My husband and I had an appointment this morning at our local fire department to have our car seat installed. This was something I was looking forward to for a few reasons. One being a sense of normalcy that comes with taking all of those fun first-time parent classes and courses, which I wasn't able to do because of the bedrest. I was allowed to do this since it required constant sitting in an air conditioned car. The second being that one of my friends is a CPST (Child Passenger Safety Technician) and so I've heard so much about proper car seat safety that I became quite interested and wanted to ensure we were taking all of the proper steps to keep Ethan safe (as well as learn new things for our own knowledge).
Due to the bedrest, it took a lot of scheduling to make sure we were able to make one of these events. Many local fire departments only had CPSTs working once a month and several only had them working Monday-Friday, which wasn't conducive to my husband's work schedule (and, of course, I'm unable to drive myself). To add to the chaos, just when we thought we had it figured out, my husband was driving my car and was hit on the highway. No one was injured and the damage is more or less solely cosmetic, but insurance doesn't work quickly with these matters. Having a rental car for over a week to fix the cosmetic damage and then having my car looked at to ensure there is no further damage (my right back wheel was hit) isn't very conducive to a taking-it-day-by-day-to-see-when-baby-has-to-come-out pregnancy. I drive the SUV between the two of us and, no pun intended, that put a huge dent in our plans. Eventually we decided to take my mom's SUV and deem it Ethan's Homecoming Chariot just to make sure we had a seat properly installed in a safe vehicle. One less thing to play ear-by-ear this pregnancy was music to my ears. As it turned out, one of our local fire stations was having CPST's install seats this Saturday. I was able to get one of the last two appointments.
Perfect, right?
WRONG.
It was quite a disappointment. Imagine my horror as I watched the technician admit she's never heard of our carseat (a brand new Chicco Keyfit, recommended to us by my CPST friend), insult our car seat (she didn't think it was good because the handle didn't go "click, click, click"), fumble over how to install it (and call over another technician to help her and then try to figure out what he did -- unsuccessfully) and eventually install it incorrectly. The technician was not familiar with how seats are installed in our car, an '01 Acura MDX so she "guessed it would be fine doing it this way" instead of looking into it, and she could not tell us how we'd go about installing the seats in our actual cars (an '07 Honda Accord and an '05 Mitsubishi Outlander). Aside from one or two obvious things (the seat should be rear-facing, it was not on the recall list), she told us that we'd have to forward-face at 20 pounds when our child outgrows the Keyfit. Even I knew this wasn't true. What was more upsetting was our seat came with a huge label on the front saying it seats up to 30 pounds.
As I sat there and watched the technician fumble to get the seat in and out of the base, I couldn't help but notice all of the cars packed in the fire station getting their seats inspected and installed. It was sad to me that people were making an attempt to learn things and do the right thing and were being shown incorrectly. We didn't learn anything about car safety. We didn't learn about the LATCH system or if our car had it in the middle seat ("I don't know, most cars after 2000 have it," was the response we got). The technician meant well but it seems like there shouldn't be that much wiggle room when it comes to the safety of children. "I don't know" or "just do it this way, it's easier" shouldn't be okay when you're dealing with, ultimately, life or death situations.
When I made the appointment, I had confirmed with the appointment scheduler that these technicians were, in fact, certified and up-to-date on all certifications. I was assured that they were. I was initially impressed by how many technicians they had coming and even more impressed to learn that the city gives free (donated) seats out to people in need when they do these installations. It seemed like they were really on top of things and eager to help. I wasn't at all expecting to find a confused technician who installed the seat incorrectly and seemed to, more or less, have no idea what she was doing. She seemed to have no idea that all seats and cars are not the same, which seems pretty common-sense to me!
In the end, this is how our seat was installed by the technician (she placed the mat beneath the seat and the seat itself should be sitting in the middle seat -- not pushed up against the passenger seat):
I do plan on sending a letter to the fire department with my concerns. Not to be overly angry and obnoxious, but out of sheer concern for others. Because I had done enough research beforehand, I knew that this was incorrect. If I didn't, it would never occur to me to second-guess a technician on installing my seat correctly when that's why I was bringing it in in the first place.
The point of this post is to share with you another post (a must-read post!) about car seat safety. It's a blog entry from my good friend, Rhian, who blogs at For Always, and did an interview with our friend, Emma, on proper car seat safety. You can read that post here.
Send the above post to anyone you know with a carseat or any mom-to-be who will be soon installing one. Make sure you're familiar with your car and your seat so you can stay informed. When it comes to the safety of your child, you can never be too cautious or well-informed!
