I was so nervous about our big flight from London to Chicago with Gerrit, but as the end of February approached, I started worrying even more about our 12 hour drive to Chattanooga, TN. We had driven around Wisconsin seeing Andrew’s family, and Gerrit didn’t always do so well on long car rides.

We planned to leave my sister’s house on Sunday. Well, we did leave on Sunday… but not until about 4PM. That may have been a good thing though. We left right when Gerrit was due for a nap, so he slept straight through Chicago (3 hours)! By the time he woke up, it was a good time to stop for dinner. We stopped at an Applebee’s just south of Chicago. We figured it would be a good place to stretch our legs a little and let Gerrit let off some energy. He did fairly well at the restaurant: he ate about 3 times (have I mentioned that he’s a snacker?), we got him a clean diaper, and he started getting restless right when we were ready to leave. Back in the car though? Meltdown.

We drove for awhile listening to Gerrit cry. It was awful! Then I thought about putting on a CD that has one of the “night time” songs I sing to him. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, but as soon as that song started playing, he quieted down and then went to sleep. I was shocked. I didn’t think babies recognized songs at that age yet, but it seems that Gerrit immediately knew the song and associated it with sleep time. Yes, we have a genius baby! 😛 Then Gerrit slept for over 3 hours. It was awesome.

When he woke up again, we stopped for gas and for me to nurse him. Again, he cried a lot when we put him back in the car seat, but he settled down when we played the other song I sing to him. It took a little longer for him to calm down, but he did go back to sleep. This time he slept until about 3AM, I think.

We stopped for me to breastfeed again. I could tell we weren’t going to have an easy time this time. Gerrit was really sleepy, and I knew he wanted to nurse back to sleep…which he obviously couldn’t do in the car seat. Well, we tried putting him back in the car seat, and he was pretty hysterical. We tried pulling over to comfort him several times, but by that point, I was exhausted and crabby. We tried the CDs with those songs on them again, but Gerrit was done. He was happy to snuggle and hang out with us up in the front seat, but as soon as he was in the car seat, all hell broke loose again. I grumpily asked told Andrew to stop at a hotel. He had been really hoping Gerrit would cooperate well enough so that we could drive through the night to Chattanooga, so he wasn’t happy about stopping just to sleep for a few hours.

We stopped in a little place called Cadiz, Kentucky. I was SO happy to be stopping to sleep in a bed. We brought in the playpen, even though I doubted Gerrit would sleep long in it. The poor little guy was so tired, I barely had to try to get him to sleep. He slept for a little while in the playpen before I brought him into our (king size!) bed. We both woke up feeling much more cheerful.

The next day, Gerrit seemed to know what was up. We didn’t have far to go (4 hours or less), but he refused to take a long nap this time. We stopped for lunch at a little Mexican place, thinking it would be enough activity to tire Gerrit out a little. He wasn’t keen on going back to sleep again, but he did nod off for maybe an hour. We ended up having to stop again though.

The last half hour or so to Chattanooga was so long. I kept dangling toys into the backseat to entertain Gerrit. I would have sat back there with him, but we had suitcases piled up in the other half of the seat. Side note: if you ever need to cram a TON of stuff into a car, have Andrew do it. I still don’t know how he managed to get all of our crap in there. Anyway, I was overjoyed to see my parents’ place and couldn’t get Gerrit out of that car fast enough!

Stay tuned for part 2 about our drive from Chattanooga to Goldsboro, NC. 😉