Before my first child was born I believed that having my baby in the car would improve my driving. Or at least cause me to be more careful. After all, there’s no more precious cargo in the world than your own sweet baby, is there? I imagined myself, puttering along below the speed limit, leaving big distances between myself and the cars in front of me, and irritating everyone else on the road.
Then dear sweet Hannah arrived. And she was a screamer. That child had a set of lungs that she put to good use whenever we strapped her into her car seat. We tried everything to stop her. One of us would sit in the back seat beside her so she wasn’t alone. We gave her toys, we played music and talked to her, we stayed very quiet, we held her tiny flailing hand. We took her seat out of the car at home and let her play on it. We stopped and took breaks. I even contorted myself so I could nurse her while my husband was driving. It all just made her scream harder.
Car seats or baby torture devices?
Here’s the thing about listening to your baby scream. You can sort of tune it out and justify it for a while. I told myself we both really enjoyed ourselves at the mom and baby group, and that if she was upset in the car for a few minutes in the car it was worth it. And it makes you feel better. For maybe fifteen minutes it makes you feel better. But then the screaming gets inside your head, and you just want it to stop. You’re distracted and agitated and the only sure-fire way to make it stop is to arrive at your destination and get out of the car.
This is how I found myself taking up habits like swearing at stop lights and gunning it for yellow lights. Under my breath I cursed pedestrians who crossed the street, preventing me from turning right. They delayed me by as much as 20 seconds, 20 extra agonizing seconds. I was frantic to get to my destination, and to make that incessant yowl stop. Anything that delayed me even the smallest amount caused me to punch the empty passenger seat in frustration.
In the car seat when he still enjoyed car rides
Eventually Hannah outgrew crying in the car. Not until she was around 20 months old and finally big enough to face forward, though. And the scars remain to this day. Contemplating a long car trip with her still makes me sweat a little.
Our second child, baby Jacob, has been far more pleasant to travel with. He rarely cries, and when he does it’s usually a relatively brief prelude to falling asleep. Or at least that was the case until recently. Recently he’s become very difficult. And I’m back to switching lanes rather more frequently than I should in a desperate effort to get home faster.
Distracted by the camera, and so not crying as we load up
As for Hannah, she doesn’t scream anymore but she does engage in some fairly distracting behaviour. I hear a lot of, “Mommy. Mommy! MOMMY! I need to ask you something. Can we go to the jelly bean store? But I want to go to the jelly bean store! Mommy? I said I want to go the jelly bean store! Can you play my music? I don’t like it that loud, I want it LOUDER! Did you hear me? I want my music louder! And I want to go to the jelly bean store!”
And my kids aren’t even old enough to fight in the back seat yet. It’s high times, driving children around, let me tell you.
Emma was like 3 months old and driving to have tea with my aunty was how I new I needed to see a dr! I thought it might be better to drive into and oncoming van than suffer driving anther foot with that child!!!! You think I am joking, but I kid you not. This was my cue for my ppd.
It got much better though, although my shoulder is still messed from all that contorting like you mentioned.
At 10 months old we even managed a very sucsessful trip out to BC and back for a week. And that was alot of driving. It was all good until we moved to the country and then they both started screaming and fighting. Then we got a dvd player and a bunch of new movies. And all is peaceful in the van. And now, they are on different benches because they just don’t like to share. But, it is all still so peaceful in the van.
Ohhh… I hear ya!!! Mine have reached the fighting in the back seat stage.
To add some extra fun to the mix, they’re also reeeeally prone to car sickness. Driving for us is a carefully calculated ritual of no dairy prior, followed by a dose of Gravol, which if forgotten, can result in a smelly messy ride. Yay!!!
(We walk wherever possible
We were lucky that both of our children were very quiet in the car. If they started to get noisy I let out a stern “children!” and they calmed down.
Okay, I’m lying. Totally and completely lying. I feared having to go anywhere in the car with the kids because the crying would eventually make me want to jam pointy sticks in my ear just so I wouldn’t have to hear the noise. Thankfully now it’s not so bad, but I still get nervous when we have to go for a drive.
Don’t worry, it eventually does get better…at least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Mike is “cryng-child intolerant” While he can’t stand a little crying I can take it much better
For us it was all about timing. Make sure the kids are well rested and fed. Now that Amelia sleeps regularly car rides shouldn’t be such an issue. Give it a few more months and we’ll be investing in a dual screen DVD player for the car!
Oh thank you. I like knowing I’m not alone. The poptart woke up 5 minutes before we had to leave for the doctor yesterday (even though I’d tried to wake her an hour earlier to feed her) and screamed the entire 20 minute drive. By the time I hit the intersection at Harris and Lougheed, and had to sit through THREE left turn lights (OMG, people, right pedal go, left pedal stop) I thought I was going to cry or lose my mind.
Then she stopped when I carried her in her carset into the doctor’s office. Then I popped a boob in her mouth and it was all better.
Ah yes, that desperate feeling I know so well. There's nothing like a screaming baby to make you drive much faster than you should! Singing childrens songs at the top of your lungs, and pumping the brakes at stop lights in an attempt to rock said baby to sleep . . . Ana was just like Hannah. I even took to turning the music up loud enough to drown out the screams.
Great post! I am glad to hear about your daughter because mine was the same. I thought it was mostly because we don’t have a car so she wasn’t used to driving around and therefore hated it. I also tried the nursing in the backseat thing (her in her casr seat and me sitting beside her) as we drove on the highway back from Toronto. Now she is much happier. He brother, not so much.
Angus went cataleptic the minute we stuck him in the car and started driving. On the average five-hour drive he would mostly sleep, waking up every once in a while to say something weird like “hat” or “red” then drifting off again.
Eve didn’t do that.
Okay, I don’t really have anything meaningful to contribute, except I’m really enjoying the idea of peaceful, baby-wearing, vegetable-growing you driving around the happy happy province of B.C. with a crossbow under your seat and your middle finger extended. Dawdling drivers, beware!
And the backseat fighting…gee how I love that….thinking of installing plexiglass dividers…but then they'd probably use those to beat each other somehow….
Oh, my…are you sure you weren’t talking about my Adam (now 6 1/2) when describing Hannah’s baby days?? I swear it was the driving backwards…makes me loopy too. I can’t stand it in trains, or sitting going backwards -no matter how slowly– in one of those rotating restaurants!
SO glad your little one is mellower…we’re not sure how our middle guy was…couldn’t hear him over Adam’s screaming. But Noah is a breeze…he has plenty of entertainment watching his 2 big brothers beat on each other in the “way back” of the van
Oh boy, do I understand the red light fear when you’re driving with a baby who hates to stop.
Last autumn, we decided to drive overnight from the Bay Area down to San Diego (about ten hours) so that the kids could sleep through the drive and not mess up their sleep schedules. Yeah, that’s when we discovered that Buster is one of those crazy ones who doesn’t sleep in the car. And doesn’t like it to be dark. Fun times.
I’m feeling you.
I had a couple of long drives with my first that shaved YEARS off my life. We would both be in tears by the end. But Teddy – no problem. I was terrified about a 7 hour trip (I’m in Australia..) when he was a couple of months old and he didn’t squeak. I couldn’t believe it.
Second-child syndrome.
I’m just sorry that your #2 is now starting to break the rules. Hope things improve soon!
Funny how we imagine things will be is different once they are born. You can always tell a frantic mother with a screaming child in the back by her driving habits. LOL.
We do have something in common. We can both tune out the crying, for sanity purposes and when needed.