The Troubling Loss of the Car Seat

Fully functioning baby in the now retired car seat.

I felt the familiar bite of envy today when I saw a dad walking into a bookstore carrying his baby in a car seat. Oh, those were the days. Yes, they were.

But wait, you might say. Aren’t you excited for your baby to grow up? To walk? To be freer? Of course I am. She is crawling right now, but all she wants to do is stand at the coffee table and cruise around. In a little more time she will be walking with me, but right now we are in a cumbersome interregnum between the too-big-for-the-car-seat size and the not-yet-walking stage.

Benefits of the car seat era include easily carrying baby during any errand, including, but certainly not limited to, a stroll through the bookstore, a coffee run, and going to pick up a book at the library. Also, easily transferring baby from house to car, to inside bookstore, back inside car, back to house, and up to room if baby has fallen asleep in car seat. All this used to be done with one convenient baby bucket (receptacle or repository I like much better, but it just sounded weird, “baby repository”).

But now upon arrival anywhere we must transfer baby from big, new, giant booster-type seat for extra-tall babies to the stroller, also great for extra-tall daddies.

Fully functioning much bigger baby in the new, custom-built-for-huge-people, booster seat.

The other option, and this is a big ask, is to carry her sans stroller. Since she’s 25 lbs and 31 inches, one better hope the errand does not take longer than expected if you spring for this non-stroller option, especially if you have already lifted weights that day.

This might be the first of many posts in which I sort of (or jokingly) mourn losing the conveniences of the infant, but also recognize the perks of getting older and growing bigger, like her booster seat (which is one indestructible gadget) and her current obsession with pulling to stand. These are great things.

But the other point of this post is that I cannot shake the memory of the days when I could carry London around in her car seat, sometimes with just a few fingers wrapped around the handle and the other two fingers carrying a six-pack. The ease. The comfort. The convenience. Oh my.