Driving 19 hours with a 10 month old

CCM82909 · July 2012

I know my LO isn't 9-12 months yet, but I was hoping for some advice from BTDT moms who had a long drive with their LO. We are looking at driving 19 hours instead of flying (saves almost 500 dollars in flights alone). I'm not sure how DS will handle the drive, as the longest we have drove at one time was 8.5 hours.

What did you do to keep LO busy/calm during the drive if you have done a long drive? He is bottle fed, so that will help in cutting down time vs having to stop and nurse for 30min to an hour.

JenWhite123 · July 2012

Ugh. We just did 15 hrs with a 10 month old. She wasn't happy, period, so I hav no advice other than fly!! Have you priced out cost of gas vs airfare??

CCM82909 · July 2012

JenWhite123:
Ugh. We just did 15 hrs with a 10 month old. She wasn't happy, period, so I hav no advice other than fly!! Have you priced out cost of gas vs airfare??

Yeah, it's about $250 to drive vs $650 for plane tickets (after parking at the airport, baggage, and whatnot). If it were just me and DH, it would be an easy answer. I'm just afraid DS will have a breakdown every time we have to put him back in his car seat after a stop or something.

Santinosmom82 · July 2012

We just got back from a 15 hour drive with our 10 month old. It was no fun. He was so out of his element that he would not even fall asleep in his seat. We had to take him out at the rest stop and rock him each time. We also had an incident where a tractor trailor rolled right in front of us. If i ever have to do it again i will fly. But i will say the times that he wasn't tired i sat in the back and we played games and with toys. And fed him his bottle and food right there. He seemed ok with it. We stopped and layed a blanket down for him to crawl around on and changed his diaper. Just expect your 19 hour drive to turn into a much longer drive! We were stuck in traffic for about 3 hours also. I was exhausted at the end of the trip.

alicia023 · July 2012

We went on a 12 hour drive in April and DH slept a while during the day while DD,DS and I were awake and then we left when it was there usual time to go to bed and they both slept the entire way, Drove straight there. DS only waking once when we stopped to get gas but soon fell back asleep. It was much easier than I thought it would be. I'm not sure if that's an option for you but it worked for us, even though our trip was shorter at least your LO would hopefully sleep most of the time. GL!

mamastich · July 2012

I just a 4 day road trip and it was a piece of cake... I have a pretty mellow baby and wasnt in a rush. We pulled over when we needed to and let her play when we could. Just be patient and get some new toys.People do it all the time and kids adjust.

chibride4 · July 2012

Benadryl... lol!

CCM82909 · July 2012

chibride4:
Benadryl... lol!

LOL, DH asks if we can use this all the time for the nights when DS is grumpy.

I'm not sure if we would be able to stop overnight since it would only be a for a 4 day trip or so. But the idea of leaving right before bedtime makes a ton of sense, and I think DS would sleep great through it.

katie4253 · July 2012

You will still have to stop a ton. My LO is bottle fed. We did a 24hr drive when he was almost 9 months old. It took 1/3 longer than that because of all the stops (32hrs). We did it in 3 days. It was hard.

I think your drive would take a minimum of 2 grueling days. I wouldn't do it for a vacation. We were moving, so we had to. We drove 2 cars too, so that made it harder, because one of us (me) was alone with him.

lkm2006 · July 2012

I would be finding some way to afford flying!! But then again, my LO doesn't handle 30 minutes+ in the carseat before having a total meltdown.

Good luck!

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