Taking a Car Trip With Your Kids: Basic Tips To Help You Plan Smart

Next weekend we’re off to visit my in-laws. But instead of over the river and through the woods, our 21^st-century car trip to Grandma and Grandpa’s house involves nearly 300 miles in my beloved Subaru Outback. At least most of it is on interstate highways, but you can do the math: We’re talking at least five hours of actual “drive time.” And that doesn’t count stops.

I’ve spent most of my adult life living far enough away from family that a long car trip was generally the cheapest and easiest way to see them. Whereas my younger single self sometimes took a train or plane trip instead, the cost and hassle of doing this with kids has made my trusty all-wheel-drive station wagon the automatic default choice for visiting most of our far-flung family.

In fact, my husband and I were so used to packing up the car to see our folks that we thought nothing of planning three road trips for the first two months after Kimmie’s birth. Including a 350-mile-each-way drive to my mother’s house in the dead of winter, so our 22-day-old daughter could be baptized in the church where we were married. (What were we thinking?)

Each time we do a major road trip, it gets easier – in part because our kids get older, which cuts the amount of gear I feel absolutely, positively compelled to haul along. My kiddos are the first grandchildren on both sides, so the first time my husband and I took Kimmie to visit our childhood homes, our parents’ houses had been newborn-free for over three decades. In other words, we had zero gear waiting for us on arrival.

How not to pack: Gear

So into the car, along with our own clothes, went

• A half-dozen outfits per day for Baby.
• Breast pump/extra batteries, plus enough bottles/milk containers/diapers to get us from point A to point B (which was suddenly an 11-12 hour trip, not a 6-7 hour one as before), and still have a few clean spares of each on arrival. (Remember, both pumping and bottle-feeding can occur while traveling at highway speeds, so long as the grownup doing them is not also the one driving. Nursing, not so much.)
• At least one play yard, sometimes two.
• And the baby bathtub.
• And the high chair, lest Mama be the one holding Baby in lap (and thereby wearing Baby’s meals) three times per day.
• Plus baby monitor, noise machine, music box, and nightlights. Plus the bibs, sippies, miniature spoons, and unbreakable plates/bowls that gradually replaced the bottles and milk storage containers.
• Not to mention enough baby cereal, yogurt, bananas, rice cakes, etc. to last until we made it to the grocery store.
• And later still, multiple potty seats (one for each floor of the house) and multiple step-stools (lest every trip to the bathroom by our preschooler require an adult chaperone to turn the water on and off).

How not to pack: Toys

And the toys – holy cow, the toys! Because the only thing more exhausting (I’ve learned) than visiting the home of someone who doesn’t have small children, is visiting such a home when there are no toys present, either supplied by your host or brought along by you.

As far as small children are concerned, the entire world is full of toys waiting for them to explore. They are far less bothered than grownups are by the fine distinctions we draw between, say, Acceptable Toys for Baby (teething and otherwise) and Everything Else:

• China and crystal knickknacks;
• Grownup books and magazines;
• Remote controls and other small electronics;
• The dog’s water dish;
• The cat toy under the couch. You know, the one that belonged to the cat who died last decade.

And when you’re talking toys for a trip so far from home, you’re really talking TWO sets of toys: One set for playing with once you reach your destination. Plus another set whose sole purpose is to keep your little angel behaving angelically for as much of the long drive as possible.

Better planning for your first Baby Travel car trip

I’ll devote future posts to such topics as packing for an overnight trip with Baby, flying with small kids, and actually surviving the drive itself (especially if you’re the only adult in the car!), among other topics. But for now, my parting suggestion on taking that car trip to Grandma and Grandpa’s house (or any other overnight destination you plan to visit regularly) involves seeing what advance planning you can do on the other end, with grandparental assistance:

1. Borrow or rent essentials and nice-to-have’s

• Do they have friends from whom they can borrow baby gear? If so, is it current/recent and safe?
• Is there a gear exchange or rental service you can access on their end?

In our case, all of our parents’ friends had older grandchildren – and the only gear either set could dig up at first, old highchairs, bordered on inconvenient at best and unsafe at worst (let’s just say that restraining systems and trays have come a long way). So this wasn’t much help for us, but it’s a crucial place to start.

Likewise, larger cities and vacation destinations often have businesses that rent baby gear to traveling families. If your parents’ town doesn’t, perhaps they can borrow some things from their church or another community organization.

2. When getting your own gear, consider more portable versions

For example, if you’re traveling back and forth a lot, consider a smaller (fits-through-doorway) size play yard, like the basic Cosco Funsport play yard we got on clearance in a discontinued pattern, as a second play yard for travel. When it comes to strollers, we were gifted a jogging stroller, but rarely used it (I don’t jog) because it wasn’t portable, so instead got one that worked with our child’s car seat.

Ditto the bulky, large high chair we were loaned to use with Kimmie. When it was time to get Kimmie a booster and have a high chair for Essie, we just got them both the same compact travel-friendly booster seat/high chair. Not only was this tons cheaper than a full-sized high chair for Essie, but having compact seats we could attach to folding chairs took up way less space in our house AND was super-convenient for road tripping to grandparents’ houses.

3. Is it worth buying an extra of the most essential items?

• Especially if you’ll be visiting frequently, might the grandparents or other relatives consider acquiring a few staple items?

Particularly if their prospects (or hopes) for additional grandchildren are good, or you plan to visit them every few months, your folks might be more than happy to invest in their own stash of baby gear, preferably in consultation with you (i.e., so you can keep them in the loop on 21^st-century safety standards, so they know that a crib full of blankets and stuffed animals, with slats wider apart than a soda can, is not part of your nursery-away-from-home wish list for your newborn).

Grandparents can easily stock their home with a small stash of age-appropriate toys via their local church’s annual garage sale (where my mom scored most of her collection), yard sales, or local thrift shops. (Just, again, make sure they check with you on current safety standards and your preferences!)

Craigslist (if they have a good one in their area), for-sale bulletin boards at work and community centers, and secondhand stores oriented toward baby and kid gear are also super places to pick up used gear at a fraction of the cost of new stuff. The internet, discount stores that sell overstocks, and clearance sales on discontinued patterns or models are also a good way to go.

If they can only get ONE item for your infant’s first visit:

If the grandparental units can only afford the money and/or space to make one investment along these lines, I’d recommend a very basic play yard (such as the basic Cosco Funsport play yard we got on clearance in a discontinued pattern, as a second play yard for travel). We eventually convinced each set of grandparents to get one, so we’d have one less thing to schlep back and forth.

If their house is multistory, see if they’d consider getting two – one for sleeping in, and a second for wherever you and Baby spend waking hours, whether inside or in the yard. Or you could bring your own smaller-sized play yard to have one for each floor. (One definite advantage of the Cosco model is it’s small enough and light enough to carry through most doorways without breaking it down first.)

Why a play yard?

As you may have discovered already, play yards are for so much more than playing in. You can also use them for

• Blocking access to the sharp edges of a stone hearth;
• A portable crib for Baby;
• Creating a “Baby-safe zone” where Baby’s toys (not to mention Baby) won’t become deadly tripping hazards for unaccustomed-to-stepping-over-such-things grandparents;
• Keeping Baby separate from Grandma and Grandpa’s friendly resident pets; and
• Containing Baby in Grandma and Grandpa’s yard, on their deck, or by their pool.

So if your folks are willing to spring for just one item to make your visits easier (and thereby increase the chances that you’ll visit again), this is the one I’d recommend.

What tips do YOU have for road-tripping with infants? Let us know in the comments!

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