Road trip with a 9 month old

[Lisa B]

Hi guys,

I have to do two trips to the country (about 3 hours each way) by myself. Sometimes DS gets grizzly when I drive for 20-30 mins. I'm not sure how I will keep him calm for 3 hours in the car seat. My DS is 9 months.

Does anyone have any tips on how to do a 3 hours road trip driving solo and keeping baby calm?

[ellasmummy]

We recently did 4hrs each way with a 7 month old....can you choose what time you leave? I fed her just before getting into the car and she was due for a sleep, then when she woke after about an hour and a half - 2 hours we stopped for coffee and nappy change and a bit of out of the car time. Then back in with some fave toys for the rest. She is a car screamer so we had planned to stop for fresh air whenever she completely lost it! Luckily she was fine. We weren't on a time limit though, not sure if you are....hth

[Teeki]

We do exactly the same as ellasmummy. We need to drive three hours to see the inlaws, and depending on where they are it can be four hours to see my parents. So basically, I know that roughly an hour/hour and a half after waking in the morning DD needs a feed and a nap, so we time it so we leave then. Have the car all ready to go the night before, then as soon as I've fed her she's in the car and we're off. We've found that she sleeps longer when she falls asleep in the car, so when she was younger she'd sleep for the entire trip, but now when she wakes after about two hours we stop and take a break, then she's usually happy to play and chatter away for the last hour or so - usually she'll fall asleep again for a bit of it too.

Good luck, hopefully you can take your time with the trip and your DS handles it well.

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

I used to do a 2hr+ trip to Gippy with the kids and i used to get them up, give them a feed, let them have a play then pop them in the car when they were due for a sleep, i found the motion in the car meant they stayed asleep a little longer than usual and i could make most of the trip with her napping.
I sometimes hung a rattle or some of those link off off the headrest for her to look at and play with.