Long Car Road trip help

[Dax]

DH and I are heading home to NJ in Aug to celebrate my DD first birthday. We will be driving from FL to NJ...about a 20h trip. The most my DD has ever been in the car at once is about 1.5h, and she did not like it for the last 30m of the trip, so I am worried about this trip....

We are moving her from her infant seat to her convertible seat in the next few weeks. I am hearing that will help her comfort a lot.

We also are planning to hit the road at night...around 9p...her bed time, in hopes she will sleep a good portion of the beginning of the road trip...

So my question....what else can I do to make this easy for us all....

 

[dis-happy]

We drove cross country when my ds was about that age.

One thing you can do: get a clothing bar that spans the back seat (hanging). Then you can suspend various toys in the vicinity of the car seat at her level. I used those plastic "chains" sold for holding toys on the stroller. One advantage to doing this is the toys can't be dropped and lost.

My ds also loved Wonder Pets from NickJr. We downloaded several dvd's to the computer hard drive and played them a lot. Worked pretty well overall.

GL

 

[Betty Rohrer]

if you can afford a weekend trip or 2 that are around 3 or more hours from home will help. if you little one is like mine, she will not sleep as well as in her bed. you are going to need to plan some time out of car seat but going to a highchair to eat is not going to be easy. also the trip home will be hard as you are going to be starting during day most likely and she is going to remember the trip down. I know it is against what most people do but we always travel during day with a early stop for noncarseat time usually swimming. for us the more moveable the child the more out of carseat time needed until 6 or 7 years old where old enough to understand the time needed to get to where we are going. most rest stops are not set up for baby or toddler out of car seat time, also true of eating stops as you go from carseat to highchair no placeto walk or crawl around.

 

[MSSANDRA]

Remember that even in her new car seat, she will need to face backwards. The new recommendation is two. I think you are very brave to attempt this with a child that has limited distant travel and shows some sign of maybe not doing so great. I would for sure, plan at least a 4 hour trip before you book to see how it goes. My guys were pretty good travelers ( ok, one was great, the other just ok), but we had friends that had a child that would cry for anything over an hour trip. The biggest thing I would do is to have someone beside her 100% of the time. Try to keep her happy, but if is she is crying, you can watch to be sure she is ok. If she takes a bottle now, I would not wean her from it before the trip. The only time I let my boys have juice in a bottle was when traveling so that was a helpful treat. Take tons of soft, safe toys, and rotate often. Plan to read and talk to her most of the awake time. Take tons of safe finger foods.
It's a a toss up how often to stop. Frequent stops may give her breaks, but making her get back in her seat may be absolutely awful. Remember that once you commit to driving, she MUST ride in the seat 100% of the time. I have seen moms give in and let them out after screaming for an hour or more! I also had a sister that learned to nurse her child in a car seat, while driving down the road!!!!
Bottom line.....I would take a test trip before I book, if it does not go well, I would fly or have family come to you.

 

[ForeverAlice]

We took our 2 and 7 yr old to Wdw it was a 13 hour drive. We left at bedtime and unfortunately 2 yr old did not sleep from 9pm departure until about 4:30 am!!!! Ds who has never been carsick was and slept a little bit. We arrived around noon at Wdw. Dh and kids slept and I organized our stuff. I realized while we were at the electrical parade at mk that night I had not slept in 37 hours and for some reason I did not care! Thankful for the resort boat service though after that!!!! On trip home we left around 7 am instead of leaving at bedtime, gave ds dramamine and stopped for lunch and dinner at our regular times. Even though it was daytime they both slept for a few hours!!! We do have a dvd player in our car and they watched a few movies on the way back as well.
I also had purchased some small toys like dinosaurs, color wonder books etc that I passed back when they were bored. But honestly their fav disney movies were a hit.

 

[msmama]

Make sure you've driven around at night before, too. I thought I was super smart taking my son on his first road trip and leaving at bedtime. Turns out he FREAKED OUT in the dark car.

Took at least an hour and a half for him to calm down and I ended up sitting next to him for the majority of the ride. Every time we stopped (in traffic) he woke up crying again.

Good luck!!

 

[chris31997]

DH and I are heading home to NJ in Aug to celebrate my DD first birthday. We will be driving from FL to NJ...about a 20h trip. The most my DD has ever been in the car at once is about 1.5h, and she did not like it for the last 30m of the trip, so I am worried about this trip....

We are moving her from her infant seat to her convertible seat in the next few weeks. I am hearing that will help her comfort a lot.

We also are planning to hit the road at night...around 9p...her bed time, in hopes she will sleep a good portion of the beginning of the road trip...

So my question....what else can I do to make this easy for us all....

Look into taking the autotrain for part of the trip. Then you can hold DD for part of the trip or even get her to sleep on the train. It runs from Sanford to Virginia.

Another thing you can do is new toys. Something she has not seen before.

If you think you have packed enough toys, pack more.

Plan lots of stops.

Don't count on DD sleeping at night, if she does not like being in her car seat then she will not like it at night and will probably not sleep.

I had one of those. DS screamed for 9hrs from Atlanta to NC. We drove at night and it did not help. He finally tolerated his car seat when we turned him around around, 7yrs ago.

 

[Dax]

Thanks for the tips. We will be rear facing her carseat as that's the law. We have driven at night before and she has slept before. I am hoping that with the newer stay she will be more comfortable

Auto train not an option, way to expensive. I think the reason she gets upset is usually hunger or boredom, so going to do what we can to prevent that. I am going she will watch a video or two, at 10m she is not all that into Tv.

Keep the ideas rolling

 

[tinkerbesh]

Look up whatever free app you can find on your phone for Rest Stops. We found it really handy this last trip. We always kept an eye on how far it was to the next several rest stops so that we'd know what would work best when DS woke up. The Florida welcome center coming in from Miss. was great - it even had a play center with baby toys in the corner.

Oh, and on a previous road trip I had grand visions of us stretching out on a blanket on the grass, but quickly found out (the hard way for DH) that was a bad idea- piles of fire ants! So now we avoid the grass and stick to picnic tables.