The car seat was the most stressful item to buy. It was our biggest expense since we weren’t getting a pram and it’s a huge matter of safety; I didn’t want to make the wrong decision. After an interesting experience with car seats at The Baby Show (see previous post) we kept putting off buying a car seat until it was absolutely necessary. I originally wanted one of the big stages car seats that fits a newborn to a four year old. As the lady at The Baby Show pointed out, you can’t take them out of the car and carry them around. I never wanted to carry Tulip around in a car seat. In my eyes, car seats are for the car (as the name suggests). Before Tulip was born I could never understand why people would carry their babies from the car in the car seat, especially when they were just going to take the baby out of the car seat when they got inside. Unlike dummies, this is something I haven’t really changed my mind about since having Tulip. The car seat is heavy and pulls all the weight of baby plus car seat down on one side of your body. For the most part, I just find it more awkward to carry a baby around in a car seat. I have however relaxed a little about my “never take the car seat out of the car rule”. I knew I would have to relax a little about it which is why we ended up getting the normal newborn carrier car seat that almost everyone has. I realised that if I were going to something like a doctor or dentist appointment and had to take Tulip with me, I’d have to carry her in in the car seat or I’d have no where to put her down. Even so, this made me anxious. I have carried Tulip in to a doctor’s appointment in the car seat. I have also carried her into the house on about four occasions. It was when I had a lot of things to carry in from the car so rather than try to balance holding her and all my bags, I carried her in from the car in the car seat so I could put her down to do things such as unlock the door. So yes I can understand how it’s sometimes easier to carry your baby in in a car seat but I do try to avoid it.
When we left the hospital the day after Tulip was born I didn’t bring the car seat in to the hospital. I carried her out to the car in a sling so she was all snuggled up to me. This did result in a fairly hilarious episode of my husband having to take the car seat out of the car and put in on the ground to investigate how it worked as we couldn’t quite figure out how to get Tulip in it! Luckily she was born on a beautiful sunny bank holiday weekend so it was actually quite a calm experience since we weren’t rushing to get in from the rain! I’ve never really talked to other mums much about car seats so maybe someone out there can shed some light on what I don’t understand! Please feel free to leave your own comments with your views.
My next few posts will be about breastfeeding as I’m taking part in a blogging circle for World Breastfeeding Week! There will be a scavenger hunt with prizes! See the Keep Britain Breastfeeding page and Positive About Breastfeeding for more details. It all kicks off on the 1st of August!
Mum Without Wheels 