A mom on Reddit brings up a common scenario many parents face on the road. Experts weigh in on why removing a baby from a car seat is never a good option.
Parents, raise your hand if you’ve been in this tricky situation: Stuck in traffic, while your baby wails from their car seat, likely due to hunger. Your anxiety is growing with each passing minute. And whether the flow of cars and trucks around you is stop-and-go, or everyone has come to a complete stop, baby’s not happy, which means it’s getting harder for you not to cry, too. Mini Travel Cot
One time, I found myself “trapped” in our car, with my husband behind the wheel, after a bad accident created a highway parking lot. Our infant son had been fussing from the back seat for a good while—and singing “Baby Shark” was no longer working to soothe him. Finally, I ended up unbuckling myself and dangling my chest over his car seat for him to breastfeed, but this didn’t feel very safe, since you never know when traffic is going to start moving.
A mom on Reddit also found herself stuck in traffic, with icy conditions and poor visibility to boot. Her husband was driving, while their 4-month-old expressed her extreme dissatisfaction with their predicament. In a recent post on the popular AITA subreddit, the mom admitted that her husband can be a distracted driver, and she didn’t feel comfortable taking her fussy baby out the car seat to feed her, even as her husband grew more agitated, and insisted that she do so.
“We were only going a few miles per hour in stop-and-go traffic, [but] on an icy road, surrounded by semi-trucks,” she described, adding that despite pressure from her hubby, she made the decision that hearing the baby cry was better than risking her safety—and experts agree.
Ari Brown, MD, an Austin, Texas-based pediatrician and founder of the Baby 411 book series, poignantly tells Parents, “Your child is hungry and upset, but this is much more manageable than having a car accident with an unrestrained passenger.”
It's critical is to keep your child in their car seat at all times while driving, says Lina Chico, CPST-I, Injury Prevention Coordinator, Clinical Specialist II, and Trauma Administration at Orlando Health–Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children. “When car seats are used properly, the risk of hospitalization, injury, and death for children is significantly reduced," she says. "Once the child is removed from their car seat, they are at an increased risk of injury."
Crashes can happen in a split second, Chico explains, and there's often not much you can do about the impact. “When another vehicle hits your vehicle while you are stopped, all the passengers in the vehicle will endure the crash forces," she says. "You will fly forward suddenly along with the vehicle and you will not stop until something stops you.”
This is where seatbelts, car seats, and boosters can make a huge difference. "They help reduce and redirect the crash forces to the strongest parts of the body which can reduce injury," adds Chico.
So, what are you options if you really need to comfort your baby in a car? Pulling over to attend to a child’s needs is always the safest option, says Courtney Barry, Child Passenger Safety Technician for Chicco. “Crashes are not planned and even the most minor of crashes can be harmful to those in the vehicle who are not secured in a proper car seat or seat belt,” Barry adds.
That's the case even when there's a lot of traffic. “Even in stop-and-go traffic where the driver may seemingly have full control of their vehicle and the passenger feels like it is a good opportunity to feed, tend to, or comfort a child, a situation that requires anyone to unbuckle is risky," says Barry.
The good news is that even though it may sound like your baby is beside themselves during those stressful moments (or longer) in a traffic jam, according to Dr. Brown, a child can likely go without a feeding until it’s safe.
“If you have a newborn, they probably should not go more than four hours without eating if at all possible,” she says. “Babies from 3 months of age and up can probably go four to six hours without eating if there is an emergency situation that arises that does not allow them access to breast milk or formula.”
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