If you can't tell by her facial expression, this is serious stuff, people. Warning, this is not an uplifting post and it's extremely sad but it's important to spread the word and educate people to what can happen if we're not careful with our babes in their car seat. To anyone that has or will ever watch a baby that is still in a car seat - this is important.
A friend of my mom (and a friend of mine) works for an organization called 'Safe Kids Worldwide' - she's no joke. She knows car seat safety better than I know celebrity gossip - and that's saying a lot. In fact, interesting note - she was on the television in the hospital talking about car seat safety while I was giving birth to Grayson. That information was not needed..but I digress. Here's the deal - she is contacted by parents all the time that have had their baby die due to a car seat incident as these parents want to have their stories heard and get the information out there so others can learn from what went wrong. She recently came across a death of a 10 month old baby girl that was TOTALLY PREVENTABLE and I'm using this blog as a vessel to inform my fellow parent friends of what happened so that this doesn't happen again.
Here's the story straight from the mouth of my friend -
A very caring, older mother (she was nearly 40) used a (well researched) babysitter to watch her beloved 10 month old baby girl. She was only leaving the baby with her for about 2 hours and dropped her off in her car seat. The mom never thought to tell the babysitter not to leave her baby in the car seat the whole time and to never leave her alone. Long story short, the babysitter unbuckled the crotch buckle but left the chest clip attached at the baby’s chest. When the baby got fussy, the sitter put the baby in a bedroom and shut the door. She soon quieted. When the sitter went to get her about a half hour later, the baby was deceased in the seat. She had “submarined” down in the seat because the crotch buckle had been left open and the baby got “hung” on the chest clip. She could not pull herself up and reposition. So here is the message: know who is watching your baby at all times (daycare, church nursery, babysitter) and be sure they know how you want your baby’s safety to be handled. Car seats are for the car. They are not babysitters. Children in car seats and swings need to be attended by adults.
For more information about this and other safety tips for kids birth through age 14 go to www.safekids.org.
GOT IT???? GOOOOD. OH and one more thing - if you have a blog or other social media outlet that you could post this story on to spread the word to your community, please do so - the more awareness out there..the safer these sweet babes are!!!
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