The value of a Community Part 1

So a friend of mine from high school, who is basically now just a Facebook friend, is pregnant. Not that this is something out of the ordinary, a lot of my friends (especially FB friends) have had or are having babies. But suddenly, I felt this need to share my knowledge with her. There are all these cool things I know now having a 10 month old that I did not know when she was "brand new" or when I was pregnant. And I realized that most of these things were things I learned from my Babycenter Birthboard. Despite having friends and family with small children and despite reading books about babies, I learned this information from a collection of strangers all over the country. I cannot share all this information in just one post (or FB message to that friend) so I'll start with one very important topic: carseat safety.

I have to give credit where credit is due; the person I learned the most about this topic goes by the screenname of Dela-Where. Not all of the informaton I learned came from her, but much of it did. She taught me the ins and outs of keeping my baby warm in the winter while keeping her safe in her carseat. She pointed out to all of us the importance of not putting our babies in a big puffy jacket or snowsuit and then putting them in the carseat. This is very unsafe because it puffs out and makes the straps looser so that baby is not a snug in her seat as she should be. In one extreme case, during a car accident, a baby was ejected from a carseat with the winter coat still buckled in.

Similarly, those BundleMes and similar carseat blankets are not safe either. These things are considered "aftermarket" and not manufactured to fit in specific carseats (and will validate your carseat warrantee if you're ever in an accident). Since they don't usually line up with the seatbelt slots, they re-route the seatbelt straps, making them longer and therefore looser on the baby. Once again, looser seatbelts equal less safety in an accident. How should you keep your baby warm in the winter then? Put them in a thin, fleece jacket or snow suit, warm up your car before putting the baby in it, and cover the baby with a blanket when going outside. There are also some products that can be purchased that keep baby warm while staying safe, such as a carseat poncho and infant seat covers that stretch over the top like a showercap.

Finally, I learned about extended rear facing (ERF) for children on my Babycenter Birthboard. The law in most states is that babies should be rear facing until 20lbs AND 1 year of age. So the general thinking goes that once the baby is a year old and weighs 20 lbs, the child should be in a front-facing carseat. While this is compliant with the law, it is not safest for your baby. Leaving your baby rear facing for as long as possible is safest for your baby, since in the case of a front end collision (more common that rear-end collisions) the baby's head will snap forward when front-facing which can sever the spinal cord causing paralysis or even death. For this reason, we will be rear-facing Mia until she is at least 2 years old, if not longer.