Travelling with a baby

[nousername]

Planning to take the baby to see my family over christmas, he'll be just under 2 months old by then. We'll be going by car and the journey is normally over 4 hours. Any advice or personal experiences about doing a long journey with a little one? How long will the baby be ok in the car seat for?

 

[Munchkin]

Baby will be fine in the car seat. We do it regularly and to avoid disruption to routine, we do the following:
1) Travel at night - we put baby to bed and sneak him out - he barely notices

2) Get baby used to travel cot in advance of travel

3) Babies generally sleep in the car, so he/she should not notice much

4) Make sure you are around when baby wakes up from sleeps, naps when you are away - they can be thrown by being in a different environment

5) Stick to baby's routine no matter what - don't skip naps etc as they can be even more tired from the stimulation of spending so much time with family or other people they do not see on a day to day basis.

Hope that helps some.

 

[marley2580]

1) Travel at night - we put baby to bed and sneak him out - he barely notices

This one is especially good once LO is a bit older - otherwise you spend the whole time trying to figure out how to entertain them.

TBH at that age I would probably try to stop once, they advise that you don't keep a baby in a car seat for any more than 3 hours without a break.

 

[xarlenex]

Kyle was 4 months when we drove for a 6 hours If I remember right. Was a nightmare at times because he wanted to be awake and play and only so many toys were keepin him happy. But at 2 months it should be so much easier x

 

[Linzi]

We're doing this on Thursday to London(train on thursday, car home on Sunday) and Im dreading it. Not so much the journey but the amount of stuff we have to take! lol

Advice would be leave early and have a couple of sttops so that LO isn't sat in his/her car seat for extended periods. Also a chance to feed and change if need be!

Good luck

 

[sam's mum]

I would definitely recommend travelling at night - it's a bit easier when they're young and sleeping more during the day, but I recently took Sam away for the weekend - it took 5 hours to get there on the Saturday morning and he hated it, even with someone in the back entertaining him. He just wanted to move around, feed all the time, the car got so hot in the sun (at least you shouldn't need to worry about that at Christmas) and I was so stressed worrying about him and feeling guilty the whole journey. Every time we got stuck in traffic I just wanted to cry!

I was meant to be driving home on the Sunday morning but I decided to leave at about midnight instead and it was great - he slept the whole way, there was no traffic and we just stopped once to give him a break from the car seat and change/feed him.

We're going away again in 2 weeks and we're doing all our driving at night! I'm sure you'll be fine x