Child safety seat

Hi.

Nyle is a certified nurse midwife, and she teaches lots of courses across postpartum and birth prep, and today we're gonna hone in on a topic that is near and dear to our hearts, which is car seat safety.

It's a really specific topic, but it's important because it's one of the first real safety decisions parents have to make after they have their newborn.

And so we'll talk about the practicalities around what seat, why, precautions, setting it up, everything you kinda need to know.

She was like, "Jeanne's leaving town.

She's moving, and do you want to interview for the position?" And I was like, "Yes, I do." And so then I got in the door at Natural Resources as the new facilitator alongside my colleague, Team And we facilitate the new mother circle.

So then once I was in there, I was like, "I wanna teach all your classes." [chuckles] And so they're like, "Great." And so now I teach newborn care and parenting, breast/chest feeding, childbirth preparation, both the intensive and the five-week series, and at some point I said, "Look, I really care about car seats.

Why don't we teach like a car seat safety class?" And the manager at the time was like, "Great.

If you can do a Google search and find out what local super, not supermarkets, but like I don't know, home goods stores or I don't know what you call them, you know, your Kmart's.

Anyway, check those because you can pick up some cheap car seats there for maybe like 50 bucks.

And if that's going to be cheaper than hiring it for, you know, however long you're there, it might be worth it.

And then you can maybe sell it on or whatever in a Facebook group.

And I was stoked because I was like, well, I've just had a seat for all this time and it's only cost me $30.

Yeah.

Yeah, when we went back to Australia, we did it because, I mean, mum's always had car seats in her car.

So, when we stay with mum, we usually end up taking one of her cars and that's fine.

It's an incredible transformation in a short period of time.

Now, once you have your child seat, there's the big question of where to put it.

The backseat is a no-brainer, but is there a preference for which side? According to Laura, not

really.

There isn't a preference, just that kids are safest if they're in the backseat and they're buckled up.

I would say, though, that if parents park on the street a lot, some parents that do that prefer to put their car seat on the passenger side in the backseat so they're not, like, in the street.

That makes a lot of sense, especially in busy city streets.

And Laura stressed that the backseat is the safest place for all kids under the age of 13.

So they, they have to come out of that when they meet one of the maximum limits.

So that's either the maximum height, the maximum weight, or they don't have that one inch of space between the top of their head and the top of the car seat.

Nearly all, not all, but nearly all infant seats have that rule.

Um, So they must come out of it when one of those limits are met, just one, not all.

And you can take them out whenever you want.

Yeah, and just keep that on the baby's pram and in the car seat and all those other things.

And so the other thing to be really aware of at three to five months is everything Capsule time.

How much time are babies spending in a capsule? By three months of age, they should have unravelled and not be curled and capsules put them into a curled posture.

So that's really important that we minimise how much time they're in there.