car seat already in the car??

[koalove]

everyone keeps asking me where the car seat is, or if we have had it "installed" yet. am i missing something? im due in 4 weeks! cant we put the seat in after the babe is born, when we want to go somewhere?! and whats with the installing? dont we just strap it in, check the angle thing on the side, and off we go? if theres something i need to know in this department, someone please tell me!

[fawnanddoe]

We don't have ours installed yet, but we also won't be getting a car until after baby is born! We're going to be trading our truck for our friends car for a few days when I have the baby and they have a car seat already installed for us to use.

That being said, I have never installed a car seat but the statistics are that 80% of them are installed incorrectly. When we do get a car and install our seat i might go get in inspected just for my peace of mind so I know that it's done right, 80% is a lot, so there must be some little mistakes that people don't realize they are doing.

When it comes down to it I think you can wait. If anything you can install it when you are in labor!

[fawnanddoe]

That being said, if you are having a home birth then yes, you can install it after the baby is born!!

[Angelorum]

It's commonly recommended to have your carseat installed or checked by someone certified in car seat safety, some communities have days or times set aside for parents to come in to the fire dept or something to have it done. And for a hospital birth you have to have it ready before you take the baby home, which is probably why most people do it well before they're due. I'm 3 weeks behind you, and I haven't even picked out a carseat yet

[WeasleyMum]

Coming over from June DDC

Eh, go ahead and put it in. If nothing else, it's one less thing to do after the baby comes, and who doesn't need that? Don't let this happen to you...

I bought the carseat and bugged DH about installing it. Yes, yes, of course, I'll get to it later, he says. I go into labor a few days "early" (not really early but three days shy of my 'due date')-- no car seat. I point out to DH that he'll have to install it when he's at home taking care of our animals, before coming back to the hospital. He comes back to say that he "couldn't figure it out". The guy is an engineer*. This is the carseat that Consumer Reports rated tops for "ease of use and installation", meaning that every Joe that bought it, installed it no problem... except mine. DS ended up spending a few extra days in the hospital, DH eventually figured out the car seat (the hooded canopy thingie was hiding a crucial button), but of all the things to be worrying about when I'm in the hospital with an infant that apparently needs time in the Special Care nursery... seriously.

Just read the instructions, pop the seat in the back, and relax knowing that it's one more thing crossed off the list. And look under the canopy for the button that separates the seat from the base...

*i.e. instructions? Who needs those?

[springbride]

We havn't installed it yet. The carseat is sitting next to my hospital bag and we'll take both of them with us. It's not like DH is going to be swamped with things to do while I'm sitting in the Recovery room! And they have CHP to inspect it before you leave in Cali.

[ATruck]

If you are having a homebirth, that is an even better reason to install it beforehand. In the very unlikely event that baby has to be transferred to the hospital after birth, the last thing you want to do is be installing a carseat when you are trying to head to the hospital.

[haren.13]

We have ours in. We're planning a HB but like a PP said, if we need to transfer then the last thing I want to think about is getting the seat in (even though it only takes a few minutes). Also, it's nice to have it back there so DD gets used to having another seat with her. She puts her babies in it and we talk about how the babies need to be safe, too

[LilMomma83]

We would have, except that we have to switch car with DH's twin for a few weeks, so we will just install after we make the switch.

I think for a first baby it is a good idea to get a seat installed--and if you have a used seat, because the inspect the seats and with DS1 they were able to show us a few things we didn't know.

[rjruiz_415]

Originally Posted by koalove

everyone keeps asking me where the car seat is, or if we have had it "installed" yet. am i missing something? im due in 4 weeks! cant we put the seat in after the babe is born, when we want to go somewhere?! and whats with the installing? dont we just strap it in, check the angle thing on the side, and off we go? if theres something i need to know in this department, someone please tell me!

Yeah, we took ours to the hospital in the backseat and just installed it as we left. Both times it was one of those snap in ones, so it is pretty simple to just put the seatbelt through the base

[LaLaLaLa]

Crashing in from new posts..... when I was seven months pregnant and trying to install our first carseat, I had the opportunity to use language I hadn't used in YEARS. Serious, serious swearing was happening in my car. It was much harder for me to install the seat correctly than I thought it would be. If I'd tried to do that when I was already stressed out from just having a baby, I think it would have gone even more poorly. I'd advise installing it early, if possible, or having someone else install it for you.

