BFing on 8 hour roadtrip?

twest0508 · September 2011

I'm thinking about our Thanksgiving trip to Kentucky, and just wondering how the roadtrip will be with me breastfeeding. LO will be 4 months old then, so I'm hoping he'll be able to go a little longer between feedings. Any advice on how to make the trip go smoothly? Do you BF in the car at rest stops or bring pumped milk?

BalancingJane · September 2011

We took a trip about that long when DD was about 6 months old. She slept longer than usual between feedings because she sleeps in the car. I just fed her with a nursing cover at rest stops. Sometimes I even woke up her up to feed because I didn't want her sitting too long in a diaper anyway. It worked out better than I thought it would.

mmoravec · September 2011

BalancingJane:

We took a trip about that long when DD was about 6 months old. She slept longer than usual between feedings because she sleeps in the car. I just fed her with a nursing cover at rest stops. Sometimes I even woke up her up to feed because I didn't want her sitting too long in a diaper anyway. It worked out better than I thought it would.

We have been on 2 longer trips since the boys were born and both times we would stop at rest areas and feed them that way we could get them out of the car and have a sensory break, too. I had lots of noisy toys to distract them with if they woke up before we got to a rest area.

tokenhoser · September 2011

I did a trip that's about 7 hours of driving + stops when LO was 3 months old. It went great - he's a car sleeper. We just stopped every 2-3 hours and I nursed him. It was a nice trip and a good age for it, I thought. As long as you don't have a screamer that hates the car, you're fine. Just do it. Heck, I did it with cloth diapers!

twest0508 · September 2011

tokenhoser:
I did a trip that's about 7 hours of driving + stops when LO was 3 months old. It went great - he's a car sleeper. We just stopped every 2-3 hours and I nursed him. It was a nice trip and a good age for it, I thought. As long as you don't have a screamer that hates the car, you're fine. Just do it. Heck, I did it with cloth diapers!

I totally forgot that he'll probably sleep most of the time, cause he loves riding! I'll be doing it with cloth diapers, too I guess that's another post for that board, lol.

damabo80 · September 2011

We did a 3 hour trip at 6w. We stopped at a rest stop, changed, BF about halfway through.

mandyjn16 · September 2011

We did an 18 hour car trip at 5mos when my grampa died and we had to drive straight through to make it to the funeral. Going it wasn't horrible...we stopped every 2-3 hours for either a potty break (4 people in the car) and nursing/diaper change. On the way home we broke it into 2 days and it was even better because we could really take our time. I nursed in the car at gas stations and rest stops. I will caution you to be prepared to change diapers in the car if necessary. Some gas stations we stopped at (which looked nice enough) did not have a change table.

bonitatinabina143 · September 2011

I have a ten hour trip this week and I will be pumping fresh in the car every 3 hours and feed her that. Then I will change/burp her when we pull to the rest stops.

LnR70707 · September 2011

We did 2 16 hr (each way) road trips this summer at 8 weeks and 12 weeks. Both times we stopped every 3 hrs to feed. I pumped as we drove and bottle fed at rest stops, either in the car or in the food court area of the rest stop.

WeWearCombatBoots · September 2011

We just did a 14 hour road trip. I am an EPer so its a little different, but we stopped a lot when LO had to eat because he just did not like eating in the car seat, and it was also very easy for me to pump while my husband drove and I used a nursing cover and a hands free pumping bra. We added about a couple hours onto our trip between all the stops, but really his feedings seemed to coincide with us needed to fill up the gas tank, our monster SUV needed to be fed as often as LO.

GBCK · September 2011

the stopping is usually the best bet...but w/ a car adaptor, you can pump in the car and feed expressed milk w/o ever taking kiddo out of the car seat

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