Wits end travelling in car with DD

personal sufferer here even as an adult. So many more options as age progresses. Mostly, do limit travel. It’s an absolutely miserable feeling.

Get her as upright as is safe for her age.

get the car cold. Blast the air conditioning. The front seat passengers should be freezing. I can not emphasize the importance of this one enough. Opening the windows isn’t the same as the noise makes the nausea worse. Blast that ac.

dry food. Let her have access to snacks, even if it makes a mess in the car. Being able to nibble helps. To this day as an adult I keep both a dry snack and hard candy to suck on hand at all times. With a child this young you are going to be limited to dry snacks.

do consider forward facing early. It makes a difference for many children. I am a proponent of extended rear facing. I kept my dd rear facing as long as we could, but she didn’t inherit my awful travel sickness. She only got sick on extremely long drives and we could combat that.

Get those car sickness glasses, they work amazingly. They are white and filled with blue liquid that moves and tricks the brain into thinking you are moving. They 100% work.

You sound unsympathetic toward your poor DD.

Used to travel with an old ice cream tub with a lid to put on it when my kids were small. Absolutely no books or screens. Keep the car cool.

I had dd in the middle seatbelt, small fat free meals beforehand as we often travelled after dinner on a Friday, absolutely no activity for hours beforehand that involved spinning around (even then I couldn’t trust a row of roundabouts). Any activity had to involve movement rather than sitting and reading (which is harder for littlies).

Please don't forward face her so young. At this age sitting backwards could be the difference between life and death even in a 30mph crash.
Try to find a seat that can rearrange face and sit more upright. See if you can get anti nausea meds for the car for longer journeys.
If you have isofix in the middle seat this can help as well.

We travelled with a small seaside bucket for many years when DD was small.

Turn her forward facing and use a high seat so she can see out the window. Try and use one that keeps her a bit more upright if you can, rather than leaning right back. 2 of mine are horribly carsick in seats that recline too much and the risk of choking on vomit for these 2 is higher than the risk of injury in an emergency stop/accident.

My youngest did choke once, it was only that her 7 year old brother got her out, leaned her forward and hit her back until she coughed, that saved her from aspirating vomit. It could have been so much worse. You have to weigh up risk vs benefit.

Does your car have cruise control? I was constantly car sick as a kid and although I don't generally suffer as an adult, if DH has the cruise control on I feel sick almost immediately!

I read it first as 19 years old lol. I get terribel travel sickness

I used to get travel sick and made car journeys miserable for everyone else. The only thing that helped was to sit facing forwards, look forwards at the horizon, and have the window open a crack. You can imagine how much fun that was for everyone else in the car in winter.

So not the answer at her age but we have these for my DS. He doesn’t throw up often but we never had any warning and it would go all over the car. Now he can grab these, we can stop by a bin and we’re done.

https://amzn.eu/d/eD2TkuL

Ds was like this until he was about 8. We found forward facing helped. Little food or drink before hand. And window open. Not allowing him to look at books (this was before screens) or play with something where he was looking down.

All the above, and also avoiding winding roads and driving as 'straight' as possible if there is a curve, ie don't hug the edge of the road, provided it's safe obviously.

She needs to forward face.

If you go for a forward facing seat and need one for the front or middle so she can see out of the front window, Britax King Pro is probably the best seatbelt fitted option in terms of safety features.

If you have her in the front, airbag off if possible (check the car manual) and in any case push the front seat back as far as it goes to increase distance from the airbag. They can be really dangerous to small children.

Try reducing the temperature in the car, and removing the headrest of the back seat of your car so she can see out of the back window first. There are also medicines but you need to ask the GP as she's under 2.

You may want to find out about getting her eyes tested because severe car sickness can be a sign of short sightedness.

Is she still in a baby carrier or a more upright toddler seat? DD2 was basically untransportable by car in the infant carrier, but is rarely sick in her rear-facing MiniKid. In your position, I might look at the spin seats, as long as the seat sits pretty upright, so you have an easy option for trying forwards and backwards in the new seat.

Try covering the window next to her so that she can see out the rear window, but doesn't see stuff whizzing past in her peripheral vision. If you turn her forward, consider putting her in the middle seat so she can see out the front if your car allows a car seat there.

Keep the car cool.

Middle seat, forward facing helped my dd. Also, you can put one of those plastic tommee tippee type bibs on her to catch most of it

Rice cakes
Don't dress in anything that needs to be lifted over the head, button up blouses and cardigans all the way!
Towels over the seats in the firing line (elastic and safety pins to attach to seats.
Spare clothes, plastic bags, wipes (baby and upholstery)
Blanket + picnic blanket if you need to stop for a while.
Do not travel after feeding her carrots or tomatoes. Stick to dry toast and water. Try to plan travel so she can eat when you're there, if not, whilst she might sleep.

When she's a bit older you can try sea bands, anti sickness tablets, chewing gum. From about 4 we had a plastic bag lined bowl on the seat next to her which she could grab hold of. She quickly learnt to tell us when she was starting to feel sick.

Junior kwells if she's not too young

I had same issue. No food an hour before car, window open and forward facing sorted it.

Front facing didn’t make the slightest bit of difference for us unfortunately but worth a try! Once they get to 2 there’s some options for travel sickness medication which has helped. And the sick bags on Amazon with a plastic ring, atleast you have a chance of catching it!

I’m a massive advocate for rear facing as long as possible. It’s much safer. But in your position I’d forward face. It’s not really safe for her to be sick so often and if rear facing you might not notice if she choked so I’d go for it

Do you have low profile tyres?

what have you tried giving her to prevent travel sickness?

I would try front-facing her. Yes, it's not as safe as rear facing but I think you're increasing the chance of getting distracted and being in an accident in the first place. Once she's 2 you can give her phenergan and try rear facing again.