To not want to limit long car journeys with puking DS any advice?

[monkeynuts123]

DS has started being carsick, seems to be on journeys over 20 minutes or so. He throws up everywhere and without much warning being only 3. I have tried those joyride tablets for long journeys but they make him very sleepy, even on half the recommended dose. So I feel like avoiding long journeys, we make them if we have to but I avoid making unnecessary journeys. DH says I'm over-reacting, he says sit him with a bag and an old towel and if he pukes so what, we just carry on and get wherever we're going and have a fun day out. To me this is far from a fun day out, watching DS gradually green up and then having to clean all the puke off him and the car and carry clean clothes etc. Also of course it's not nice for DS! So, DH wants to carry on with days out at far away places and I feel like sticking closer to home, I don't want him to get a complex though and feel he can't travel. Does anyone have any suggestions? How about breaking journeys up into half hour chunks with little breaks for walking about in fresh air, would that work? I feel frustrated and like our life is grinding to a bloody halt!

I agree with haverer's plan

Your Dh is being massively unreasonable.

Stugeron

Phenargan (on prescription from the GP) is the only thing that works for DD.

She even turns green if she's in the front seat.

As another poster has already said, it usually makes her drowsy or hyperactive and there's no way of knowing in advance which will happen..!

She will be 7 at the end of this month and still throws up on journeys over 10 minutes or so, and feels dreadful for ages afterwards. It is a pain in the arse for her, and a pain in the arse for us as we really do limit our family days out, holidays, after-school activities etc as a result. But it isn't
fair to put her in a position where she feels awful, and I hate clearing up sick.

I get really cross about it actually, as there are loads of things we want to do as a family which we simply cannot do, due to DD's carsickness. And medicating her all the time is not something we want to do either, as it messes up her sleep patterns.

To answer your original question: YANBU BUT you may still be asking this in a few years' time (although I hope not!).

Oh DH had it as a child, his parents sent him on long haul flights with his sis with no parents and just the air hostess to watch them and relatives to collect the other side, he was sick every flight. He was carsick and his parents gave him something to puke into and on they ploughed, he says it didn't do him any harm. Think it sounds frigging horrific myself.

I sympathise. I have found, surprisingly, that a good supply of sweets, such as haribo, stopped mine being sick on longish journeys. I think keeping your blood sugar up must keep the stomach stable. Also, have someone sit with him in the back. When he goes green, stop the car and walk about outside for 10 mins till he feels better. Works really well. Good luck. I don't think you should let this dictate where you go, just work out solutions.

My 2 older DSC's used to get car sick but seem to have grown out of it, DD does too, but can go for a couple of hours - unless it's very twisty roads. Fresh air and stopping for a walk helps her.
I don't think YABU to try and tailor your days out around your DS's sickness as much as possible.

Travel sickness is horrid, I get it sometimes in back of car. How do you feel about him in front?

To answer your question - I don't think you are being unreasonable at all. Two of my three boys get car sick (as I did as a child) and we rarely travel by car anywhere as a result. We can do this as we live in London with excellent transport and no car. Days out are taken by train. When I book holidays, I look at transfer times from the airport first. Main preference is by train (which they are fine with) and if that is not possible, then I will only book somewhere with a car transfer time of 30 minutes maximum (and even that can be iffy if its not a straight route).

There may be times where you cannot avoid long car journeys, but why do it if you can?

DS gets travel sick.

We use Traveleeze pastilles - much better than Joy Rides and last 24 hours
Time travel for sleep/nap times
Go by train

We don't do journeys over 20 minutes unless he's asleep basically.

I had terrible carsickness a a child and so did DD. we avoided all car journeys unless she could sit in the front, and even then I would plan a route that wasn't twisty. we would ban certain foods- anything with milk or god forbid yoghurt, and no puddings or rich foods at grandmas if we had to drive afterwards.

DH needs to adapt a bit and recognise that it's not all about him. He can go on big days out with his mates if he likes. Personally I hate big days out with tiny children anyway, even if they don't vomit. I don't believe they remember a damn thing when they are older, and they would just as soon go to the park and dig a mud pie. Big days out are often because daddies find childcare boring and need a great, well, tough. YANBU.

Great=treat

YANBU. Ok, you've had lots of recommendations for curing travel sickness. I bet you've tried most of them. You still have a child who gets very carsick, right?

(I do get that medicating doesn't always work either, or has consequences. I still get travel sick as an adult, although not as often as when i was a child, luckily. Usually the choice for me is between risking feeling and being very sick on the journey, or arriving for work meetings and interviews having taken the tablets and feeling absolutely exhausted. It just isn't fun).

