![\"first-motorway-services.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/ianandgabriella.co.uk\/babyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/first-motorway-services.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe journey up to Wolverhampton went well \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we needed to get there by lunch-time, so decided to give Jessica her second breakfast of formula before we took off at 9.30am and then hoped that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d sleep in the car. She got quite excited as soon as she was put in the car seat, though – as per usual – so it took a while for her to go to sleep and when she did, she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sleep as long as she normally does (her morning naps tend to be around 2 hours, never normally less than 1 \u00c2\u00bd and sometimes almost 3 hours).<\/p>\n
She was still cheerful and sociable when we got to Ian\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mum\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cousin and her husband\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s place and happily walked about the house to investigate, guided by different hands. The goldfish in the little tank in the kitchen attracted her interest, as well as the washing machine, a birthday bouquet of yellow flowers, a creaking cupboard door, which she opened and closed, opened and closed until eventually she got bored.<\/p>\n
In the afternoon Ian set the travel cot we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d borrowed for the journey up in Alison\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s room, I fed Jessica her mid-afternoon bottle and tucked her in. It took her a while to go to sleep, probably partly because there were so many exciting things to look at in Alison\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s room, but when she did fall asleep she seemed to sleep soundly.<\/p>\n
Jessica woke up nicely in time for us to go over to our hotel and check in. The birthday party started at 7.30pm. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d decided that Ian was going to represent the three of us \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Jessica usually goes to bed at 7pm, so she was never going to attend the party anyway, and I was happy enough to stay behind, as I was feeling a bit tired. Jessica went to sleep very happily in the travel cot while I read a book and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stir until morning.<\/p>\n The following day we needed to check out 10am at the latest, so I fed Jessica her mid-morning formula at 9am, while Ian packed our car. Jessica fell asleep in my arms, so I left her snoozing on our bed for 10-15 minutes, hoping that we could carefully transfer her over to her pushchair for a walk in the park to let her continue sleeping. Unfortunately, that plan didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 We walked around the park with a crying baby for an hour until we had to give up \u00e2\u20ac\u201c carrying her now and then and singing to her didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help to calm her down. She wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hysterical, but we were worried it was heading that way, and we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand why: she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never acted this way before\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6!<\/p>\n We gave her baby-paracetamol and teething gel, in case it had something to do with teething, and went back to the hotel, got in the car and drove around Wolverhampton instead. Ian showed me where his Mm and grandmother used to live and where he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d visited as a child and Jessica turned quite cheerful. She fell asleep just as we arrived at our hosts’ house again -the plan was for all of us to go out for lunch at a Chinese restaurant about an hour later. Again we tried to move her whilst hoping she’d continue sleeping and again we failed… She woke up straight away and cried and cried, this time really getting hysterical. Poor thing must have been absolutely exhausted.<\/p>\n We had to make our excuses and head home instead. We said a quick good bye and headed back out in the car with our screaming little baby. She was far too upset to have any solids, but by this point she was due a meal (and if she was hungry too that certainly wouldn’t help), so I hopped in the back with her and gave her a bottle of formula. It took ages for her to feed as she kept breaking away from the bottle to cry and I had to keep re-offering it, but in the end she thankfully finished most of it and after about an hour she went to sleep. Ian and I were getting hungry ourselves but kept driving until she’d slept for at least an hour before we dared risk stopping…! We brought Jessica with us into the restaurant at the motorway services and she was feeling much better, smiling and dangling her legs from the highchair as she was munching on a rice cake while Ian and I had a cooked lunch.<\/p>\n For the rest of the day everything was back to normal and in the evening she went to sleep as per the usual routine. Maybe it was the whole new experience that got too much for her after all and didn’t allow her to relax enough to sleep properly during the morning. Couldn’t help thinking things will be so much easier when Jessica and we can talk to each other.<\/p>\n Gabriella<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On 8 to 9 December, we went up to Wolverhampton to celebrate Ian’s second cousin Alison’s 18th birthday. It entailed Jessica’s longest journey by car ever (about 3 hours) and first night in a hotel…! The journey up to Wolverhampton went well \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we needed to get there by lunch-time, so decided to give Jessica […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-babyblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianandgabriella.co.uk\/babyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianandgabriella.co.uk\/babyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianandgabriella.co.uk\/babyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianandgabriella.co.uk\/babyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianandgabriella.co.uk\/babyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ianandgabriella.co.uk\/babyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianandgabriella.co.uk\/babyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianandgabriella.co.uk\/babyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianandgabriella.co.uk\/babyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n