One morning in the all-too-near future, we’re setting out on our annual trek to visit my parents. The drive takes eight hours, when the occupants of the car are two adults who don’t want to stop much.
This year, there will also be a three month old baby. Herein lies the problem.
We plan to start as early as we can without compromising our night’s sleep (probably about 7 am) and to avoid the hellish interstate loop around a huge metro area, on which it’s nearly impossible to stop the car for two hours of that drive. We have a pleasant highway detour planned out.
Probably I will have to spend a lot of the trip in the back seat, reassuring, talking to, and showing books and toys to the baby.
When you need a sanity break, and decide to sit up front, if you don’t have a bench seat, drape a towel between your seat and the driver’s seat so the baby can’t see you. We had to travel cross country when ours was 6 months and this really helped because at that age, out of sight, out of mind.
Take about 3X as many diapers and baby clothes as you think you need.
Do take some breaks and get the baby out of the car seat. Even though they spend a lot of their time lying down, babies can get uncomfortable if staying in the same position for hours. My son also sweated a lot in the seat and I had to get him out to change his shirt, sometimes.
A.M. radio is your friend. We found that a constant “Carl Kasell NPR” drone really kept the excitement down for our little ones when traveling in the car.
If you stop just 15 minutes every 2 hours it is only an hour longer so don’t worry about stopping too often. Let your child lie flat on stomach and back on a blanket in the grass during the stops. If they can stretch out a bit, they really are much happier getting back into the seat.
Plan on stopping every 2 hours during the time your baby’s not asleep (which will likely be half or more of the time. Every time you stop, feed him something, change him, and play for 10 minutes or so. If you can find somewhere to lay down a blanket so he can get some tummy-time or roll around a bit, all the better. He’s in one of those backwards-facing car carriers, I presume, so he won’t be able see you much anyway. He’ll probably get bored and sleep a lot. Babies get almost hypnotized by the “road lull” in my experience.
Consider stopping somewhere kid-friendly (McDonald’s usually has clean bathrooms, a changing station, and yummy fruit & yogurt parfait that baby would probably like a bite of, if he’s eating any table food yet) and lord knows there’s plenty of them scattered up and down the highway.
Sit in the front. The less your baby sees of you, the more likely he is to fall asleep.
Honestly, the traveling I’ve done with a 3-month old baby in the car has not been bad at all. We stopped more often than we’d have liked to take the baby out of the car seat and let him kick and to change his diaper. I did not breastfeed, so I’d sit back there and give him a bottle when he needed one. Otherwise, I sat up front where he couldn’t see me. He was pretty content. When he wasn’t content, we played music (didn’t matter what kind).
He was 2 1/2 before car rides, even really long ones, got ugly. Just thinking about the last one makes me want to lie down with a cold rag on my head.
Three months is a great age for car trips, especially if you formula feed. I did it with a breastfed baby at that age–I would give her a bottle, then use a handsfree setup to pump the next bottle. It was a pain, but doable. At that age they still sleep a lot. Stop every little while for a diaper change, but you don’t really need to worry about car trips until they’re much older. My 2.5 year old just did a seven-hour car trip (should have been 3.5, but Northern Kentucky is hell on earth) and was a total champ.
Uh, most babies that age are in rear-facing seats, so if Mom is in the front, she’ll be invisible anyway.
When Moon Unit was 3.5 months old, we drove from northern VA to Chicago in one very long day. Unlike her brother at that age (for whom a car ride was the equivalent of slipping him a couple horse tranquilizers), she did NOT tend to fall asleep in the car. And she SCREAMED much of the way. This had the odd effect of both speeding us up and slowing us down - because the screaming caused us to lead-foot out of stress, and then we had to stop much more often. Dweezil, who was not quite 3, was fine - he enjoyed the ride. He didn’t sleep either, which was odd - I guess the horse-trank-effect no longer applied.
Anyway - what did not occur to us was to have, and offer, a pacifier. This might have helped. So, if your baby uses such a thing, have it handy!!
Other than that: if baby does sleep, drive as long and fast as you can while the baby is snoozing - don’t stop during that time unless you HAVE to.
Have a couple new toys handy also - while 3 months isn’t old enough to be distracted all that long by a toy, it might help.
Oh - and they make “grabber-thingies” (a handle with pincers at the end - they might be called can grabbers?). These are HUGELY useful in picking up tossed toys that are otherwise out of reach.
And: Make sure baby’s tush is protected against diaper rash. Moon Unit had a case of that going on, which was probably a big part of why the poor thing screamed so much. Let her go bare-assed as much before and after the drive as you can, and maybe slather on some Desitin or whatever to protect the skin during the driving part.
We did the same thing when the kid was about the same age. Make sure you have plenty of milk/formula and, if the kid’s food needs to be kept cold, think about that in advance. Do a quick stop every few hours so the baby can kick her (?) legs and be absolutely on guard for diaper rash – change frequently, bring Desitin, and if you normally use cheapo diapers, splurge for the good stuff for the trip.
At that age, my kids didn’t really appreciate reading to them. I found putting something in their field of vision or some quiet noisemaker within reach was pretty much all they needed. Plus, bathroom breaks.
