How to Drive for 2 Days Straight with a 4-month-old

To figure out if you'll survive a car ride with a baby who is just 4 months, you'll need to make sure the following are in place (especially when you're driving 1,380 without your husband - just parents, sister, and brother-in-law).

The best travel buddy ever!

1. Sanity. You must mentally prepare yourself to endure crying with no escape. As she wails like a banshee, you must remind yourself, "she will fall asleep, she will fall asleep, she will fall asleep, she must fall asleep!" I suggest a good mystery/thriller book to completely occupy your mind - romance novels aren't good enough here.

Faith's little room for 2 days

2. Safe Haven. Try to figure out how you'll create a little cocoon for your babe. With Faith, I took the blanket that we spread on her Pack N Play to sleep on top of and draped it over her rear-facing car seat. Then, I took my phone, turned on her noise machine (the Relax & Sleep app [Android] is amazing! We use the Relaxation Melody and Air-conditioning for soothing white noise), and waited her out. She took several half-hour to one-hour naps throughout the day with a six hour stint in the middle of the night.

3. Comfort item for you. Find a pillow and blanket for yourself and just relax while she cries because the second she falls asleep, you don't want to waste time trying to get to sleep AFTER she's asleep!

4. Heed all Rest Areas. These are your best stops. I would have stopped at each along the way but my dad was driving, and it wasn't imperative. Take a towel or picnic blanket and lay it out while everyone takes shifts watching the baby play. Faith enjoyed the ability to roll around and get out of her seat - which was my biggest concern. It definitely made our trip longer, but stopping for twenty to thirty minutes per waking period wasn't painful and it's healthy for everyone - not just baby!


5. Prepare to re-train sleeping patterns once you reach your destination. We're on day 3 of being in the condo and Faith is having a really hard time sleeping through her naps. I'm going back to hardcore mommy mode and I'm just glad no one is in the condo next to us!

6. PUMP!! If you breastfeed at all, bring your pump! I figured that since Faith only breastfed about four times a day, it wouldn't be a big deal on the road. I'd just feed her whenever we stopped. Nope! I'm pretty sure the fact that we were in a car was a big deal and meant that she wasn't interested in anything but socializing while she was out of her seat. Consequence? Now I have less than about two minutes worth of milk for her during the day. My morning and evening milk wasn't affected because she did nurse then. By day 2, I gave up on hoping she'd nurse so I just hand-expressed into her onesie from the day before to relieve and prevent mastitis.

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Overall, it wasn't a terrible trip. Faith did a lot better than I was willing to even hope for and she was able to happily make it through an hour-long trip through Wal-Mart in Fort Myers before we made it to our condo on Sanibel.  I feel really comfortable about our airplane trip back home on Sunday. I think she'll do alright but I am hoping my milk supply comes back in so that I can comfort her enough so she might sleep.

I also recommend packing a ton of bibs. Nothing is worse than sitting next to a baby in a stinky bib because her mother was too stupid to pack plenty of extras.

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Do you have any other travel tips with infants? What about venturing into my plane trip on Sunday?

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