I called Safe Kids a couple weeks ago to set up a car seat inspection. My appointment was Friday. In their attempt to provide a truly safe way to transport a baby in a car, manufacturers have made it completely impossible to put in a car seat without a dual masters degree in child safety and engineering, so our local police/hospital set up free safety checks at various official locations every month. E had actually installed the car seat a few days ago but apparently did it ENTIRELY WRONG. The look of horror on the Safe Kids volunteer’s face when they looked at it would have been more appropriate if I’d said “We were just gonna strap the kid to the roof rack with this here rope”.

The whole thing should have been easy – my car seat has a LATCH system and my Jeep is LATCH equipped. Don’t ask me what that means, I have no idea. But because the middle rear seat doesn’t have LATCH the volunteer spent 20 minutes on the phone with my car seat company just to make sure it was compatible. After she got the ok, it took two seconds to run the lap belt through the appropriate holes and then ten minutes of yanking and pushing to get it as tight as possible. I should have volunteered to do it myself – it might have been just what I needed to get labor started. It ended up being a lot less complicated than my War & Peace sized owner’s manual tried to make it sound. I’m pretty sure my regular old BA in Communications would have been enough education, but why argue when someone else wants to do the work for you?

As much as I mock, I have to say it is really reassuring to have someone tell me exactly how it should be done. Now I know the car seat is safe and I don’t have to worry about the whole thing flying through the windshield on the long, scary less than one mile drive home from the hospital. I’ve put up with way too much in the last 9 months to have something as stupid as a car seat ruin this for me.