Car Seat Inspection and Safety Recommendations

Brandy: I went this morning to the police station on Hall Street to get my car seat inspected. Brian could not make this appointment, so he is going separately... hopefully in the next week. The ladies that did the inspection were very nice, Luckily, our Honda has center LATCH which made me very happy. We had the car seat base installed in the center LATCH position. I knew before I went that it was too loose, but I did not know how to make it tighter. It was as easy as pulling on a strap. She put her weight on the base, and pulled the strap so that it was in there nice and tight. It is not supposed to move more than an inch from side to side (up and down movement is okay). Then comes the discussion we had about "after market accessories". The bottom line is read your car seat manual to see if there are any of these accessories that were safety tested with the car seat. If not, don't use them. We had purchased extra squishy body/head support padding to replace the pads that came in the car seat. We were told these put too much space between the baby and the seat and could lead to serious injury. I am going to put the original pads back in and use the other support pads in the stroller or something. The officers told me that the only thing I could do to help support babies head in a safe manner was to roll up a receiving blanket and place one on each side of babies head. This can help a newborn head from flopping around. We also had car seat strap covers that we had added on because they were softer than the ones that came on the car seat. We were advised that these are okay later (when baby gets bigger), but they prevent the center clasp from going in the center of the baby's chest when they are itty bitty. Once they do not get in the way anymore, then we can use them. We also had one of those mirrors so you can see the baby from the front seat. We were told to take it down because if it came loose during an accident it could injure the baby. Since we have an SUV, we were also advised to get a cargo net to place over any objects in the very rear of the vehicle. These can become projectiles during an accident. The officers said they have seen babies injured or killed due to flying objects in the vehicle. So, I am taking everything they advised to heart. I just wish that I had known about this information PRIOR to getting a bunch of accessories that could kill my child. Why do they even sell these things if they can hurt my baby? And why are they brands called Safety 1st? This is just a tad bit misleading! Can you sense the sarcasm in my words? And why do stories (like Babies R Us) have these things on their "checklist" of things to register for? Oh wait, money! Forget about the safety of children when money is involved! There is nothing like suckering a first time parent into buying things that can injure or kill their baby!