Hi! Well, I made it through Animal Kingdom and today I’m off to Disney Hollywood Studios!
Today I have the amazingly talented Erica here and she is sharing some of her tips for traveling with a baby. I’ll admit that I never traveled with my kids as babies until I had Andrew and it’s no easy task that’s for sure.
Thank you Erica for guest posting today while I’m off enjoying my vacation!
This is the time of the year most of us start dreaming of vacation. And, if you are like me – a working parent with 2 kids – vacation cannot come soon enough.
For us, tips for traveling with a baby include one thing: Know where every hospital and / or emergency room is.
This story is how I came to that learn that gem.
Our 7 hour-ish car ride to the Outer Banks, North Carolina, began with an overnight stop in Chincoteague, Virginia.
We were bored with the downtown within 5 minutes enjoyed the small town quaintness of Chincoteague. I scarfed down many blue crabs while getting my hands covered in Old Bay Seasoning We had a lovely dinner at the local crab shack. And managed so see some of the famed ponies enjoying the natural beauty of the island. Oh, and we had the crap bitten out of our legs by mosquitoes, which, of course, is expected in Chincoteague.
The next morning we planned to wake up early for a beach stroll before beginning the second leg of our journey down to the Outer Banks.
Then my daughter fell face down off the hotel bed. Face down.
We. Were. Terrified|Horrified|Panicking.
She. Was. Crying|Screaming|Bleeding|Throbbing.
She had to go to the hospital. I called down to the receptionist.
“Um, hi, my daughter just fell off the bed and we need to go to an emergency room.”
“Well, the closest hospital is an hour away.”
An hour? Where the heck were we anyway??? Oh yeah, Chincoteague.
Why didn’t someone share with us tips for traveling with a baby and let us know we needed to stay within 15 minutes of a hospital??
Our daughter was finally calmed down, and we packed the car to go to Nassawadax, which, by the way, looks exactly like you would picture a town called Nassawadax, Virginia to look like. Chicken farms and boarded up gas stations.
She checked out fine… of course. Any change in behavior, we should come back.
She had a shiner, and some rug burns, but other than that… she was good to go.
Until 2 am… See, when she woke up at 2 am screaming and inconsolable, our first thought was, “Change in behavior! Concussion! Back to the hospital!”
So back we went. This time, to Nags Head Hospital, which was a bit more thorough. The doctor asked us a question that caught us off guard…
“Have you given her Tylenol for pain? She might have a headache.”
“Um, no. No one told us that was something we should do… hmmm…Can we have our Parenting Award of the Year now too?”
We got our discharge instructions and I, in my typical fast-northern talkative fashion asked the nurse who was letting us go…
“So, is there a 24-hour pharmacy, or someplace we can get Tylenol?”
“Well,” in a slower southern drawl…”Nothing’s open on the island 24 hours… ‘cept Harris Teeter.”
Um… great, thanks… yeah, the 24-hour grocery store will probably have what we need. Awesome. Can we go now?
We were also told it’s good luck for your child to fall off the bed before she is a year old. I guess this happens often enough for a wives’ tale about it.
So, it was an awesome start to the vacation…
SO… what has your kid done to make you scare the heck out of you? What toddler moment sent you to the ER?? What tips for traveling with a baby would YOU include?
Erica Voll is a freelance writer, blogger, and social media consultant. She writes a parenting blog, No Sleep ’til College, and is co-founder of Girls’ Lunch Out. Erica rarely sleeps.
Check out Erica’s favorite blog posts at No Sleep ’til College:
The Post In Which I Judge Other Moms
Hold Your Baby
My Toddler is an Awful Photographer