Am I being extra by wanting a booster seat? I have been asking myself this lately. Mainly because I am not exactly rolling in the money over here and have spent so much of Aidan’s little life defending my decision to ALWAYS have him in a car seat, even if it upsets family members and means I can’t give a lift to someone who needs it.

It’s a tough one, this booster seat business. Even the car seat business, I mean when you deal with a generation that sees car seats as a luxury item you have to defend yourself A LOT. So once your child starts outgrowing his current seat (which is where we are now) why would you want to look for more trouble, especially if it is going to cost you real money?

The problem here is, the  #carseatfullstop campaign  has made me increasingly aware of the need to upgrade. Funny thing is, up until I started reading the articles around booster seats like the one Cindy did over at 3 kids, 2 dogs and 1 old house I kinda thought we were nearing the end of the car seat era, we have one of those pillow ones for the next step so we are sorted…but turns out I’m wrong.

But it’s so expensive! But flip so is a funeral, is that crass? I don’t know! Probably!  we buried a child before, granted that was NICU death so it’s completely different, BUT it was damn expensive. It rid us of our savings (ahhhh to have savings) the coffin, the burial site, the tea, the therapist, medical bills, all expensive.  Oh and It rid us of our sanity, our sense of peace and our lives as we knew it.

Sorry for that, it’s just that this is really what is going on in my mind. Is my insistence on a car seat just me being “bad luck”? like a well meaning older person once said when I said I’d rather stay at home then drive without Aidan in a seat. (That was last thing she said to me for a while – because I didn’t think positive thought was enough to keep him alive).

I’m a muddle because #money. But way more than that I just want to do everything to keep him safe, I want to put in extra effort.

Flip if it’s going to cost extra shifts, extra research, let that be it…. So if that means I’m being s extra let me be extra, and honestly I suggest you be extra too because the stats are damn scary

• Car passenger deaths are the fourth leading cause of death in children in South
  Africa.
• The latest research says that 93% of children in South Africa that need to be in a
  car seat to be safe in a crash, are not in car seats.
• A car seat belt is designed to be used by an adult male over 1.5m tall.
• A car seat belt’s job is to distribute the force of a crash to the body’s strongest
  points – mid-shoulder, chest and pelvis.
• On a child, a seat belt sits over their 2 most vulnerable points – the neck/throat
  and the belly area containing all the vital organs. The seat belt becomes a
  definitive threat to a child who isn’t using a booster seat to protect them from it.
• The majority of car accidents happen close to home – one study shows 52%
  within 8km and 77% within 25km. So “just up the road” means nothing.
• When a car crashes or suddenly stops, the body takes on the weight of the speed
  you were travelling multiplied by your actual weight. If your baby weighs 10 kg,
  and you are driving at 60km per hour, when you hit something your baby will take
  on the weight of 600kg.
• . Physics research has shown that passengers have less than half a second to react
  in a collision or sudden stop.
• It is scientifically physically impossible for you to hold onto a child that suddenly
  weighs hundreds of kilograms in an accident, within the less than half a second
  you have to react.
• If you have a seatbelt over you and your child and there is a crash… your baby
  or child is likely to be crushed to death. The force against their little body is the
  equivalent of 30 adults, each weighing 50 kg (1500kgs… or an entire rugby team)
  standing on top of your child.

With statistics saying that up to 93% of people aren’t strapping in their kids in South Africa… We ALL know somebody who is adding to that number. Please share this post to help us reach more people.

You have the power to save a little life. One share, seen by one person, who straps in one child, saves a life. #CarseatFullstop. Every child. Every time. No matter what.

#CarseatFullstop is a very proud retailer for the BeSafe car seat range in South Africa. This means that if you purchase a BeSafe car seat through #CarseatFullstop, the profits go to maintaining this initiative! If you would like to have your little one as safe as they can be, be sure to join this group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/supportcarseatfullstop/ or contact us on besafe@carseatfullstop.org.

And if you have a car seat that your little person has outgrown, please consider donating it to Wheel Well[1]. Wheel Well is a non-profit organization that collects used car seats, which are then cleaned and refurbished in order to provide a safe option for parents who are unable to afford a new car seat. Seats can be dropped off at any Renault dealership.