoon different. Relaxation was the only focal point.”

When she and Brydon arrived, the Sandals team sang to them, took their luggage to their Rondoval suite, and began pampering Stephanie the way selfless family members care for a soon-to-be mother. They brought flowers, bottles of non-alcoholic champagne, and food from a cravings menu when Stephanie had sudden desires for fruit pizza, fruit sushi, or freshly baked doughnuts. She found the tender comfort of a pregnancy pillow on the bed and the soothing luxury of a lazy river off the patio.

For the next five days, every step in every direction took Stephanie and Brydon deeper into the welcoming radiance that is the very identity of Jamaica and its people.

“Every person at Sandals told us to do nothing, and they meant it,” Stephanie says. “We’d go to breakfast worry-free, to the spa worry-free, to our candlelight dinner on the beach worry-free, and to the ocean worry-free.”

Under the shade of their umbrella, they’d find coolers with sparkling waters for Stephanie, and Red Stripes for Brydon. Every so often, a butler or bartender would share a nugget of home-grown wisdom in voices as uplifting as the breathtaking sunrises.

Each moment is beautiful when you really live in it.

You can always feel like you’re on the go if you choose. Just … slow … down.

This is the beginning of the best time of your life.

“Hearing those words changed us,” Stephanie says.

And because of that, she and Brydon enjoyed every minute of their babymoon more fully: the couples massages, the opera singers at the pool deck, the Blue Mountain coffee, and the random walks with grape-nut ice cream in hand.

“During those moments,” Stephanie says, “we began to reconsider what is important.”

With their focus recalibrated, Stephanie and Brydon are living a fresh chapter back in the Toronto area — with helpful reminders from Jamaica. For one, they can pull out their private candlelight dinner menu, a tender keepsake. They say they also feel more connected than ever.

“We came back with lasting imprints,” Stephanie says.

Just as she never forgot those images from a Sandals commercial years ago, she and Brydon are entering parenthood with the reassuring rhythm of Jamaica branded on their hearts: Slow down. Live in the moment. See beauty everywhere. And for the good of you and your child, simply lead with love.

And that — love — is by far the most enduring babymoon takeaway of all.