Wednesday, August 22, 2012

the dreaded car

jacob has hated the car since his first car ride. no joke. we never considered taking him for car rides as a baby to put him to sleep. we loathed taking him in the car because he would cry and scream and be miserable. i find it close to impossible to block out the crying when driving. not only does it get under my skin but it creates a lot of anxiety for me. he will now cry until he vomits which is absolutely awful for someone who has a phobia of barf. i basically stopped taking long car rides without having another person in the car who can distract jacob....yeah...it was getting ridiculous. about a month ago i had planned to go down to Seattle to visit my grandma and knew that i needed something to distract jacob or my mom and i would be pulling our hair out. i borrowed a friend's portable DVD player and some sesame street DVDs. WOW!! jacob barely made a peep. it was a very peaceful drive.
so now i want a DVD player for the car but we can't afford one. thankfully i have a husband who knew how important it was for me to be able to go places with J and have him be calm. he decided to try and get some cartoons on our tablet. steve spent HOURS on it. he had a few friends (who are very educated on computer stuff) help him and finally he was able to get some sesame street episodes on our tablet. yesterday i drove to abbotsford and back and jacob watched sesame street the whole time. so peaceful! i know a lot of people don't agree with tv in the car but i don't care at this point. the stress of driving with J was too much that i was avoiding all drives that were longer than 10 mins. now i can visit family and friends without having to pull over a million times, without having to clean up barf and without having to feel anxious the whole drive. it's worth it to me.