Travel Sickness - where have you stopped to clean up a travel sick child? The more unusual/interesting the better!

[jockolad]

I recently returned to Glasgow from a fantastic mid-week break at CenterParcs Sherwood Forest with my toddler daughter only to discover that she suffers from pretty chronic travel sickness. As a consequence of her continuous spewing I found myself stopping in places I had never heard of before let alone considered visiting.

The fist mega-barf occurred just as we entered Newcastle. We were forced to stop in a place not far from the center of the city and just off the M1 motorway called Wallsend. I ended up changing her clothes and cleaning up her car seat next to a section of Hadrian's Wall!!! I couldn't believe it although was saddened by the fact I was unable to walk amongst the existing Roman stonework for fear of being viewed as a neglectful parent, leaving my poorly child as she lay semi-naked on a rug next to the car.

The second uber-chuck of the journey happened just after we crossed the England/Scotland border and resulted in us pulling into a small village off the A1 called Reston - a stones throw from Coldingham and Eyemouth. Again, whilst changing and cleaning my now extremely 'peely-wally' child I found myself impressed by the floral display at the entrance to the village and also laughed inwardly as a group of teenagers passed me questioning amongst themselves why there was a naked child lying in the grass whilst I was frantically scrubbing the back seats of the car with my last remaining baby wipes.

Finally, the most recent episode of horrendous-hurling happened just as I paid my £8 parking fee upon entering the Royal Highland Show Ground just on the outskirts of Edinburgh. I made it out of the car and round to her side during her second gag by which time it was too late. This time I found myself changing her in the parking attendants portacabin. In praise of the attendants, they all left to provide privacy which I thought was a real classy touch. Whilst I had a change of clothes for her I had not bargained one her being sick on every single piece of clothing (which she was) so had to subsequently buy additional clothes for her within the showground at exorbitant prices.

So, there you have it: Wallsend, Reston and The Royal Highland Show. There have been many others, including a wind tunnel like valley on the West Coast of Scotland in the pouring rain but that's a story for another time.

Please, share with me and others your similar stories of travel sickness misery and the places in the world you have been forced to visit/experience as a consequence of your child's inability to regulate the content of their stomach.

Jock O'lad

[mistlethrush]

Can I thoroughly recommend getting her used to using a bowl? It makes such a significant difference just having to stop, do minimal mopping up, emptying bowl and providing small amount of water....

I think the funniest episode was eating at Peterborough services (pizza), managing to get back onto the A1 north, and having to stop at the layby only 1/2 a mile further on.... DS (aged 3at the time) then suggested that he was hungry and could he finish his pizza (no!). Oh, and he managed to eat a children's portion of spag bol in Carlisle services (looked really good for services food) whilst I ate a bowl of soup - at which point I caught the regurgitated spag bol in my empty soup bowl...

[AtAmber]

I have knocked on someone's door in the middle of North Wales to ask for help. They were lovely. They gave me a bucket of hot water and a towel for ds3 to sit on as we had to take the car seat cover off. We had to buy a new car seat 30 minutes into a trip to York once as it was so covered in vomit. The journey should have taken about 2 hours. With all the stops for ds3 to be sick it took us 6 hours. When we finally arrived at the hotel, ds3 was sick all over my arms and new handbag as I lifted him out of the car.

[jockolad]

Sadly, I fell hook, line and sinker for the 'I'm hungry' nonsense after the Wallsend spew and stupidly fed said toddler Cheerios and a strawberry smoothie to fill her back up again. Hence our second stop at Reston.

Thanks for your advice mistlethrush, it's definitely a steep learning curve.

[scrappydappydoo]

DD (5) managed to throw up just after we landed on a transatlantic flight. It was just as everyone was queuing to get off the plane. It went all over her, me and the three airplane seats in our row. Because they hadn't opened the doors yet we literally stood there wuth no room to move for what seemed like hours covered in sick waiting for some space to clean up. Other passengers were NOT helpful.

On a slightly similar note I went through a phase of fainting lots when I was about 10 and my parents have interesting recollections of times and places I fainted.

