Forward facing car seat?

Question

i heard that your not supposed to face a child forward in a car seat until they reach 1 years old...

but i have a car seat that goes up to 40 lbs. i think? and when i have it facing backwards my son's legs are all squished up and it can't lean back or move back anymore...so i HAD to face it forward...

my son is around 29-30 inches tall and weighs around 24-25 lbs. now hes only 7 months old...

it concerns me that it may be too early to do this, but i cant have my baby all "squished" up...and i had the car seat in RIGHT so hes just too tall LOL

any other mom's have this problem?

Answer 1

I have the same carseat as you.  My son was the same height as yours at 7 months...and weighed around 26lbs.

It is way way way too early for you to turn your child around.  (not to mention illegal- and you'd be fined if a police officer caught you)

Watch this video on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psmUWg7Qr...

...bottom line- if you were to (God forbid) get in an accident- would you rather your child break a leg or break his neck?  (even though no leg/hip injuries have been reported because of extended rear facing)

Answer 2

hi i put my daughter in a forward facing car seat when she was 10 months old its all about head control if there head control is not that great wait because if the car was to stop suddenly there neck would get damaged!  it gives a recomendation on the seat but i never followed this i went with my own instinct x

Answer 3

Sounds like you have a bad carseat then.  My son is 34 inches tall at 9.5 months and he has plenty of room in his carseat.  He's still rear facing.  

What seat do you have?  We have the Britax Marathon.

It's really, really dangerous for you to have your son facing forward at only 7 months.

Answer 4

His legs being squished is not uncomfortable and is not a safety risk. He is not too big to rear face until he is either:

1)35lbs - the rear facing limit on that seat

      OR

2)there is less than 1" of seat above his head

At that size, neither of those things has happened yet. You do not HAVE to turn it around. Do not go with 'instincts' on this one, as another poster said. I'm all about instincts in many areas of parenting. When its about safety and concerns more difficult engineering stuff its not about instinct, its about listening to the engineers and safety experts who know what they're talking about. If you watch these videos, you should be able to see why its a common sense thing to keep him rear facing as long a spossible:

In the foreground is a forward facing seat, in the background a rear facing seat. You can see how much trauma the forward facing dummy has to endure. The rear facing child simply rides it out.

http://www.oeamtc.at/netautor/html_seite...

Here's another video. You can see how there is NO trauma to the baby, it simply sits there waiting for it to end.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v163/j...

You can get a different seat, but in any seat rear facing, at some point his feet will touch the vehicle seat. Its not a problem. And I doubt he was complaining about it - that is something we as grownups put on the kids - our perception of how we think they must feel, when they really don't.

The old 20lbs/1 year rule is just that. OLD. It came about in the 1980's when our seats were only capable of rear facing to 20lbs and we didn't know any better. Now we definitely know better and all current convertible seats rear face to at least 30lbs, but its hard getting people to realize this.

Turning kids forward at 20lbs/1year is an outdated practice that could cost you your child's life!

1)A forward-facing child under 2 years old is 5 times more likely to be killed or seriously injured in a crash than a rear-facing child of the same age.

2)A child's vertabrae do not fully fuse until 3-6 years old, before then, she is at great risk for internal decapitation. The spinal column can stretch up to 2 inches in a crash BUT the spinal cord can only stretch up to 1/4 inch before it snaps and baby is gone.

3)Current research suggests that children under the age of two years are 75 percent less likely to die or be seriously injured when they are riding rear facing.

4)In a recent article from Injury Prevention, it was found that the odds of severe injury to forward facing children age 12-23 months old was 5.32 times higher than a rear facing child. (Car Safety Seats For Children: Rear Facing For Best Protection; Injury Prevention 2007; 13:398-402.)

It works this way: when you get in an accident and run into something, the car stop suddently, but everything and everyone in the car keeps moving in the direction the car was moving when it stopped, in most accidents, this is forward. So in an accident with a child in a forward facing seat, his head, the heaviest part of the body on babies and toddlers, flies forward very forcefully and easily snaps. If that same child is in a rear facing seat, his head tries to fly forward but is supported by the back of the rear facing seat, so there is no stress put on the child's neck and spine.

Check out this photo album exclusively of rear facing kids, many of them much older than 12 months: http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/RFAlbum...  There isn't a single documented case of a child breaking their legs b/c they were rear facing in an accident. There are, however, lots of cases where children have been killed and seriously injured where a rear facing seat would have protected them better. And  most kids actually prefer to be rear facing b/c they can rest their feet on the vehicle seat back. When they are forward facing, their legs don't receive enough support and will frequently fall asleep.

Answer 5

hello there...

even if your son is 24-25 lbs and 29-30 inches tall, you should not make him face forward yet... you should wait until he is at least 1 year old.

kids are safest when they are facing the back of the car. In a frontal car crash, your baby's head will remain cradled and the whiplash motion will be eliminated, reducing the risk of head and spinal injury.

Answer 6

The legs touching the back of the vehicle seat is not considered a big enough risk to deem rear-facing unsafe and warrant the decision to turn a child forward. Most children, especially long legged children or those over 1 will touch the back of the vehicle seat at some point, this is completely normal and is not regarded as a major safety hazard. Injuries to the lower extremity are usually less severe with fewer long-term complications than injuries to the head, neck or spine, which occur more commonly when a child is seated in the forward-facing position.

