Car Seats

Safety Tips on Using a Car Seat

Join Lactation Specialist Wendy Haldeman, MBA, CPST, and founder of CleanBeeBaby Jennifer Beall, along with Officer Suzie Kim as they impart vehicle safety tips for your baby. Oftentimes parents layer their child with too much clothing, which can work against baby seat safety straps. Learn about how to appropriately strap a baby in, and how you can have your car seat properly installed.

Transcript:

- The shoulder straps need to be at the height of a baby's shoulder or lower. Another error we see is that parents put too many layers of clothing onto their baby. You want the baby in a very thin piece of clothing because the more layers you place between your baby and the strap, the more padding you have, the more you're lifting your baby away from the strap system. The whole purpose of the straps is that in the case of a crash your baby and the car seat move as one so that you minimize injury to the baby's spinal column. In putting the baby into the seat, another thing we'll see parents do is this strap is meant to go over the baby's ... Read more

thigh. But we see some parents lift the baby's leg and bring the leg underneath the strap. That is not gonna help hold your baby. The straps at the top come over your baby's shoulder. Then these strap covers want to come all the way up over the baby's shoulder. Come across their thigh. Just snap in at her hips. Attach your chest piece. Then the first thing you want to do is start tightening your strap system is you want to start at the waist and you want to snug it down as snug as you can. Then you want to bring your chest piece all the way down and then take your strap and start tightening. You want to keep tightening until your straps are to the point where you cannot make a pinch in the straps. Then pull your chest piece all the way up so that it is at your baby's armpit. Once your baby is securely into the seat, if it's cold out, you can then take a blanket and just tuck it around their little bodies.

- 85 to 90% of car seats are improperly installed. I often say even the Stanford dads get it wrong. It is really hard to get your car seat installed in your car correctly. You need to read the car seat vehicle manual and the car seat manual and make sure that you find the correct position for your car seat.

- Parents often want to know where is the safest place to put my child in the car. The center seat is always the safest seat in the car because it's gonna be the furthest point away from any point of contact in case of an accident. But if we can't sit the seat in the center, then we want to go for one of the outboard seats. The first one we're going to look for is the passenger outboard seat. Not because that side of the vehicle is safer than the other, but because when you're taking the child in or out of the car you never have your back to traffic. You're usually against the curb side of the street. So you don't have to worry about oncoming traffic. Parents also wonder about using the third row seats in their minivans or crossovers, SUVs. The third row seat is fine as long as you look in your vehicle manual and the manufacturer states that it's okay to use those seats for your car seat. But it's important to check the vehicle manual as well. If you're wondering where you can get your car seat checked to see if it's properly installed you can call your local police department or your public safety facility, some fire departments offer the service and also highway patrols. NHTSA website, that's NHTSA.gov and under their child safety seat section they have a place where you can actually look for technicians in your area who can safely install your car seat and show you how it's done. If you are having someone install your car seat, you should make sure that they are nationally certified before they install your seat.