All together, the journey made us better parents. We listened more closely to her as our usual busy lives laid dormant and, through experimentation, learned more about her cues and boundaries. I won’t hold back the whole truth, we had some scares along the way. A couple of times I wondered how anyone allowed me a license to parent (oh yeah, they don’t have those), but Flora survived. She even laughed, that dorky giggle she inherited from me but sounds a lot cuter on her, more than anything.
While my baby girl might not remember her first major road trip, her first time in another country (we went to Mexico for two hours), her first time at the ocean or seeing an armadillo or meeting a Voodoo Priestess or hearing a Cajun band or being in a cave or seeing the Alamo or meeting her cousins (yes, we saw some family along the way), I am convinced that all of this, this all encompassing experience, will help her, somehow, to be a better person. Her senses have been heightened by all the new experiences, her motor skills awakened by the intense traveling, her constitution endowed with increased adaptability and, of course, the best part, her bond with her parents stronger than ever.
Each place we went, we needed new tools to navigate with baby. In Carlsbad Caverns or Big Bend National Park, our Ergo baby carrier was indispensable while in San Antonio or Austin, we could not do without the stroller. At the Arkansas Wildlife Refuge where alligators looked suspiciously at our dog, our daypack became a diaper bag and in the electric humidity of New Orleans, a portable fan helped us all sleep better at night. We figured it out as we went along and considered every day a learning lesson.
In the end, the most difficult part of the whole trip was the adjustment of returning home. Flora was used to being within twenty feet of us at all times in the van so, in our house, she hated when we left the room. With more space to move, she quickly began doing so and we learned how much more cautious we had to be. The old tricks to get her to sleep we used before the trip no longer worked and we had to continuously employ the tricks we used on the road; i.e., driving in the car, walking with her in the carrier. While she used to sleep through the night before we left, her new separation anxiety prevented that. But that is life with a baby. Once you have it figured out, they change; and this too shall pass.
Sleep; the all consuming and precious commodity of parenthood. If I have any advice to offer, it is this: do not deviate from baby’s sleep schedule. This was the secret to a winning road trip with baby. Drive during nap times. Stop for feedings and play time. Get back on the road for nap time. Stop early enough to make dinner, keep her bedtime routine and put her to sleep in her bed promptly. This makes for one slow road trip. Our three week plan turned into five weeks. We drove about four hours a day, six on a good day. 
Remember those road trips you two took before you had children when you drove all night traversing eight hundred miles in a day? Well, consider those days over. Even if you have a fancy mini-van with DVD player and video games and fully reclining seats, those little ones need to get out of the car or they will go batty. And sometimes Flora did go a little batty in which case, if we were unable to pull over because we were just ten miles from our destination, I would sit next her and amuse her, usually with tambourines and all the songs with lyrics I could muster until we arrived. When desperate, I would force the dog, her most favorite thing in the world after breast milk, to entertain her. Unfortunately, he does not appreciate her as much as she does him.
Step two: packing for a six month old baby for an uncertain amount of weeks, in variable climates, sleeping in a van at night with no running water. This was the biggest challenge of all and I won’t say I was completely successful at it either. I packed a lot she didn’t need and forgot a few things too. Sun screen and sun hats, pajamas and onesies, long pants to keep the sun off those little white sausage legs, sweatshirts to keep her warm on chilly nights, wash cloths for sink baths and burp cloths for everything else, and that’s just what was in her suitcase. We had a diaper changing station set up for quick changes anywhere anytime. No cloth diapers on this trip; all paper, all the way.
I brought a box of toys and books with a playmat and her Boppy pillow which served invaluable when we pulled over to make lunch or dinner. On a nice day, I sat her outside the van on the grass to play on her own, the dog keeping guard. Mosquitoes biting or a chance of rain, I planted her at the end of the van on the floor and out of the way. I must mention here that she was the perfect age; able to sit up and play independently but not quite mobile enough to get too far.
Where she would sleep was also an initial obstacle. Fortunately, the mini co-sleeper that we use at home was the perfect size to fit in the rear of the van when the “adult” bed was pulled out. Yes, it was more difficult to pick her up and nurse her at night, but she got her usual sleeping quarters and we got our space.
Note from Dana: I’m very excited that Johanna DeBiase agreed to blog about her 5-week trip on the road with her six month old daughter. She and her husband are certainly braver than I am in taking on this endevour. She’ll be posting every few days over the next couple of weeks. She’s a fantastic writer and mom and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
When we decided to take off on a road trip for a few weeks, the last thing we considered is how we would make it work with our six-month old daughter, Flora, and eleven year old dog in tow. Instead, we were anxious to get away from the seven foot piles of snow outside our door and the slow accumulation of resulting mud in our driveway. Generally, we act first and think later with the faith that everything will work out for the best, which, I’m happy to say, it always does.
Our destination: south and sunny. One of the best features of my life is that my husband, Eric, is a freelance journalist which means he can take his work anywhere and even create more work while we’re traveling (this might be better for me than him). With mobile broadband and a cell phone, we could basically choose our journey. Eric wanted to do some coverage of hurricane recovery in rural areas of the gulf coast region. I had never been to New Orleans. In between our home in the Sangre de Christo Mountains of Northern New Mexico and the bayous of Louisiana is one big land mass called Texas which would soon become our mission to explore.
