Travel sickness panic

[Aozora13]

My 2.5yo DD gets travel sick. I’m a bit of an emetophobe (understatement). In a moment of weakness I let DH persuade me to book a holiday 4-5 hours drive away. We moved house last week and have a 6mo party baby so I’m quite stressed and seem to be channeling a lot of this into anxiety about tomorrow’s trip.

We’re planning to give DD a plain breakfast and dose her up with Piriton about 1-2 hours before we travel. We have hourly stops planned and are going to keep the car as cold as possible. No books/iPad in the car. If she is sick, I’ve got wipes, small bags to store mucky clothes and febreeze. What else do I need and what the hell can I do to manage my anxiety, I’m dreading what should be a lovely family holiday!

Thanks all for your advice and reassurance, I’m actually feeling much calmer by focusing on being prepared. We were caught unawares on a journey at Christmas (only 1.5 hours so I didn’t think) and it was really rotten for poor DD. I don’t want her to have negative associations with car journeys, so good to hear that your DD has emerged unscathed @UncomfortableSilence!

DD will be very happy with the advice to have plain crisps and chips too.

@Needcoffeecoffeecoffee I think reframing the stops as for the baby will help, that’s a nice idea, and DH has been planning suitable stops along the way. I’m normally really impatient to get there but will think about the next stop rather than the destination.

@WaxOnFeckOff I can only drive in my own opinion and not that of the driving testers so unfortunately can’t outsource that, but am good at yelling (as @SleepWarrior describes!)

Thanks @xine15 fingers and toes are firmly crossed!

I can only drive in my own opinion and not that of the driving testers

How very dare they!! :o

Good luck OP. Thankfully all these days are behind us too. DS1 was our sicky one and DS2 was never sick... Both DH and I were travel sick as children yet another reason for thinking DS2 isn't ours (jokes..) not joking...

I remember my little sister often being sick in the car next to me, but to put a more positive spin on things if she’s not asleep then looking out of the window helps , either between the front seats or out of the side... games to distract too ...’yellow car’ , white lorry etc, aeroplane ...or the dreaded I spy (it doesn't have to be letters maybe something blue = sky etc) if she’s up to it maybe she can sing a song .. On a practical level maybe a bin liner or towel on the back of the seat in front ..and spare adult clothes too .

How did it go xx

Thanks for checking in @roundligament and to everyone for your advice. We’ve arrived safe and sound with everyone’s stomach lining still intact. Gave DD piriton about an hour before we set off. First 30 mins were fine. Second 30 mins were white-knuckled “tummy ache, feel sick”. Stopped for a break then she zonked out completely for an hour. Then after lunch was absolutely 100% fine despite the last hour up hill and down dale (literally - hello Yorkshire!). It’s a miracle! Shame about the exploding nappies but that’s another story.

We didn’t travel yesterday as DH was feeling unwell plus I had a phone call from work to say I’m being made redundant! Which proved to be an excellent distraction from worrying about puking toddlers .

Great news on the travel sick toddler front and commiserations on everything else. I've been redundant a couple of times. The second time I was the sole wage earner and had a 6 month old and an 18 month old. It was briefly scary but it all worked out in the end :)

Travelling later or when they are sleeping is the key I think. If I go back to when I was a child, I was one of 7 and all of us were travel sick. A day trip to the beach usually resulted in multiple times on and off buses with sick children, dad with the boys and mum with the girls and we'd all meet up in the end. After a day at the beach, none of us were ever sick on the way home.

Thank you @WaxOnFeckOff - I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end! And in the meantime I have

Your parents were either heroes or crazy - just getting 2 kids on holiday has been enough for me to require a holiday (ideally without kids)!!

They were both I think. We couldn't afford to go on holiday. We had one and that wasn't really very far away and was in caravan that someone loaned us for free - 9 of us in it and then my Aunt and uncle came to stay for a night too!

Trips to the local beach were well planned - mostly we just went to the park for a picnic - big picnic packed and they'd save up coppers for the arcade and if we were lucky there was enough left for some bags of chips to share for the journey home. Very happy memories so it was worth their effort to me :)