home

Carsickness

We seem to have discovered yet another unfortunate trait that Ane has inherited from me. The kid can’t even read yet, and she just had a nasty bout of carsickness on Saturday.

Let me back up. Saturday evening, the Webmaster and I were debating – do we go out to dinner or not? We finally decided in favor of, picked the Old Spaghetti Factory, and called Friend and Doc up and invited them to come along.

Amazingly, we got seated right away – especially considering we had 8 of us, which meant 4 chairs, 3 booster seats and one highchair around one table. They were incredibly busy, so it took forever for the food to show up, and the kids got tired of bread pretty quickly. By the time the food came, the three older kids were definitely out of sorts. Tad had been so happily even-tempered that Doc actually forgot he was there for a moment – he was drinking his milk, enjoying his applesauce, and blowing raspberries on my arm. A small rebellion by the Brain, Ane and Head about no longer wanting to eat was eventually quashed (Tad didn’t follow their lead), and we all enjoyed our Italian food on Cinco de Mayo. Friend commented, “Well, we did Taco del Mar on Columbus Day, so I guess we like switching our holidays around.”

We all took a quick trip down to Barnes & Noble after dinner – the Webmaster, Ane, Tad and I opted to walk (Tad was in his stroller) the two blocks in an effort to burn off some carbs from all the pasta and spumoni ice cream we’d just had. And because I can never deny my children books, I picked up Robert the Rose Horse for Tad and a Berenstain Bears book for Ane while all the kids were playing with the train table.

On the way home, Ane insisted on “reading” her new book in the car. Since we were only a few miles from home, we turned on the light above her seat and I drove home. We could hear the pages turning as she looked at the pictures. When we got home, though, Ane was standing in the driveway after getting out of the car, clutching her new book, when she started to vomit. (The book was okay.) Poor little girl. Once she finished emptying out the contents of her tummy, she began to cry. “I spit up,” she said, in great distress. We hustled her inside, gave her some Tums, brushed her teeth and got her into her pajamas. I read her new book to her at bedtime, and she fell asleep pretty quickly. She was kind of pale the next morning, but she eventually perked up enough to be almost send to time-out during Sunday School.

All I can figure is that between the excitement of the evening, her full stomach, and the drive home trying to look at her new book, she got her first case of carsickness. She hasn’t had a recurrence since, so I know she’s not actually sick with a stomach flu or anything like that, and she’s had no other symptoms.

This has been a problem for me as long as I can remember. For all of my reading ability, I can never read in a moving vehicle (planes and trains being the exception, and even then, I had a bad case of motion sickness the last time I flew – the plane was going through turbulence, and luckily I had a bag on hand). It makes me sad, because I could have spent so much time reading on all those long car trips as a kid if I hadn’t been subject to motion sickness. I was really hoping that my kids would escape this curse. But seeing as Ane has already displayed my propensity for nosebleeds, why am I surprised? Really!

The funny thing is, she’s done pretty well with her read-alongs in the car so far. When we drove down to Long Beach, she never had any trouble. So, maybe it was just a “perfect storm” of events that caused it. Who knows? All I know is, we’re keeping an eye on her the next time we drive the 2 and a half hours down to visit the Webmaster’s parents.

One Response to “Carsickness”

  1. Little Cousin's Mommy
    May 8th, 2007 05:56
    1

    Oh, I feel your pain. I don’t recall that carsickness has ever caused me to vomit, but it does seem like a lot of wasted time just sitting. With kids, though, you never get to “just sit.” There is always someone who needs a drink, a snack, or your undivided attention.