I finally made it out to Ikea in Renton to have our baby car seat inspected. In line ahead of me was a responsible pregnant woman making sure her car seat was properly installed before her precious cargo arrived. Ahead of her was another irresponsible couple like myself who hadn't gotten around to this important job in a timely fashion since their rear facing pint size passenger was in the dad's arms. In my defense (to make myself feel better and look less flakey) my baby did come nearly 3 weeks early (never mind he's 3 1/2 months old now and I've had 3 1/2 months to get around to this task).
After sitting in my car for about 15 minutes it was my turn for a pat on the back. OK, so I was expecting to be one of the 10% of the genius population who can install a car seat properly. Actually, I was piggybacking on the brains of my engineer husband who is very mechanically inclined. I knew that by myself I would be part of the 90% of the population who have to chant "righty tighty, lefty loosey" when turning a screw driver.
Not only did we:
1) fail to install our car seat in best location (middle seat - which we knew, we just couldn't figure out how to make the seat base secure enough),
2) we attached it incorrectly and
3) had the harness too low on the baby which would have helped facilitate serious damage to his delicate internal organs in the event of a car accident.
Needless to say I was humbled to learn that our efforts to keep our son safe were very flawed and I am very grateful to the people who volunteer to help keep our innocent children safe while they share the roads with distracted drivers.
If you have a baby in a car seat or a toddler or young child in a booster seat you can call the Washington State Safety Restraint Coalition at 1-800-BUCKL-UP or visit their website 800bucklup.org for information on car seat checks like the one I attended today at Ikea.
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1 comment:
Well, I think it's too harsh to call it being irresponsible. Perhaps you were just too busy with things so you forgot to have the baby's car seat checked. :) But you gotta give props to the pregnant woman who had hers inspected early! And even if you're confident that you installed it yourself correctly, you still have to get it verified by experts. That would surely take away your worries about your kid's safety.
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