Baby safety - the safest way to install a car seat: get a professional to do it for you!

When you are nine months pregnant and exhausted and trying to plow through your to-do list of things to take care of before your baby is born one of the most daunting tasks is installing a car seat. My recommendation would be to take the easiest and safest route: get a safety professional to install it for you.

Safe Kids coordinates nation-wide car-seat inspections. And by "inspection" they really mean "we will look at your pitiful attempt to install the car seat, point out 99 mistakes that you made, and then install it correctly for you."

Here is their link for locating a car seat inspection: Safe Kids Car-Seat Check-Up Locator

The San Diego Safe Kids program is run through Children's Hospital and you can call 858-576-1700 ext 5096 to set up a car seat inspection.

The staff were super friendly and helpful. The whole appointment only took 30 minutes. The staff understand that with the wide variety of cars and car seats on the market it is nearly impossible to figure out what the safest way to install a car seat is with only the little booklet the car seat manufacturer gives you and your car's manual.

Some helpful hints I learned from our car seat inspections:

1. the center seat is always the safest place for a car seat (in the event of a crash)
2. sometimes using the seat-belt to secure the car-seat is safer and more secure than using the LATCH system
3. if you have an SUV or station wagon with an open trunk then putting a cover over the trunk will prevent anything stored back there from potentially flying up in the air and hitting your child (really important for rear-facing babies/toddlers in the event of an accident)
4. Even though manufacturers give you height and weight guidelines for when you can turn a rear-facing convertible car-seat to front facing it is safest to keep the kid rear-facing for as long as they fit comfortably in that position (some background on this issue)
5. how to use receiving blankets to make sure a newborn fits snugly into the car seat

My understanding is that in most towns police stations or fire stations and sometimes hospitals also will inspect car seats. I think this is a great service. However, since the professionals at the Safe Kids site I went to explained that they are the ones who actually train the police/firefighters on how to do the installation I like the idea of getting my advice straight from the horse's mouth - so to speak.

Not just for infant car seats! When we switched from an infant car seat to a convertible car-seat we went back to the same inspection station and again really appreciated with how helpful they were in teaching us how to install and use the car seat.