To think I simply can’t go on a car journey with my 3.5 month old?

[AtWitsEnd2025]

I’m currently parked up on a roadside with a screaming DS. Inconsolable. I’ve changed his nappy on the back seat it’s not that. He was fed 40 mins ago. I’ve offered him boob on the back seat and he doesn’t want it. He’s crying his eyes out. Dummy not helping. I’ve assembled the pram to see if lying flat helped it didn’t. DH standing and bouncing him on the pavement in the rain helped a little.

in the end we’ve decided to put him back in the car seat and drive the ten mins home. He is SCREAMING.

what do we do? What if we were on a motorway?

we can’t calm him, and pulling over to change him and offer boob isn’t possible on the hard shoulder!

My eldest was like this anytime we took him in the car up until about 18 months old. Looking back I think he probably had undiagnosed silent reflux (when he learned to talk he described symptoms that are consistent with that). Singing very loudly sometimes helped (or maybe it just made me feel better!) but he'd usually exhaust himself and fall fast asleep eventually. It was awful at the time, but he's now a perfectly healthy 10 year old who will happily sit in the car for hours.

Make sure he's not too hot! If it's only at nighttime, try a little clip on reading light somewhere safe/lower and a car seat toy. Mine liked the taf toys one that hangs in front like a play gym at that age.

Mine HATED the baby car seat. I moved him into "the next size up" at 6 months and he was a different baby. Turns out the "next size up" was actually suitable from birth - I wish I'd tried it sooner!

When he was little I avoided pretty much all non-essential car journeys. But sometimes it happens that your baby screams blue murder for 10 minutes in the car while you find a safe place to pull over. And it's horrendous at the time, but it's just one of those things - you do both recover.

Yep. DS2 screamed in the car if it was dark outside.

Aww OP I remember this. I used to sing 10 green bottles on a loop and it seemed to help. Weirdly worked for a friend of mine as well. Our DD grew out of it at about 5/6 months.

Same here!

Another person recommending trying baby in a bigger seat. Most of the ones for older babies/ toddlers have a newborn insert. Both of my kids were so much happier once we moved them. I could never get over the amount of my friends whose babies stayed in the smaller car seats for months!

Had it been like this every time for the last 3.5 months or is this new today?

Trains are easier.

My little one was like this and I changed the car seat at 6 months and she is much better in it now but the first few months was a shit show when going out and about. Look at the next size up car seat with the newborn insert and keep doing what you're doing.

Haven't read the full thread so apologies if this has already been asked/suggested but was this his first time out in the car in the dark?
My now 3yo was great in the car until one afternoon in December when she was around 4 months old. I was taking her to visit my mum and set off in daylight but living in the north of Scotland it got dark early and she was inconsolable. Went home a few days later and all was fine but it was a daylight journey. After a few more inconsolable journeys we realised it was only when we were out in the dark that there was a problem. Battery powered fairy lights and someone sitting in the back with her sorted things.

I also find it a bit weird that if you suggest sleep training on here, even with a much older baby, it's cruel but when it comes to driving, well fine for a baby to howl for hours

My youngest was like this ... it was awful. I had a school run with older children so we had to just get on with it on those days and they would do their best to entertain. It stopped some where between 6 and 9 months .

@RabbitsEatPancakes @kiraric

but vast majority of time parents are not taking their babies in the car for the fun of it but due to necessity. What if you have other kids that you need to take to school? Do you just not go? What if you need to take baby to doctors? Do you just not go? It’s not always possible to avoid driving with a baby especially if you have more than one child.

The hard shoulder is absolutely not for nappy changes and breast feeds. Just being parked on the hard shoulder massively increases your chance of a vehicle colliding with you and at 70mph with your stationary there wouldn’t be anything left of any of you. You need to keep going and get off at the next junction, unless your child has vomitted and it poses a choking risk etc.

