When Monica Cheung was pregnant with her now-four-month-old son, Elliott, she spent months researching car seats, asking friends for recommendations and reading online reviews. After finally deciding on and purchasing one, Cheung signed up for a free car seat clinic to have the installation checked. ?Some of our friends thought we were being too intense, that it was overkill,? says Cheung. ?But the possibility of putting our little one?s life at risk was not something we were willing to do.?
Heading to the clinic, Cheung felt prepared; she and her husband, Aaron Igel, had looked at Transport Canada?s website, carefully read the car seat manual and watched several installation videos on YouTube. But it quickly became clear to clinic staff that the seat was too loose, and though two different volunteers tried to install it tightly, it just wasn?t working. ?One volunteer told us that perhaps this was just the wrong car seat for our car,? says Cheung. ?He suggested we return it and buy another one, but we had purchased the car seat months before. We wouldn?t be able to return it.? Eventually, Igel was able to install the seat securely with the help of a cut-up pool noodle wedged under the base, but Cheung left feeling disheartened. ?We thought we had done our homework,? she says. ?This just made us feel like failures.?
While getting the car seat checked wasn?t a good experience for Cheung, it was the right thing to do. Studies show that the correct use of car and booster seats...