How to survive baby road trips

Hannah Riley - 16 Nov 17

Can you remember what you did for New Year five years ago? Nope. Me neither. Not a flaming clue.

However, wading through the brain fog to recall whether I was downing mojitos in the pub or reclining chez nous with Jools Holland took up a usefully large chunk of a recent road trip with the small person. Just one of the tactics I employed to get through it.

And as we hurtle relentlessly towards Christmas, AKA ‘let’s sit on the M40 for 5 hours to go and eat minced whatnots with the
rellies’ season, it seems like an appropriate time to furnish you with my hard-won tips on surviving lengthy car journeys with a
baby or toddler.

1. Abandon all comparisons with your child-free years. Yes, you might have been able to bomb it up to your mum’s in under three hours for the last seven years, but your mini me neither knows nor gives a flying fruitcake. Accept that you’ll be making the acquaintance of several hitherto unvisited service stations for nappy changes/feeds/10 minutes to run around like a lunatic (mainly you not them). The downside of this is that it obviously takes forever and a day to get anywhere. The upside is that, following a few trips, you’ll know exactly which services have an M&S Simply Food and Starbucks – a small but satisfying addition to your parental knowledge base.
2. Time check with the land of nod. If you can get even half an hour of the journey under your belt in blissful nap-induced silence, then you’re winning at life. If the stars align and you manage to get a door-to-door mega sleep out of your wee one, then I salute you, Queen Parent.
3. Pack an arsenal of entertainment. At some point during the journey, the babe is likely to realise that being strapped into a car seat and watching 4,000 overhead motorway lights flash past is not the life they dream of. They’ll squawk, they’ll wail, and you’ll be pathetically grateful you packed a bag of toys. Start small with Sophie the Giraffe, and only move onto the big guns like the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Bear when you’re really desperate. There’s a limit to how many times an adult person can hear ‘tummy!’ ‘t-u-m-m-y spells tummy!’ before they have a long, sad cry.
4. Rehearse your repertoire of nursery rhymes. It’s only when you’ve been singing to a grizzly baby for a solid hour that you realise that your catalogue of child-friendly tunes is woefully lacking. Your appetite for repetition is nothing versus your tiny one’s, so do yourself a favour a have at least 15 tracks you can bear to sing MANY TIMES.
5. Snack your way to glory. I don’t know of a single long road trip that hasn’t been vastly improved with the addition of snacks. For the grown-ups: Twirl Bites, grapes, crisps and Percy Pigs. For the small people: satsumas and those organic baby crisps that they hoover up with gusto. Pondering how much is too much chocolate, discussing the relative merits of Percy Pig consumption methods and wiping tomato wheel paws all over the upholstery passes the time for all concerned. If your babe is still on the milk, this is where your knowledge of service stations becomes invaluable: where’s the most accommodating place on the M1 to get your boob/bottle out?
6. Keep your tired, frazzled brain moving. As a parent of a small human, it’s highly likely that you’re crushingly, eye scratchingly tired. So, if said small human is either napping or otherwise happily occupied, you’ll need to keep that brain whirring along to combat the snoozies. So yep, try and remember what you did for New Year in 2013. Or the name of you’re A Level geography teacher. Or every country you’ve visited since uni. If you’re driving solo, feel free to argue the answers with yourself aloud. If you’re co-travelling, the ensuing debates can fill a solid 2-3 motorway junctions’ worth of journey.

So that’s it. That’s all I have. All that remains is to wish you, brave soul embarking on a ‘baby’ road trip this Christmas, a large, hearty
GOOD LUCK. May the traffic be on the other side, may the roadworks be finished already, and may your small person sleep the whole blessed way.

Hannah Riley

Seaside dwelling writer, runner and yogi. Trying to find my new mum feet.

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