My 6 m/o DD is a car screamer.

Has been since day one, out of the bucket at 2 months, every.single.car.ride is HELL.

I'm posting with a smirk on my face, but some real seriousness. If we let a baby cry this much in any other situation, wouldn't it be like abuse or abandonment? In two weeks we leave for a 20-hour one way trip for three weeks and for months have been saying "she'll grow out of it", well she hasn't....at all. You set her in car seat and you can't even get the straps over her shoulders and she's freaking. By that point she is screaming so much she will not accept soother or any distractions. Again, I moved her from the bucket at 2 months into RF Graco, we have now put her into RF Diono.

We joke gravol.....we have joked one of us flies with her (we have a 3 y/o DS and 4 y/o DD1, plus our dog).....

I love my husband, but he is now home for the summer and with us on our every day. I have become numb to the car screaming, from our outings we had to do (DD school, grandparent visits, groceries, etc) but he is not. He cannot focus and is a rageful awful person and the screaming just eats him alive. It is realistically intolerable, but just.....I'm numb. I refuse to let anyone drive with ear plugs or ear phones, it's not safe.

This vacation is optional, we are going to put her through something that is obviously painful/awful/the worst for my DD and I don't even know what to do. Like.....if you said you were going to force your kid to cry and said it to someone you'd be judged. We know she's going to cry, we know it's going to be terrible, but we "have" to go.

I don't even know why I am posting, just venting, she is the happiest most pleasant baby in the world every other moment of her life, eats well, sleeps great, poops normal, social, happy, smiley girl. We LOVE this trip and love doing the drive, but there is definitely a huge amount of fear about the drive when thinking about DD.

Also, I have rearranged our van every way possible to try to help her, kids in sight, parent in sight, parent beside, kids beside, it's been done. FWIW, the only other time she has "straps" go over her is the stroller (BOB single, FF) and she would stay in there all day long so long as we're moving.

Gah.