[BlackNoSugar]

This will totally out me if anyone I know is on here:

Living in Germany, my cousin and her husband were flying in to visit us. It was an hour and a half drive to the airport for us to meet the midafternoon flight, so DD and I had an early lunch - hers was pasta shells in a veg and cheese sauce. Off we set, in our minivan, and about 40 minutes later she started gagging. I could see a petrol station just up ahead and she hurled just as I was turning in, so I jammed the van into the nearest open space (a sort of gravel/grass area next to the road) and jumped out, pulled the sliding door of the van open, and got DD out. Part-chewed pasta shells were literally everywhere, all over DD, the car seat, the floor, everywhere. I stripped DD off, cleaned her up with babywipes, wrapped her in my jacket, and sat her in the passenger seat. Then I pulled her carseat out, emptied it onto the grass and cleaned it up as best I could.

It was as I climbed into the van to start cleaning the floor up that I realised the petrol station had a restaurant. The nice gravel/grassy area I'd stopped on was right in front of the plate glass window. I was scrubbing baby vomit out of my van in front of about 50 people who, up til then, had been tucking into their lunch.

I sort of gave them a bit of a wave, a sickly smile, loaded DD back into her seat as fast as I could, and left.

Oops.

[autumnboys]

Only today we parked to go to a long awaited party for grown ups with tag along kids welcome, DS2 got out of the car and threw up at the side of the road. DH went to the party and I took the kids home.

I once turned round in time to see DS3 throw up a packet of haribos, afloat in a sea of vimto. We stopped in the next lay by where a terribly concerned herd of cows came over to watch.

I have been caught by surprise and sacrificed many a fleece/top/towel to the gods of the road. Anything to keep the seat dry. An ice cream box with some kitchen roll in the bottom is good and easy to dispose of.

[BlackNoSugar]

DD was always sick if we were in the car more than half an hour, I tried using bowls, bags, all vile ways to deal with it. A friend gave me the best advice ever - a bowl lined with a nappy sack and a disposable nappy inside. Child starts heaving, you just open up the nappy but keep it in the bowl. Afterwards the nappy will have absorbed all the 'wet' and you can just fold it back up and tie the sack.

If you're travelling, you can do the same thing if you put a clean nappy in a nappy sack, you just have to be a bit more proactive with holding it in place.

[SavoyCabbage]

We pulled up on a quiet dead end street in the city in the middle of the night for dd to have a wee and

ROAR!!!!

We were right next to the zoo. I nearly fainted. It was pitch black and we had no idea where we were.

[mistlethrush]

We still have 'the bowl' (DS is now 10). And it still gets used regularly. Because it's about 8" deep and about 12" across and therefore easy to hit and quite easy to cope with until we can stop. It does actually have a fitted lid too - but we normally manage to stop before that would be required! When we stop the bowl is very easily emptied and then it just rinses out with the bottles of water that are conveniently located (next to the roll of kitchen paper) in the boot. A few plastic bags for rubbish (or clothes for washing) are also helpful.

DS learned very quickly that it was much better to use the bowl as this avoided being stripped (completely) at the side of the road several times per journey. We always used to take at least 3 sets of clothing in an easily accessible location on every journey. We also (still) have to avoid dairy products for about 4 hours before any journey as they seem to exacerbate the problem.

In fact, I think the worst occasion was having to do a U turn on the school run and remove DS from the car, strip him on the doorstep, run him through the shower and find a whole new set of school uniform whilst DH was hosing out the back of the car, and ring the school to explain we would be late, and explain that we had already seen the Dr about his car sickness.... They were somewhat about it but once they'd seen him perfectly OK (with some crackers to eat as he'd thrown up all his breakfast) they were fine. Oh, and there was another school run where DS managed to make it to the flowerbed outside school before throwing up... and managed also to hit the front doorstep and I had to suggest that someone needed to throw a bucket of water over the front step before too many people trod in it on the way into school.... that was embarrassing!!!

[jockolad]

An addition to the many places my toddler has spewed: 5 minutes way from our holiday destination in Northumberland having been quite the thing for the preceding 3 hours during the trip. Thankfully the nappy-in-poly-bag-in-bowl approach has been implemented so vomit residue was kept to a minimum.