[lindsayjean]

I want to install mine within the next couple of weeks- mostly because my 2 y.o. whose car seat is in the middle is going to be moved to the side and then the baby carseat on the other side so I want her to get used to both not being in the middle and having another seat in there. Maybe I'll put one of her dolls in there to save the seat for baby brother or something. I think it will be better than a quick switch.

With my 1st I don't think I installed it until like almost my due date.

[rjruiz_415]

Oh, but i did get really scared cause the first night after DS was born, a security guard came up and told us our car had been broken into! And all I was worried about was that they might have taken our carseat!

[eli's mama]

ours is not installed yet. installing it means giving up the last square inch of space in the backseat. It is all ready to go though, so all we have to do is strap in the base and we're set, it's one we've used before so we are old pros with it.

[MOMYS]

We don't even have space for the baby, yet! :-) :-) We drive an 8 seater van, but it has 11 seater capacity.... but the back bench was removed by the previous owner.

We finally sourced another bench, but the rails have to be moved and only then it can be installed. Tomorrow morning dh is dropping it off at a place that does modifications. Hopefully we will have it back by tomorrow evening or Tuesday. Then I have to figure out who is going to sit where and then we will install the seat!

[mamaveggie]

I feel like we just moved dd2 out of the seat and into her new one. We are having a homebirth too and if it looks like we have to transfer, we have the seat cleaned and ready to be installed.

[SequoiasMom]

I have been bugging DP to put the carseat in, and he has the same attitude "we can just do it later".....I am thinking, no I do not want to deal with it after the baby.
We compromised by letting me just put the base in the back of his car, so at least it's in the car, just not installed.

[koalove]

yay! im not the only one who hasnt done it yet! maybe the only one who didnt know i was supposed to be thinking about it though. so, if 80% of seats are in wrong, what are folks doing wrong? i mean, ive put a car seat in bunches of times and it seems like as long as the angle is correct (thank goodness for the handy ball thing on the side) what could be wrong? and if you have the poice department or whatever do it for you, they put the base in, right? then you just never remove it and it stays correctly positioned? sorry if im being dense...i just never knew this was so complicated!

[mags]

I'm having a hospital birth, so my DH will have to re-arrange the carseats after the baby comes anyway. The older two will be in the third row of our minivan, and the baby will be in the 2nd row. Right now the older two are in the 2nd row. I'll let my DH deal with it when the time comes. I have a snugride 32 for the new baby, and they are pretty easy to install, so I'm not that worried.

[learnlovebe]

Originally Posted by koalove

yay! im not the only one who hasnt done it yet! maybe the only one who didnt know i was supposed to be thinking about it though. so, if 80% of seats are in wrong, what are folks doing wrong? i mean, ive put a car seat in bunches of times and it seems like as long as the angle is correct (thank goodness for the handy ball thing on the side) what could be wrong? and if you have the poice department or whatever do it for you, they put the base in, right? then you just never remove it and it stays correctly positioned? sorry if im being dense...i just never knew this was so complicated!

I don't think you're being dense at all! I've had the same thought!

Okay, so we had one of those "specialists" come and talk to our infant class back when ds was around 5 months old. She is very...um...militant about her job.
Here are some of the things that she said can cause you to get a failing grade (some of them totally don't make sense to me- they're really not about the actual INSTALLATION!):
If you have any sort of item in your back window (some people put a box kleenex, ice scrapers, stuffed animals, maps, etc).
If you have any sort of cushion/blanket/etc that didn't come with your car seat in the car seat (ie anything that goes between the baby and the car seat that didn't actually come with the car seat). She gave examples of those blanket covers.
Any sort of toy attached to the car seat or in the car seat.
putting the car seat in the back jump seat of a pickup truck (the side facing kind).
Not having it in the back seat.

If you've never installed a car seat before, you might want to practice putting it in before the baby gets here. Some cars and car seats are very easy to work with, others are not. Ours was easy, so it wasn't a big deal. We practiced (me being put on bedrest kind of sped up that process last time). We took it out. We took it with us to our last 2 dr appts (our dr was 1 hour and 15 minutes away then), along w/ our bags for the hospital.

This time, I'm not as worried. I've at least located it and dusted it off!