Your Car Seat Can Kill Your Baby

A car seat can kill my baby? I remember when I had my daughter three-year-ago and all she would sleep in 75% of the time was a car seat or rocker. Who wants to wake a sleeping baby up? I needed sleep myself and having those extra moments of relaxation or shut-eye was everything I need to be rejuvenated. I had already planned on using the rocker to put my son in and if he fell asleep in the car seat I was going to leave him there as well. That’s until I read an article on Independent Journal about a couple, Ali and Derek Dodd who unfortunately learned the lesson in the worst way imaginable.

Their son Shepard was only eleven weeks old when a daycare worker swaddled him and put him down to sleep in an unbuckled car seat in an empty room. Two hours later, the daycare worker saw that Shepard was blue and unresponsive and called 911. Shepard unfortunately died. What adds even more pain and anger is that the same daycare worker was notified of the dangers of keeping a child asleep in the car seat only 11 days earlier before Shepard’s death. Now this isn’t to mean that car seats overall or dangerous and to not use one, but when you clip your child into the car seat’s car base it’s positioned differently to give your child the proper positioning and safety. So when you take the car seat out and then have it sit on the floor it’s not positioned differently then intended. It’s called positional asphyxiation, it occurs with newborns and babies who get into a sleeping position that closes off the airway (like the slouch that often occurs in a car seat or rocker).

The reason they suffocate infants don’t have the muscle strength to lift their heads up or position themselves correctly. Now I’m saying the same thing as you, the crap they come up with! For years parents have had their children sleep in a car seat with no issues now all of a sudden anything can become a death trap. I say if you have a crib to put the baby down then do so, but if not and the car seat is the only option you have to put the baby down make sure they are not left alone, keep eyes on them and they are visible to your eyes at all times.

Their mission now is to raise awareness to other parents and are now lobbying the state legislature to introduce safe sleep standards for babies. I agree! The more we raise awareness on these kinds of issues the lower percentage of deaths we’ll have in newborn babies.