"You won't be able to take the baby on those trips of yours around Australia..."

[dalekboy]

A brief post for the many, many people who said we couldn't travel to remote places with Lex.

Post-Melbourne trip, my son, at 8 weeks, has seen more of the country than most of the people who offered me this advice, and we aren't home yet. Interestingly we have discovered travelling with him so far inland is no different than travelling with him from Canberra to Melbourne was.

10,000 years ago we all used to be nomads, yet somehow we managed.

And I have the Belwood!

A quick selection of pictures of places he's been, below the cut.

Comments

[kaths.livejournal.com]

Wonderful!

So how do you deal with the heat and sun? I'm getting a bit paranoid about that, with summer approaching and all the warnings we get about keeping the sun off young babies!

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

It's mostly common sense, and no different to what we'll have to do in Canberra in high summer.

Lex already has a hat that covers his head and neck, and we have the baby wrap. So if we suspect we're going to be in the full sun for more than a minute, we make sure to pull the wrap around so it covers Lex's arms and legs.

Long trips in the car seat, and while in the hotel room, we're tending towards having him in one thin layer or just the nappy. We'd give him nappy-free time, but don't want to risk a poo escape onto carpets, bedding, etc. that isn't ours. Outside he's in clothing, even though it will make him warmer, because it also protects his skin.

Also, while driving we keep an eye on where the sunlight is hitting in relation to the baby seat. Early and later in the day we have a gauze cloth to cover it and protect him from direct sunlight.

At night it's still warm (we're currently in a hotel in Broken Hill, hence the wireless net connection) so he sleeps in just a nappy with a gauze swaddle cloth to prevent the chance of him getting chilled. We're not using the air-con in the room at night in case he gets chilled, and only using it in short bursts during the day to help drop the temp a little. Not trying to get the room really cool, because then his system will be having to deal with regular radically see-sawing temperatures.

And we're making sure to feed him a lot. He may not be hungry, but he does get thirsty. We can be sure he's getting enough by the sheer quantity and weight of wet nappies we're dealing with. We're also using plenty of nappy rash cream to prevent the effects of being in a warm, wet nappy.

My only paranoia is that babies being too warm is one of the things they think is a SIDS risk, but that's hard to avoid during an Aussie summer. And SIDS is something I'm paranoid about anyway. Rarely a week goes by that I don't check that he's still breathing at some point. And during one exceptionally long sleep he had while I was driving, I started to worry that maybe he'd died quietly in the back.

At this point if any such thing were to happen, or he just got overheated or a bit burned, we'd at least know that it wasn't as if we hadn't been very careful.

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

A version of this reply will be making it into a Things New Parents Should Know post. In fact I may be able to just copy and paste :)

[fe2h2o.livejournal.com]

Don't know if you have air conditioning in the Belwood?

If not, there's yet another use for cloth nappies:-)

Dad strung a line across the top of the car windows, we had a pile of nappies, and mum had a bucket of water. Get a nappy wet, wring it out and hang it over the 'string' (it was a little stronger that that:-) ) and have the window open a bit.

That's what we used going around Australia, and on our Nullabor trips...

[kaths.livejournal.com]

All sounds good.

I'm paranoid about SIDS too, although there's probably a higher risk just driving around the suburbs with a baby!

I think every parent checks for breathing. For the first few weeks I could barely breath myself, the urge to watch Clara's every breath was so strong.