10 hr Road Trip with 5mo old

[Anonymous]

It's a 10hr drive without a baby in tow, but first time parents and all that. Driving is pretty straight forward, but how do you recommend we plan out stops? How long should we take breaks for? Would you consider driving in the afternoon/evening to get in some hours of baby just sleeping in the car seat past 8pm?

[Anonymous]

We stop to nurse and change diapers with an infant. that's pretty much it. If i'm pumping and bottle feeding, then we basically stop for diaper changes only unless the baby is on solids, in which case, again, it's the same as nursing (i.e. stop for feedings and diaper changes), so we don't plan out our stops. If baby had been excessively fussy, i guess we would have stopped more to get him fresh air, but in our experience our kids ended up generally sleeping even more when in the car. Generally we leave as early in the morning as possible to get the drive done in as much daylight as possible. Last trip was a 9 hour trip (although it should have only been 7) and we left at 5:30am.

[Anonymous]

I recommend breaking it up into 2 days if you can.

[Anonymous]

We did 15 hours straight with a 3 month old and that was doable. She slept nearly the entire way (car puts her to sleep). Now at 6 months she screams if she's in the car for the 3 hour trip to our parents.

[Anonymous]

I recommend not doing that at all. That sounds AWFUL. Fly.

[Anonymous]

We drove from DC to Ashville when DS was 7-8 months old. Left in the morning and stopped whenever we needed. It was getting dark when we approached Ashville and DS had just about had it. The last hour of the drive was pretty awful, partly b/c we had also ran out of bottles for him and the little guy was hungry. So bring plenty of food and drinks for all concerned, especially the baby. Our return trip was much better.

[Anonymous]

I breastfed but in car trips I would bring a hand pump and pump some milk as we went to keep from stopping too often. Unfortunately for us, our LO gets car sick.

DO THIS NOW. Once the baby is active and crawling it will be so much harder to keep them content in the car for long periods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I recommend not doing that at all. That sounds AWFUL. Fly.

If this is an option OP, I would recommend flying too. Although like one PP said, if you have to drive, the younger the better. A normally 6.5 hour drive for us recently turned into an 11 hour nightmare thanks to traffic, motion sickness and, what later turned out to be a stomach virus (baby was not the cause of any of the big issues, although a stop for one big blowout did take some time as I had to wash him off in the sink of the rest stop). Car smelled awful for a loooong time after too!

[Anonymous]

Fly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I breastfed but in car trips I would bring a hand pump and pump some milk as we went to keep from stopping too often. Unfortunately for us, our LO gets car sick.

DO THIS NOW. Once the baby is active and crawling it will be so much harder to keep them content in the car for long periods.

+1 Do as much feeding in the car as you can so that when you stop, LO can spend the time moving around as much as possible. Also, once they start crawling/toddling, it is much harder to do long car trips until they are old enough to be interested in digital devices for long periods of time (if you allow it) and/or until they learn to read.

[Anonymous]

You know your kid better than we do, hopefully.

Do you what seems right with the understanding that you may have to adjust plan along the way for better or worse.

[Anonymous]

We have 5 kids. We do a lot of long-distance driving with our kids. We would definitely drive and we probably would leave at 2 or 3 in the morning so that most of the drive was during the night hours. Then at the normal wake-up time, we would stop and great breakfast at someplace with a play area (I know, a 5 month old won't play but it will be a place where the baby can be a baby). Then after breakfast, we would go as long as we could and hopefully make it to our destination by around lunch time. Bring lots of bottles, water, diapers, back-ups, etc. And we usually do most diaper changes while we are on the road.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have 5 kids. We do a lot of long-distance driving with our kids. We would definitely drive and we probably would leave at 2 or 3 in the morning so that most of the drive was during the night hours. Then at the normal wake-up time, we would stop and great breakfast at someplace with a play area (I know, a 5 month old won't play but it will be a place where the baby can be a baby). Then after breakfast, we would go as long as we could and hopefully make it to our destination by around lunch time. Bring lots of bottles, water, diapers, back-ups, etc. And we usually do most diaper changes while we are on the road.

Oh, and normally we giggle to ourselves about the folks who have the second parent in the back riding along with the baby but this is the one time that you really, really need someone in the back with the baby the whole time.