Adults who enjoyed driving pre-dc and like doing long journeys often seem to insist on carting small children on long trips for no good reason. It's tedious and selfish and I agree with previous poster, it's often about finding child oriented activities boring and wanting 'quality' trips for the adults. Nothing wrong with trying to do both IF YOU CAN but dragging a travelsick child around for no good reason is selfish.

Is this very long Euro trip you husband wants to do just a holiday? Tell him not to be an arse. The world won't end if he doesn't get a foreign break. If it is for much needed medical treatment or to see an important relative who cannot travel themselves, ok, then go and do the best you can. If not then forget it.

I can still remember what became unhappiness and then fear about car journeys from when i was small. I hated the feeling of constant nausea and i could tell how frustrated my parents were at me. They also got more upset snd frustrated with me the more they tried to manage the problem, when that didn't work ('what do you MEAN you're feeling sick again, we just stopped for 20 minutes, you said you felt better, we're never going to get there ar this rate - oh for god's sake, she's been sick again, pull over... were you looking out of the window? Were you? I said we shouldn't have let her eat lunch!' and so on and on).

If you don't have to do something which makes a child sick, then don't.

We use Traveleeze pastilles - much better than Joy Rides and last 24 hours

I agree, traveleeze pastilles are the only things that work for me and I've used them for the DC too. Unfortunately there is a manufacturing problem at the moment and there is no alternative available

Agree also with other posters that if you are car sick then you feel awful all day, plus there's the effect of medication. Does your DH understand what he is putting DC through? I bet he doesn't, he just thinks the kid feels a bit nauseated for a few moments. It's much more than that, and it isn't right to inflict that on a kid just because daddy likes his trips.

I always got car sick as a child. DM kept an old icecream tub and bottle of Milton fluid in the car.

we had the aptly named "yucky bucket". Three of us in the back sharing our space with this old nappy bucket with a lid.

We always have a good supply of travel sweets, usually mints, but I'd also read once that ginger was good and was very pleased when I found some ginger boiled sweets in Tesco in the aisle with all the Indian food, drinks and snacks. They certainly helped.

We've found the bands useful and the approach that "you'll feel better once you've thrown up". And DD always did. Travel sickness is no longer a big problem.

Where did the driving holiday in Europe come into this? I thought the OP was talking about flying and then picking up a hire car for a one hour journey? A proper driving holiday would be a little silly, but I don't see the OP's DH is being unreasonable here. It's not an excessive amount of driving.

DS gets car sick - he still does occasionally even though he's now 8, but its got a lot better than it was when he was 3 - 6.

On a number of occasions I have had to ring up school and apologise that we were going to be late as he's thrown up on the school run. He's also thrown up on the front step of the school on one memorable occasion.

However, what limits the problem is having a bowl. The bowl theoretically travels everywhere with us. It used to get moved from one car to another in his car seat - now we get enough warning usually so that we can stop before he's sick. However a bowl - fairly large so that its easy not to spill - then you can stop as soon as you can safely, empty bowl (down a drain if in urban area or in a hedge in the countryside) wash it out with some water - small sip of water for DS and piece of kitchen paper to wipe face, and you can go off again.

A weird remedy I've heard of, that may be worth trying if all else fails, is to put a sheet of brown paper on your child's chest, under their T-shirt. God knows why, but it could be worth a try.

not all travel sickness involves actual vomiting though - me, DD2 and DD3 all feel dreadful in cars in varying degrees, but are never sick, so we can't even do the "bring it up, get it over with and start to feel better" thing . We just suffer till we can sleep it off that night.

What I've found helps is: driving, not sitting in the back, and whoever does have to sit in the back sits in the middle, avoiding twisty turny roads wherever possible, driving slowly and smoothly on twisty turny roads, keeping the temperature as low as bearable (either air con or windows open), and finally not letting DH drive as he does the foot hard on the accelerator - brakes hard on - accelerator down to the floor kangarooing style of driving with lurch-ey gear changes which makes everyone except him ill.

Both DDs have got worse as they've got older, but the wristbands are making a difference (don't car if it's placebo or not ).

I think it depends on how severe it is. I still get sick unless I drive and I am in my 50s . I have to be drugged to the eyeballs to get on a ferry without disaster. If a child throws up, so do I. That doesn't help.

If you get real travel sickness it is like having a bad hangover, all day long, long after you have arrived. DH needs to get this.

Travel sickness isn't something he will necessarily grow out of. I still get it at nearly 30. Stugeron worked for me as well as the opportunity to sit in the front (although I know that's not really possible with a 3 year old), no reading, window open - fresh air certainly helped. My mum would just dose me up on the Stugeron and if I showed any signs of being sick, she would pull over until I felt better. I was never allowed sweets before a car journey and mum would avoid having to drive after a mealtime.

Its frustrating but can be handled once you know the signs.