How To Guarantee Your Child Will Not Be Sick In The Car

If you have a child that is prone to car sickness, it actually really simple to make sure s/he will not experience car sickness on a given trip. Make sure you have extra clothes, Clorox wipes, hand towels, paper towels, and extra plastic bags. That's all there is to it!

On the other hand, if you would like to guarantee that said child will indeed get sick in the car, all you need to do is leave those items at home after completely cleaning out the car. After all, you're not planning on going on a long trip so there should be no rush to restock the car. Right?

Yeah, not so much. Poor Ian. We headed out to Lifetime Wellness for his third trip today. (These pictures are from last week's appointment, but they tell almost the same story.) Isn't this an adorable face??? I may be slightly biased, but only slightly.

Brrrr!!! It's cold! Hurry and get in the car, Mahnee! But let me see the picture first!

Today Ian was wearing jeans, which press his tummy a little more. And we got stuck in traffic because they decided to do construction in the middle of the day. And maybe he was too warm. Who knows! For whatever reason, we were almost to Lifetime Wellness when Ian put his hand over his mouth and started crying. He has never done this in the car before, so I wasn't sure what was going on. I was on the phone at the time and thought perhaps his mouth was hurting. He had been whimpering on and off, but he does not like slow traffic, so I had attributed it to our snail pace crawl down 820. Poor baby!

It crossed my mind that he might be about to throw up, but there was nothing I could do. We were exiting the freeway and there wasn't a place to get over. Sure enough, right as we pulled up to the light to turn, my poor baby lost his breakfast. Ian has gotten car sick more than once, and I have to say he is a pro! The poor kid just sits absolutely frozen until I can pull over and clean him up. The first time it happened, he didn't move a muscle for 10 minutes until I could pull over!! (We were stuck in downtown Dallas on our way out of town with no way off and no safe place to pull over.) I feel so bad for him, but I am so glad he doesn't make a bigger mess.

This time we were pretty lucky. We were one minute away from Wal-Mart and I was able to reach back while waiting at the red light and cover him with a plastic bag so he didn't get any more yucky on him. In the parking lot, I took off his clothes, wiped him down with my last two wipes in the diaper bag, and put my jacket on him. We went into the store and got him some more clothes and me some more wipes. Back to the car for a quick clean-up, and then on to Lifetime Wellness. We were a half an hour late, but they were still able to get us in.

Ian was happy to finally get to play with Thomas! He loves going anywhere that has a train table.

In the room, there is a bucket of toys. This family of dinosaurs lives in there and Ian loves seeing them every time we go.

The light switches are down low - perfectly placed for someone Ian's size! Mommy has instituted a two-time on/off rule. :-)

Well, all's well that ends well. Ian's car seat has been properly washed, dried, put back together, and rebuckled in the car. I have a new clue for when he is going to puke and am going to start taking a bucket in the car. I am thrilled that he is probably old enough to use one now and is giving me clues at least a couple of seconds ahead of time. Hopefully we won't have any more car sickness for a long time though!