Our first road trip w/ dd, advice needed

So we live in Northern VA as some of you know, and will be traveling to NY for the first time w/ dd. We are leaving tomorrow night. I am super excited to see our friends & family, and Sat is dd Baptism. DD is 5 months, w/ and adjusted age of 3 months (preemie). And we have out giant moose of a lab coming. My questions for you ladies are:

What time should we leave?
(DH is working tomorrow during the day, gets home by 3:30pm. I was thinking we should leave late, late. Hoping she would sleep, and we wouldn't have traffic. DD doesn't have a set bedtime but usually goes down between 11:30pm-1:30am. I thought it would be best to put her in pjs, feed her, and get in the car and go. DH would nap when he got home, and I am hoping to sleep during the trip Are we nuts for thinking this is going to work? I figured when we get to my parents, I can nurse her and put her back to sleep. Fingers crossed.)

What should I make sure I have in the car for the trip?
(Packing all the basics, diaper bag, blankets, a few toys. Anything else?)

EBF mom's what would you do about feeding?
(I plan to give dd a bottle of pumped milk before we leave to fill her up, and hopefully make her pass out. That is if she takes the bottle Also going to bring a bottle in case she wakes up, and needs to eat. I figured it would be faster than nursing her at a rest stop. And in case we are stuck in some type of construction traffic, and she is screaming.)

Any other tips/advice I welcome w/ open arms?

TIA!!!!

Re: Our first road trip w/ dd, advice needed

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Re: Our first road trip w/ dd, advice needed

first off - you are NOT nuts - we've done a bunch of road trips with Em (she's now 16 months and i think we've done at least 4-5 major road trips with her already). it can be done - with little to no worry!

as for timing....i don't know that i'd leave LATE LATE.... one question - do you have a GPS? the reason i ask is because lots of roads in NY and NJ now are doing road construction during the overnight hours and LOTS of roads are closed during the week because of this. If you have a GPS and don't mind detouring - then leave late, late...

things to have: bunches & oodles of 'busy stuff'. i know your baby is young...so i'd just have some teether toys, some stuffed animals, whatever her 'fave' things of the day are....

burn some cd's of lullaby's or other soothing types of music (heck, you can even get a white noise cd)....that may help lull the baby to sleep.

i can't help with the bf'ing part...but best of luck to you! if you think of any other ???? - feel free to FM me - i'll be happy to help!

Re: Our first road trip w/ dd, advice needed

We took DS to Disney when he was four months old. We drove from NY. We left around 5am. He slept most of the time. He did great the first day. Your trip won't be as long. We stopped when he woke up to change him and feed him. We walked around a bit. We had someone sit next to him in the back so he wasn't alone. We bought a mirror that played music and has lights on it...We were going to leave at night, but a friend of ours told us it was a bad idea. It screwed up their DC and themselves...

Re: Our first road trip w/ dd, advice needed

Sounds like a good plan. How long is the drive? I think if you leave when it gets dark your DD will sleep most of the way. If she gets up i'd pull over, nurse her quick (in the dark) and get right back on the road.

Re: Our first road trip w/ dd, advice needed

Question is does she sleep when you drive, and in the carseat for long periods of time. If so than I think it's a great idea. If not than my suggestion is to leave in the morning. HTH

Re: Our first road trip w/ dd, advice needed

having done this exact trip (I'm in silver spring), you are going to want to minimize stops and slowdowns. So that unfortunately means leaving post 730pm. The LAST thing you want to do is get stuck on the Beltway or get caught on the north side of Baltimore.

If you can leave at 330 or 4, you could scoot up 29 and jump onto 95 north of Laurel. You'd probably be ok the rest of the way up b/c by the time you clear the Baltimore tunnels, the traffic has thinned out enough to the north that you can keep moving.

When we've done the trip, DD has been fine and passed out in the car unless she's been hungry or had a diaper, so the key is to keep moving.

Also, the best rest stop on 95 is now the newly rebuilt one in Delaware. Great place to stop and feed her if you need to. And coming onto the Island, if that's where you're going, I'd suggest taking the Goethals to SI and then the Verrazano to the Belt. By the time we reach that point, there is rarely any traffic going east, whereas we almost always get stuck going on the BQE.

GL! Its not going to be as bad as you are expecting!