Baby car seats are serious safety products that are important to any parent with any combination of vehicle and child! Although car seats are mandated in each of the United States and are respected by responsible parents, it took over sixty years for them to be introduced after automobiles have been mass produced and marketed in the early 1900’s. A Denver, Colorado inventor named Leonard Rivkin introduced them in 1962 in response to child mortality rates of 2,000 annually in addition to 320,000 child injuries in the united states resulting from unrestrained or poorly restrained child passengers.
Today, baby safety seats are not only a requirement but an essential part of parenting for anyone with a child and an automobile. As children grow from infants to toddlers, they will start off with an infant car seat, graduate to forward facing convertible seats and ultimately to booster seats for their appropriate age and weight.
We received the Graco SnugRide infant car seat as part of the Graco Spree Travel System as a gift from mom-in-law as we expected the birth of our first son. I remember how I thought I had everything prepared and properly installed, until the day we took our boy home from the hospital and the nurses reprimanded me for incorrectly installing the baby car seat. I broke a sweat fixing the problem before being given the “okay.”
The Graco Ultra CarGo Car Seat came just as our boy weighed in at 20 pounds. He was less than a year old and loved to face forward in his new seat as we drove long and scenic roads hunting for what would eventually become our new country home.
The Safety 1st Vantage High Back Booster came just while he was getting a bit tight in his Graco car seat and while his younger sister was in need of the Graco. It also came in during the time we bought our first (and current) used mini-van that would solidify our identity as the American family, with a wild mixture of atomic elements in a country setting.
We never take car seats for granted, even though they are synonymous with driving. With the exception of my very first super fun 1984 928s Porsche, every vehicle we owned has housed a baby car seat. As we speak, the mini-van has the girl’s Graco, and our commuter Subaru has the Safety 1st Car Seat for dropping off the boy at pre-school.
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