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The Glamour of Being a Mom: Vomiting Child in Moving Car
By
Danelle Ice - Home Ever After |
June 17th, 2009 |
Category:
Kids |
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This was one of the thousands of times in our lives in which my husband turned to me and said, “It’s a glamorous life we lead, isn’t it?” For those who need proof of the glamour of being a mom, read on as I present my recent evidence!
Last night we went house hunting during a nice evening drive. I got dressed up in a pretty summer dress, high heeled sandals and did up my hair. I figured that my husband and I don’t go out on many dates, and even a drive to look at homes could be a mini date for us (even though we had the kids in the car).
I thought I’d give my hubby an excuse to want to take me out of the house more often- why not? This is one occasion, however, that I wish I had NOT been dressed up.
Being the frugal mom that I am, I always pack snacks when we’re going on a car ride. I packed a drink for everyone and a little snack, including a sippy cup of milk for our son, Truett. All was going fine as our daughter, London, fed Truett his Ritz Bitz cracker sandwiches and milk. We cruised through town looking at houses for sale.
Then suddenly, Truett had a half cough/half laugh, with a weird gurgling sound at the end. We had just pulled into a cul de sac and spotted a nice condo for sale when we heard the strange sound. London said, “That sounded weird,” and I said, “That sounded like puke!” We all laughed, and I turned my head to look at Truett. 
Just then, a scene that looked more appropriate to be shown in The Exorcist than our car unfolded right before my eyes. As I looked on, the largest projectile vomit I have ever seen in my life was expectorated from my poor toddler’s mouth! My daughter ducked toward the window as if in slow motion, and my husband pulled the car over instantly.
In front of some unsuspecting stranger’s house, we quickly exited the car to start damage control! Poor Truett, who hasn’t thrown up since he was a baby, had no idea what just happened and was screaming. The car was covered in, let’s just say stuff, which was far too gross to describe here. Thank goodness we had just filled his stomach with food and drink, right?
No spot in the back seat of the car was left unsoiled, including the entire carseat. Thankfully I had a mini pack of diaper wipes which were enough to clean off Truett’s skin, but for the rest there was no cleaning that could fix what had just happened!
We quickly high-tailed it home, where we stripped the boy down to his diaper in the driveway and my husband hosed out the carseat. Thank goodness we happened to be testing out a new product from Febreze at the time, the Febreze Fabric Refresher, which went to work on the foul stench of curdled milk which permeated our car! (You can read my full review of Febreze Fabric Refresher here, which you now understand why I was motivated to write today.)
How to Clean Up Vomit
You knew we wouldn’t leave you hanging without the specifics of how to clean up the stuff! Here are helpful links that will help you clean up life’s unexpected expectorations:
- How to Remove Vomit From a Car Interior
- Video: Stain Removal Tips- How to Clean Vomit & Urine Out of Car Upholstery
- How to Clean Vomit Out of a Carseat
It must have been a funny sight to the people that lived in those houses to see a gussied up woman in heels hauling a child out of the car covered in vomit. Let’s just say, it got on us all. I’ll just add this to the memory book of all the times my husband and I have been glad we chose the glamour of being parents, which – despite all of its drawbacks- is really the best!
Aww, poor guy. We’ve had a few of those moments as well!
Poor guy, indeed! It can be really fightening to a child who’s no ‘used to’ getting sick!
Our oldest is like that. He can’t do anything on road trips without getting sick, and even commuting in the city last week he got queesy on the ride home (thankfully no vomit, since I was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic with no hope of pulling over)
Sadly, I too was that child. My poor parents. Their poor car.
@Kate: lol about their poor car! I guess your road trips have to be limited. Does motion sickness medicine help him?
Barbi
@Barbi: We only really took three trips per year when I was young, usually all in the summer- twice per summer we’d go to the lake, a two hour drive, and once a year we’d drive about 16 hours to visit relatives two provinces over. My parents would usually pack lots of grocery bags for me to use, lol.
But after one terrible incident involving a 15 minute drive in the dark, no bags, and a stubborn Dad who wouldn’t pull over for me (I was old enough, and experienced enough in my motion sickness to give fair warning)…let’s just say it was very, very similar to your story, and I was seated right behind the driver. Not pretty. From that night until my motion sickness disappeared, I was drugged (gravol) every time we went anywhere! I would miss the “road” part of every trip on account of being “knocked out”.
As for my son, we haven’t used anything on him yet. I prefer to not medicate for problems that don’t absolutely require it, and we have yet to get to that point with him.
We manage his motion sickness with preventative actions- no reading (or comics, or drawing, etc), no personal video games, etc, while driving. He can play with toys without getting sick, but often will just sleep instead. If he feels sick, he looks out the FRONT window, and we’ll open a window for some fresh air.
My sister in law has had pretty good results using “Sea Bands”(an accupressure wrist band).
I hope your little guy’s experience was isolated and that incident wasn’t the start of being a car sick kid!