Miss Mom: Those Dratted But Necessary Car Seats

When I was little, my parents had an old Ford Falcon station wagon. I remember it being brown and big. We would often lie on little pallets in the back on road trips where we could either play or nap. I think that there were seat belts in the front of the car, but I seriously doubt that they were ever used.

In fact the first time I ever willingly strapped a seat belt around myself was right after my first child was born. The Mandatory Car Seat law had just been passed, so I was required to put my little baby boy into a car seat. I had to place my wriggling infant son into his new harness, which was in the back seat of my compact Honda Civic. Early car seats were engineering marvels, and looked like something you’d find on the NASCAR Circuit. You needed a slide rule to figure the things out. Good thing my dad was a mechanical engineer. Seeing how I had to go through so much trouble to keep my precious one safe, I decided that maybe keeping myself safer was a also good idea.

Once I mastered getting the baby strapped in, I still had one main problem: When we arrived at our destination, the kid would be passed out in his seat for a good solid nap. The maneuvering of getting him untangled from all his straps would be sure to wake him up. As my oldest was a master of waiting until you were parking the car to fall asleep. He would be cranky, but just recharged enough that sleep wasn’t going to happen again for a while.

Car seats improved a little once my other two children needed them, but not by much. One invention that I wish I had thought of was the “bucket” style car seat/carriers, that you could take in and out of a car leaving your precious little one inside, snoozing comfortably away. Naturally those were invented just in time for my children to no longer need such child restraints.

I understand completely the need for car seats. They’ve made stricter requirements for safety standards, and have lengthened the time a small child needs to be strapped in for the ride. They greatly improve the safety of the child, and can help reduce accidents. Yes, accidents. Accidents that could be caused by an untethered little one climbing from the back seat to the front and trying to shove french fries into the CD player.

I just wish they were a little more comfortable for the kids when they are trying to sleep in. With the exception of those bucket-style car seats, I have yet to see a child be able to recline comfortably and nap with out their head falling into a drooping position. If you don’t have the straps adjusted just right, it can make for a too snug or too loose a fit as well. Maybe someone will invent a car seat is essentially a cocoon of air and soft yet very strong materials. Of course it will be invented just in time for my great-grandchildren to enter college.

Since the arrival of my first grandchild, I am once again dealing with all things car seats. We got one of those bucket-style car seat/carriers for our little granddaughter, and it had an added bonus: You could snap it right onto a stroller. Isn’t technology amazing?

Yes, I’m kicking myself for not thinking of that invention either. As great as those little carriers are, when you put in a baby, I swear the weight you are having to lug around quadruples. I don’t know how that happens. A small infant under 3 months old weighs maybe 12 pounds, the car seat, maybe 8 pounds. But when you combine the two, the weight feels like 75 pounds, that gains in poundage for each 20 feet you have to walk while trying to carry it by its handle. Naturally, when my granddaughter enters kindergarten, they’ll invent a hovercraft version of that seat.

She has since graduated to the combination-style car seat that she’ll use till she’s past toddler stage. I remember the first time I tried to put that thing into my car. I strongly considered calling my dad, as I couldn’t figure out what all the hanging straps were, much less where you strung the seat belt through to secure the seat in. Then I remembered the prolific cursing that ensued when Dad was figuring out that first car seat long ago, and decided against it. Besides my own frustrated comments on my progress on attaching the car seat to the back seat of the car were hardly G-rated.

My granddaughter is growing at a rate almost faster then we can buy clothes to fit her. Because of her constant change in size, we have discovered a new problem with the car seat. Adjusting the straps that secure her in. I sometimes wonder if those straps have secret meetings before we go to put the baby into the car seat. Those pesky straps make certain important decisions destined to make parents or grandparents crazy. The right strap determines it is going to be a quarter-inch too short, the left half-inch too long. The next time they will reverse lengths. And, just to keep us guessing, once a week the dimensions will be perfect.

Do you think that someone will invent a solution to that problem once that car seat is no longer needed? I’m counting on it.

Sylvie Galloway is a Spartanburg-based writer and blogger. You can read more of her work at Sylvie is a blogger.