Inside: If you’re planning to travel by car home for Christmas with a baby in tow, you’re gonna need these tips for a better car ride – for everyone involved.
I clearly remember traveling home for Christmas when we had babies.
My oldest HATED her car seat – she would scream and scream and scream. We had no choice but to pull over frequently, and do the best we could to arrive at the destination with our sanity in tact.
(Once my mom came along on a couple hour road trip and told us to “just keep going and she’ll stop crying”. We tried. She screamed for 45 minutes straight, and my mom couldn’t believe it.)
After we had kid #4, we stopped traveling for the holidays.
But we did it for YEARS with babies in various stages because it was worth it to be with family for Christmas.
Even if you have a car seat hater, like we did, you can still travel for the holidays!
15 Tips for a Better Christmas Road Trip with a Baby
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Some of these tips are sure to work for your unique baby – whether yours is easy to soothe or really not easy to soothe.
Especially if you’re looking forward to holidays with family, keep your eyes on the prize.
You’ve got this!
Related: Infant Travel Essentials for Car OR Plane (Be Prepared for Anything!)
1. Plan for more (far more) frequent breaks than you think you’ll need.
As someone who’s a total optimist when it comes to planning and scheduling…I have been burned more than once by impractical travel ideas with kids.
And this is especially true with babies.
You might need to stop every hour for at least a few minutes at a time. When your baby naps, you might be able to power through and make up some time.
But in any case, be prepared to double your planned road trip time in order to account for breaks.
Also keep in mind that there are definite safety concerns with prolonged car seat use for infants. Through about 6 months of age, the recommendation is no longer than 2 hours at a time in a car seat.
Some car seat manufacturers suggest that babies under four weeks old should be in a car seat no longer than 30 minutes at a time.
Pro tip: Map out stops about every hour of your road trip ahead of time, so you’ll know the best places to pull over ahead of time IF you need them. It can be stressful having to figure this out at the moment (i.e., when the baby is having a meltdown).
2. Choose a strategy to deal with the stress of a crying baby in the car.
When my babies were screaming in the car, I was super stressed out, even if I wasn’t the one driving.
There might be times during your holiday road trip when you just have to power through the crying, like when the next exit is about twenty miles away.
If you’re traveling with two adults, whoever is less stressed out by the screaming needs to drive (it’s an unfortunate biological fact that men’s brains are less affected by baby’s crying).
If you’re a single parent traveling alone and the crying makes you batty, come up with some way to cope with the crying:
- Blast music or sing.
- Open the windows a little (or a lot) to dampen the noise.
- Put just ONE loop earplug in the ear closest to the baby (check your jurisdiction for legality).
- Sniff a calming essential oil like lavender.
Whatever you do, stay as calm as you can and pull over in a safe location when you’re too stressed to keep driving.
3. Consider traveling overnight
Depending on how far you’re traveling, an overnight departure might be a great idea.
You could take turns with your spouse and split the driving 50/50.
If your baby tends to be a good sleeper at night in a moving vehicle, it can be well worth the schedule-adjustment for mom and/or dad.
4. Sit with your baby as much as possible
This is a no-brainer, but our babies were always a little calmer on car rides where I (mom) could sit beside them and hold their hand.
When your baby is rear-facing, it can make them anxious or simply bored when they can’t interact with you or see you.
Another adult could work, too, or possibly an older sibling if that’s an option. Sometimes you just need a hand to hold a bottle, depending on the age of the baby.
There are also mirrors you can strap to the headrest of the backseat, which could give you and your baby both a measure of comfort when you can’t be right beside them.
If you have motion sickness, try to rotate to the front seat during naps.
5. Print out a picture of yourself and tape it to the seat in front of baby’s car seat.
I got this one from Tiktok (I wish I could remember where to give credit!), and I think it’s genius.
Choose a picture of whoever baby is most attached to and print it on a piece of 8.5×11” paper. Tape it to the seat in front of baby’s rear-facing car seat.
Voila! Hopefully it will keep baby smiling for at least fifteen minutes. YMMV.
6. Pump breastmilk and introduce bottles before your trip
If you’re breastfeeding, you know how hard it is to be in the car and not be able to feed your baby until you stop.
So if you’re planning to give your baby breast milk from a bottle, make sure you start practicing ahead of time.
It can take some serious encouragement for exclusively breastfed babies to accept a bottle at first.
Often, a baby will refuse a bottle of breastmilk from their breastfeeding, but might allow it with the other parent. So consider driving and letting your partner bottle-feed when it’s meal time.
7. Address any potential reflux issues before you leave.
I am pretty convinced that my babies’ reflux issues were part of the reason they struggled with car rides.
