How to deal with Travel Sickness

Tips for travelling with a travel sick toddler

My daughter has always been fine travelling in the car and like most babies she would fall asleep quite happily, but things soon started to change just after she turned one. I would hear her start to cough and heave, I would immediately pull over at the next safe place but it was usually too late as she would have been sick. It was frightening as you are scared of them choking.

The first couple of times I put it down to her feeling unwell or having just eaten but then it happened nearly every journey. It soon became obvious that she was suffering from motion sickness. My husband used to also suffer from this badly as a child and into his early adulthood. He would always be the one being sick on the back of the coach on school trips. You can't just never go out anymore because of it either, but now that we know what it is we can try to make her more comfortable during a car journey. Along the way through trial and error we have found a few things that help, these are:

Keeping your child cool. We usually go coat free and open the window a little bit to get some fresh air in.
Drive more cautiously, I try to drive at the lower end of the speed limit and keep all corners, braking and accelerating as slow and smooth as possible.
Buy a head/neck support pillow, this minimises your child's head movement. If their head sways around a lot in the car then they are more likely to feel unwell.

I have also found a few things that might make it worse, which are:

Travelling if she had just eaten or drank milk.
Travelling if she had recently just woken up.
Using a toy as a distraction such as a book. If their eyes are trying to focus on any stationary object whilst in the car and it's moving this is more likely to make them feel sick.

My main tip is to carry an emergency bag in the boot of your car incase your child is sick. Even whilst taking the above steps it usually doesn't stop her motion sickness and we are still suffering at the moment. In the bag I usually pack:

A spare outfit, including socks, shoes and a jacket.
Baby wipes
Kitchen roll
Hand sanitizer
Plastic bags, one for the soiled clothes and one for the dirty wipes/tissues.
Towel, some people swear by covering their child with a towel before setting off but my daughter won't keep it on. It might also make her too warm but it could work for some people.

It is a bit weird as my daughter is fine travelling on public transport which we use most of the time as my husband uses the car for work Mon-Fri. Also I've noticed that she only usually starts being unwell around 30 minutes into a journey. Dr Google say's that it's usually only children around the age of 2 that start to get travel sick but for my daughter it wasn't the case. I hope that some of my tips might help someone else or if anyone has some tips for me please leave a comment below.

-Jodie x

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