8 month baby boy & long car trips - advice?

[KathG]

Hi there
I have an 8 month old baby boy and we travel a 10 hour drive every month or every 2nd month.
Any ideas from anyone on how to entertain him as he only sleeps 30 mins every 2 hours. He doenst sleep much in his car seat sadly.
He gets bored with his same rattles and small toys that he uses at home every day.
He wants to get out the car seat often.

please help! :-)
Thanks

[momtokennedy]

I'm not sure if your DS screams in the carseat but my DD did! It was awaful. I couldn't go anywhere so I decided to turn her carseat around early. She is over 20lbs and at 7 months I turned her around to face forward and now I can't go anywhere because she falls asleep...only for an hour though. Can you take breaks? Does he like a kiddie CD? 10 hours is a long time for anyone, let alone a baby.

Good luck.

[brenda2]

hard age for a long trip...does he like cds/music?

books, new toys he hasn't seen before.  something that lights up and "does" something.

frequent stops when he is awake to have a look around outside.

feed him in the car on the go, that'll keep him busy for 30 min or so.

hope for a long sleep!  i always put a blanket completely over dd and over the carseat to darken it and make her sleep longer.

maybe you could time it so a lot of the driving is after he goes to sleep?  we had good luck with this when dd was 6 mo - we left at about 5 pm, she had dinner and fell asleep by 7 pm and we continued driving until about 11:30 pm and got a hotel and then continued the rest of the way in the morning, only 4 more hours.  worked well.  i suppose you could drive all night too.

[KathG]

Thanks to all of you for your replies.
I think we have got to stop more often.  We have limiting circumstances in terms of nice places to stop. We drive from a very 3rd world country next door to South Africa to RSA so the road is very rural with no picnic spots, plenty roadworks and no decent fuel stations with gardens and picnic spots. In fact, almost none.
Also, without trying to find excuses, we don't like to drive at night because its a bad road with plenty inexperienced drivers and narrow roads,  so its not always the safest bet.
We would not travel this road if we had a choice but have to to get to a 1st world town in SA to stock up, do doc appointments etc.  Just in case you think we choose this and are cruel to our baby!  ;-0
He doesnt scream thank goodness, just niggles and moans and gets frustrated.  I am sure facing forward will help and now that he's 9 months and legal to face forward, we will buy him the new car seat for that.
I guess there is no real solution... maybe new toys esp for the trip might help.