Most doctors are hesitant to prescribe reflux medicine for spitting up unless it’s affecting their weight gain, which is understandable.
However, there are many reasons babies can be “spitters”, which I wish I had known more about at the time.
Talking to your health practitioner (even getting a second opinion), and coming up with a plan to address reflux might make a huge difference!
8. Consider a new car seat if necessary.
If your baby has always seemed uncomfortable in the car and reflux isn’t the issue, maybe there is some other reason that has to do with your particular car seat.
Some babies just hate certain car seats.
A friend told me that one car seat they had, in fact, was just not compatible with the shape of our backseat. She took it to a car seat technician who told her she had tons of complaints with that particular seat, which was good to know.
Apparently the new Evenflo Revolve360 seat can, for whatever reason, help calm some babies in rear-facing mode? And since rear-facing is now recommended through age two, babies unfortunately have to get used to it.
It may not be the car seat at all, but hey, if you think it might be the problem and you’re desperate, try a new one!
9. Put together a box of items for distraction purposes (plus pacis!).
Introducing some new toys and books can be a great trick for keeping a baby’s attention OFF the fact they’re stuck in a car seat.
You could buy a few new items for the trip, or just pull out toys they haven’t seen in a while.
Don’t forget to include several of their favorite pacifiers in the box.
I’ve had pacis drop into crazy crevices that you just can’t dig them out of – talk about panic!
10. Make sure you have a sun shade.
Stick-on sun shades made life much easier for us on road trips, or even shorter drives.
Colorful ones like THIS one can also give your baby something interesting to focus on.
(Maybe even buy 2 and rotate them, like the toys.)
11. Be vigilant about diaper changes.
Sitting in a dirty diaper might not bother you when you can roll over, crawl or squirm your way into a better position.
Strapped into a car seat, stuck in the same poisition for an hour at a time? You’re bound to get cranky.
Change baby’s diaper religiously – at every.single.stop. If there’s poop, make an effort to stop even sooner.
12. Splurge on fun snacks you rarely buy.
If your baby is old enough for foods beyond the bottle, it’s time to pull out all the stops.
It can definitely be difficult to serve fresh whole foods on a road trip, so buy some easy-to-pack, fun treats that can help distract and entertain your infant between meals.
Try some new flavors of smoothie melts, teething-friendly snacks, or baby puffs, for example.
13. Dress baby lightly – you can always add blankets.
Whatever you do, dress baby as lightly as the weather allows!
You can always add warmth. But if they’re too warm with no way to remove the layers, then you’re in trouble, especially if they’re screaming on the highway with no place to pull over.
If it’s winter, put them in a long sleeve sleeper outfit. If it’s summer, a short-sleeve onesie works.
14. Try playing white noise on the drive.
We’ve used white noisemakers with all of our babies since they were tiny.
Pop some batteries in your noisemaker and bring it along, especially if your drive will be on the longer side.
It may or may not lull baby to sleep, but hey, it’s worth a try!
15. If all else fails, use screens.
Even as a pro-tech mom, I did try hard when my kids were babies to use screen time as a last resort.
But sometimes, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. And if a cartoon will stop the screaming and get you thirty more minutes of driving time, then so be it.
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Give Yourself Plenty of Extra Time & Use This Trip to Make Future Decisions About Holiday Travel
Taking a holiday road trip can be exciting for the adults in the car, but not always for baby. I definitely needed to adjust my expectations as a new mom.
The bottom line: Do whatever your baby needs, leave way earlier than you think you need to, and just accept that it will be better for everyone to accommodate the baby!
Don’t let grandparents pressure you into driving through the crying in order to get there sooner. Follow your baby’s lead.
If it seems like you’ve done everything possible (fed, changed, sang, distracted) and nothing is working, don’t give yourself a hard time.
Some babies are not good travelers: period. Heck, some adults aren’t good travelers!
Some babies grow out of it. Some never do.
Use this road trip to assess future ones. Decide if the pain of the car ride is really worth it to you to travel long-distance in the future for Christmas or Hanukkah or any other holiday, really.
Maybe in the future, grandparents or family can come to you?
But for now, with some careful planning and a baby-centric mindset, you CAN make it to your destination with (most) of your sanity intact.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Read Next: 10 Easy Ways to Toddler Proof the Christmas Decorations
Owner of Growing Serendipity, June could talk to you all day about homeschooling, parenting, and minimalism, which she does at This Simple Balance. When she’s not homeschooling, decluttering, or blogging, she loves to enjoy perfect silence while sipping a hot cup of coffee and thinking uninterrupted thoughts—which, of course, with five kids, doesn’t happen very often.