Another concern most parents have about their child touching the back of the vehicle seat and bending their knees is whether or not they are really comfortable. It would be never, or at least close to never that you see a child sit on the ground with their legs stretched out straight in front of them, so to the same can be said for when they are rear-facing. They will naturally bend their legs and be quite comfortable doing so.  

Answer 7

I'd ask your pediatrician to make sure that its safer to have him facing forward than being a little uncomfortable and being squished.  I am a huge safety freak though and drive my husband crazy with my safety rules lol. The rule is that they have to be at least 20 lbs AND one year of age before they face forward, but your son is a lot bigger than the average 7 month old lol so like I said I'd just make sure its ok with your pediatrician.  :)

Answer 8

He can sit cross-legged.

Or you can get a different seat

Or you could apply for a permit to use a non-US carseat and import one from a Scandinavian country where kids stay rear-facing until at LEAST age 3.

My 2.5 year old is in an Eddie Bauer.  He's 30lbs-ish not sure how tall I will try to measure him when he wakes up.

My 8 month old is in a Evenflo Triumph Advanced which is a better (and cheaper) seat.

(also if your child is uncomfortable you can place pillows or blankets under his legs to support them.  Remember no extra padding between the restraint and your child's back/back of head, and no padding between the straps and your child, but you can use a rolled up blanket or pillow around a child's head or under their legs as these are not key to restraint.)

http://www.carseat.org/Technical/tech_up...

Some older convertible CRs indicated in their instructions that a child should face forward when her feet touch the vehicle seatback or when the legs must be bent due to lack of space. This prohibition is not justified by any crash experience or any laboratory evidence, and these instructions have now been revised. There have not been any crashes documented in which rear-facing children sustained leg injuries because they were rear-facing. Even if this were the case, broken legs are easier to fix than broken necks. The only physical limit on rear-facing use is when the child's head approaches the top of the restraint shell (see Height and weight limits). At this point, she should be moved to a rear-facing convertible restraint, or, if the child is already using one and is over one year, to its forward-facing configuration.

[...]

Safety experts and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that children remain rear-facing as long as possible and never travel forward-facing before they are 1 year old and also weigh at least 20 pounds to reduce the risk of serious neck injury and lifelong disability. All new convertible seats available today allow a child to remain rear-facing until they weigh up to 30 or 35 lb, depending on the model.

When the child is rear-facing, the head, neck, and thorax are restrained together by the back of the CR in a frontal crash. There is little or no relative motion between the head and torso that could load the neck. If the same child were facing forward, the harness would restrain the torso, but the head and neck would pull and rotate forward, leading to the potential for serious upper spinal injury.

There are many misunderstandings and misconceptions about rear-facing vs. forward-facing that lead even the best intentioned parent or pediatrician to believe a child is "safe" facing forward when he is still very young. These come from obsolete ideas and advice that may still appear in older pamphlets and pediatric literature and are not the current recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Real-world experience has also shown that a young child's skull can be literally ripped from her spine by the force of a crash. The body is being held in place, but the head is not. When a child is facing rearward, the head is cradled and moves in unison with the body, so that there is little or no relative motion that might pull on the connecting neck.

The most common misunderstanding is that a child is ready to travel facing forward when his neck muscles are strong enough to support and control his head. However, when a car hits something at 25 to 30 mph, it will come to a stop at a negative acceleration rate of from 20 to 30 G. Because of the time lag between when the vehicle stops and an occupant stops, and the fact that the head of a forward-facing adult or child is still free to move relative to the restrained torso, the head may experience as much as 60 or 70 Gs acceleration for a brief moment. Even the strong neck muscles of military volunteers cannot counteract such forces. Instead, the rigidity of the bones in the neck and strength of the connecting ligaments (not the muscles) hold the adult spine together and keep the spinal cord intact within the confines of the vertebral column.

Very young children, however, have immature vertebrae that are still partly made of cartilage. These are soft and will deform and/or separate under tension, leaving just the spinal cord as the last link between the head and the torso. According to documented research, autopsy specimens of infant spines and ligaments allow for spinal column elongation of up to two inches, but the spinal cord ruptures if stretched more than 1/4 inch. Real-world experience has shown that a young child's skull can be literally ripped from her spine by the force of a crash.

Another aspect of the facing-direction issue that is often overlooked is the additional benefit a child gains in a side impact. Crash testing and field experience have both shown that the head of a child facing rearward is captured by the child restraint shell in side and frontal-oblique crashes, while that of a forward-facing child may be thrown forward, around, and outside the confines of the side wings. Field data show better outcomes for rear-facing children than forward-facing children, even though most CRs are not specifically designed to protect children in side impact.

Answer 9

I had the same problem, I went to my doctor with it, and I also went to SGI about it and had them tell me what I should do. I was told to turn my daughter around at 10 months, but it was also making her legs tingle and hurt so bad that we couldn't touch her after being in her seat backfacing for at least half hour.