I don’t think anyone is advocating letting a 3 month old scream for hours but the reality is that not everyone has the choice to just not drive. If you have other commitments and children to get to places then you have no choice but to get on with it. Some of us don’t have anyone else to help and have to do everything for their children themselves.

I'm about to have baby no 3 myself. I walked everywhere possible when my 2nd was small so as not to cause more distress and I'll do the same if no. 3 is the same. Obviously some journeys can't be avoided but I did just use a sling and bus rather than car for some trips. It wasn't a massive hardship.

One of my children was like this from newborn. Once they could talk, we realised they got terrible travel sickness but were rarely actually sick with it, just had that awful feeling. The doctor couldn’t prescribe anything til they were older and just said to try piriton I think it was, as there is something in it that can help. Once they could have travel sickness tablets they were fine, but I still feel so bad about doing days out which we could have avoided or done differently.

Er, sleep training mostly happens out of necessity too. Do you think it's safe for a parent to be driving (or cooking, or doing all manner of things) when they are cross-eyed with sleep deprivation?

The attachment mummies on my mother's group were always keen to share all this evidence of "cortisol spikes damaging the brain." When asked to explain how this the cortisol spikes caused by car-seat screaming somehow managed to magically avoid damaging the brain, they went quiet, or started making up convoluted arguments and twisting themselves into logic pretzels. It was comic to watch.

Either prolongued screaming causes brain damage or it doesn't?

And yes, of course you could technically avoid driving car seat screaming, esp if you have a partner. Rent out your house and rent a flat somewhere close to work, doctors, older child's school, and on a PT route. Cut out all unnecessary activities for the older child. One partner quits work for a year or a few years or whatever, to free up more time for walking. Of course you could bloody do it if you really wanted to - how do you think families cope when medical issues which forbid driving (epilepsy, eyesight issues) suddenly develop in the parent(s)?

Needless to say, I do NOT think parents should be doing the above. But if we really believed - like, really, genuinely believed - that prolongued screaming by babies causes them to develop cortisol-related brain damage, we'd do it, wouldn't we? I would do the above if I genuinely thought I had to in order to avoid damage to my child's brain.

But we don't, and nobody online recommends doing the above. Because at the end of the day, and in their heart of hearts, they all know perfectly well that crying does not cause fucking brain damage to babies. It's just a useful tool for promoting attachment parenting crap.

(OP, try out the suggestions on this thread, and do whatever you need to do until this stage passes. It's OK. My first was a carseat screamer, though luckily we rarely needed to go in a car. 13 years later, she's a fine girl. It is awful to listen to but doesn't harm them long-term).

I was shocked to see this thread pop up on the Reddit site where some people thought I was trolling - really? That makes me feel a bit gutted, as though DS must be really high needs if people really can’t comprehend what it’s like having a baby who won’t automatically nap in the car!

(We also co-sleep as he won’t be put down to sleep, and contact nap as he won’t be put down to nap!)

I can confirm I’m not a troll and have been here for 16 years now!

I was almost in tears when I posted this. It was pouring down and the only way we had to calm a screaming, distressed, hysterical baby was for DH to bounce him at the side of the road.

Thanks all for your suggestions. We did make it home safely thank you.

To add, we’re going with the hypothesis that perhaps it was dark and he didn’t like the dark.

We drove him in daylight to an appointment 25 mins away yesterday morning; on the way there he was mostly fine, on the way back he got a bit grizzly but I had brought some expressed milk which kept him quiet (he also won’t take a dummy, though we do keep trying!). That’s normally how he is in the car. So thinking that it was something to do with the dark is potentially the way forward and we are going to make sure we’re/I’m not out anywhere in the car once it gets dark from now on and see if that helps.

Great update, OP. Most of us have been there at some point. You will work out some strategies to make car trips less painful, and in the long run, it doesn't matter anyway - it's just a bit miserable when it's actually happening!

Our kid did this. Changed the car seat when things got absolutely desperate and he was fine, he just hated that particular car seat.