What No One Tells You About Car Seats

Hey there moms-to-be!

It’s about to get real, really real. You’re going to have to give birth, and that’s an experience in and of itself. And then you’ll go home with a tiny human you’ve got to figure out how to keep alive for the next approximately two decades, and while you’re surviving that, you’ll have to learn to overcome a host of other challenges that somehow come out of the fact that you’ve got this human to be responsible for. We’ve decided to write a series of our favorite things that we wish people had told us before so we’d be more prepared for parenting.

Today’s lesson: car seats! 

Carrying the baby seat
I learned that carrying those awkward infant seats is one of the biggest causes of moms getting rotator cuff injuries! Here’s the safer and easier way to carry the seats around to avoid damaging yourself while you’re carrying around your tiny human.

You’re going to want a mat
If choosing a car seat wasn’t enough, just know that at some point you’re going to need to check and see if your seat’s manufacturer makes a seat protector mat or something similar, because your tiny little angel is going to get big and will stomp their feet all over your car’s back seat and will get snacks lost in the crevices that you won’t see for months. One day you’ll clean your car, you’ll take out that seat mat and you’ll find something surprising and disgusting. When you do find those little gems, just roll your eyes, put another quarter into the car wash industrial vacuum, and know that you’re not alone. We’ve all been there.

Be careful cleaning your seat
Your darling is also going to spill or melt something on their seat eventually. Trust me, it’ll happen someday. On that day, resist the urge to get the seat wet. Instead, check with your seat’s manufacturer about what’s allowed to clean it. Often you’re not allowed to use certain soaps (and sometimes even baby wipes) on the straps, because of the way they make the seats flame retardant. Take a moment to check before you attack that nasty mess, or it could become way more expensive than you expected.

Houdini happens

Speaking of car seats, at some point your kid may get a little wise on your and try to esape like some sort of houdini. Take a page from the car seat lady and get yourself a button up shirt and button it around the straps. It’s a little tricky, but hopefully your kid will tire of trying to escape soon once they realize their plan has been foiled yet again. Your kid is smart, but you’ve got the benefit of age, google, and thousands of other moms who’ve been there.

Jenny Ditch lives in Illinois with her family and is so thankful for the internet’s village of moms who make life more achievable.