Spica Weeks 8 and 9: Road Trip!

Before we left on a road trip to see my family in New Jersey, we received some encouraging news. Londyn had a routine x-ray which showed some new bone growth in the hip socket! This was black and white evidence that we are making progress, little by little, and though the spica experience may be far from over, it’s working for the time being!

Armed with confidence to continue on with the spica, we packed our minivan and drove east for a small trip we had planned to see family. We watched the landscape around us slowly turn from listless flat to gorgeous green mountains, valleys, and rushing rivers. The places I grew up in northwestern New Jersey are so staggeringly beautiful to me; all the quaint towns nestled amongst forest-covered mountains.

We got to see so many people we love- grandmas, aunts, uncles, cousins, new babies, and dear friends. For many of them, this was their first time meeting Londyn. While staying with my parents in their beautiful RV, we got to teach Grayson the all important experiences of campfires, smores, fishing, and nature walks. Of course, we also had to educate him in all the foods we miss from Jersey: pizza, bagels, taylor ham, and Entenmann’s crumb cake. Grayson’s comment when we gave him some was, “This cake has snow on it!” 

Now, how did we fare with a baby in a spica cast, you ask? The whole trip was actually not too bad! The trip is 12 hours one way, so we did two 6 hour travel days, with a hotel stay in between. Londyn behaved like any normal baby- she did alright but obviously wanted to change her position every so often. We had brought our changing pad from home to lay in between the van seats at rest stops so she could lie down and we could change her. For sleeping at night we had her pack n play and wedge pillow as well as one to place under her legs. (Although she didn’t sleep at night well at ALL on our trip!) We brought her travel booster seat for meals, and this adorable poodle rocker my friend gave us for play. Londyn likes to sit on it and throw her torso back and forth inside the cast so the poodle rocks. The most challenging part of the trip was not having our rocking chair I’m used to for nursing and rocking her back to sleep. With the cast, she’s heavy and awkward and it’s difficult to nurse her sitting on a bed, which is what we had to do, even in the hotels. Part of me thought we were insane to attempt such a big trip but overall I’m glad we did it, as it wasn’t the spica that made things hard, it was just having two kids under 3!