Baby Car Seat Safety

[MUSIC PLAYING] [SINGING] Pretty mama, ain't your world today such a strange and amusing place? One day you buy them rocket ship underpants and then the next they're in outer space. Mama, don't you know that you're the only-- Care seats can be so confusing. I know. What kind do I get? What would fit in my cat? As a part of our series, "My Baby, Me, and My World," sponsored by Pampers-- --we were able to speak with Bob Wall, who literally wrote the book on car seat safety. So let's take a look. [SINGING] turning round. Mama, don't you know you keep the whole world turning round? Can you tell us, just give us a brief understanding of what purpose car seats serve? Well, car seats help us adapt children into our adult world. When you think about it, a car is made for an adult. And safety-wise it's made for an adult. We take our children, our most precious cargo, and we put them in an adult world, so we have to have something to make them safe. All right. So can you explain to us why a five-point harness would be important to put a small child in, versus having them in a booster with just the strap? Or a seat belt in a car? Or a seat belt in the car. When you think about a seat belt in a car, the way it's designed, if we put a child that's say four years old in a seat belt, that belt would probably cut across their chin. And the hips would go way underneath. And it would crunch into the belly. OK? So what would happen in a crash is, the belt, the lap belt portion would go into their belly and start crushing major things like spleens and all the organs that are in there. It'll also do some major to their neck and their face. So really, a seat belt with a five-point harness, what it does is number one it uses the adult seat belt to put it into the car or the latch system, the lower anchors that are in some of these vehicles like this one. And then you take the five-point harness, it goes over the shoulders. And it actually supports them at their strongest parts of the body. We do hip, hip, shoulder, shoulder, and then the crotch strap. It's kind of like a race car driver. So Bob, tell us what are the age and size changes? Like what car seats do you have for each age and weight? Well, there are four phases. And the way you start is rear-facing would be infant, newborn to about, general rule of thumb, a year old, about 20 pounds. Now some of the seats you will get are rear-facing to 35 pounds or 30 pounds. It's OK. Keep them rear-facing as long as possible. It is the safest thing to do. The American Academy of Pediatrics say sometimes even 18 months. At about a year, 20 pounds, you need to turn them around. And the way you do that is make sure the harnesses in that seat are correctly adjusted for forward-facing. You put the seat-- What's the difference between harnesses for rear and forward-facing? Well, rear-facing, the harnesses need to be at the shoulders or below. And forward-facing would be at the shoulders or above. Now, your instruction manual, which we really need to talk about-- they need to read the instruction manual-- will tell you where they need to be. Now some car seats, they can be in any position as long as they're at the shoulders or above. It all depends on the car seat. But you've got to make sure you make those adjustments, because if you don't, it makes the seat a little dangerous for the child. So you leave them in there as long as they fit. So then at about 40 pounds, you take them out of that seat and put them in a booster seat. And now you're using the adult seat belt. And the adult seat belt then is adjusted by using the booster. The booster picks them up and takes the harness away from their neck and brings it down onto their shoulders and brings the lap belt down below onto their hips, upper thighs. And then when they get to about 4'9" and they can sit in a seat correctly, you can them move them into a seat belt. How can you tell if your car seat is properly installed in your car? Many places around the country, either fire stations or police stations or health departments or even some hospitals check car seats to make sure people have them in right. But don't rely on that. Read the directions. Read the directions. I remember when we went home with our first child, we had to first of all show them the car seat. And they had to check that it was installed right before they would let me take my child home from the hospital. That's correct. A lot of hospitals will make sure you have a car seat. Many of them will not touch it, though, to make sure you have it in correctly. That's up to you whether you have it in correctly. But some will. And that's great. Well, I was grateful, because I was clueless. I mean, I had never done a car seat before ever. Well, new parents have found that this is the hardest thing to do. It is. They look at it and they say, really, it shouldn't be that hard. But it really is. There's a lot of different car seats, a lot of different vehicles. And there's a lot of different sized kids. Thank you so much for being here. For more about car seat safety, visit our website. mommycast.com. Once you have those kids safely strapped in, then it's time to figure out where to go. Pampers.com has a fantastic out and about guide. It'll tell you where to find the nearest playgrounds, stores, even restaurants with changing tables, every place that mom needs to know about. For more information for moms, check out our website. mommycast.com. [SINGING] Mama, don't you know you keep the whole turning round? Uh, Bob, do you think my car seats are installed properly? They are now.