Car Seats Are Evil

Car seats are a necessary evil, but make no mistake, they are evil. Ask any mother.

First of all, why are infant car seats so stinking heavy?! It’s like a Mexican drug cartel is smuggling hundreds of bricks of cocaine. In my infant car seat. The baby? 12 pounds. The baby’s car seat? Denser than a black hole. When I can’t park next to the shopping cart corral at the store and I have to lug that thing out, I look like a cast member from The Walking Dead. Most likely because I’ve dislocated my shoulder.

I can’t wait for the baby to sit up. Then I don’t have to take her car seat in and out, but just as nature intended, we mothers are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. This is, of course, because as soon as the baby outgrows the behemoth seat of their infancy, we must then UNBUCKLE AND BUCKLE them for EVERY STORE! Which is why every mom loves Target. Who wouldn’t want to get a nursing bra, carpet cleaner, and ben gay (for your dislocated shoulder) all in one place?

Then they outgrow the seat altogether and need to get a new seat. One that doesn’t unhook from the base. Which is fine except it then becomes a petri dish of discarded snack foods you threw at your toddler to keep them quiet in their five point restraint. And milk. Just milk. (Who lets their kid have milk in the car? Me. Guilty. My car smells so. bad.)

Just when the sweet relief of fall comes to alleviate the lava hot buckle scenario we’re hit with winter. Children in car seats aren’t allowed to wear puffy jackets (safety first) so we either have to install them in the car with no coats and continue to take them on and off or buy an expensive name brand wind proof fleece jacket that no one’s grandma is going to think is warm enough. (I’m not a monster Grandma. It’s not 1960! I can’t just toss the baby in the back and floor it. )

With winter comes the flu and little sweetums will inevitably upchuck in their car seat. Probably because milk, winter mucus, and a bumpy car ride go together like hipsters and Taylor Swift. Good luck untangling the labyrinthian straps and buckles. It’s going to take a long time, and it’s going to smell really pukey in your car.

We won’t even get into the unearthly pressure to select the correct seat and further more to install it. “I’ll just wing it.” Nope, you should probably read the manual. Hashtag life or death. And to anyone suggesting that we move the car seat from one car to another? No thanks. I would rather walk barefoot uphill two ways while carrying the baby in a papoose.

So yeah. Car seats are evil.

Related post: The Hell That is Running Errands With Kids