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.
WHATEVER works in that situation!! Shonah used to do the same thing - without throwing up - and we drove from Langley to City Hall area in Vancouver for church every Sunday. By the time we got there, I was a wreck of nerves. So we'd take the older two into Sunday School class and then the three of us would go to White Spot where I'd have a cup of tea and a scone and calm my nerves and Shonah would be as happy as a clam. When they were much older, we did a LOT of travelling from Seattle to here and Ken bought a small TV and VCR in one at Costco and an inverter so it would run off of the cig lighter and the kids didn't mind the drive at all after that. You have to do what it takes and a few hours of Sesame Street won't harm him!!
ReplyDeletenice! way to make it happen, steve!
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