To the mom of the crying baby in the car seat

Originally posted April 19, 2016

Hello!

I see you. As creepy as it sounds. I see you struggling to put your baby into the car, and I see the dread in your eyes for the trip to come. You wonder if all babies cry so much, you wonder if you should stop the car. You also wonder for a second if maybe you letting your baby cry in the car seat is a good thing, maybe your baby will learn to stop. In the same second you wonder if your baby will choke from the tears.

Your baby won’t. Your baby will eventually love car drives. Your baby will eventually sing with you on the way to nursery or school. Car drives will be pleasant. Even in the car seat.

Your baby might eventually drive you crazy while driving for other reasons than crying. Such as being able escape the arm straps of the car seat.

You are probably so worried about your baby’s feeding habits. Be it breastfeeding or formula feeding. Is it too much or too little. If your baby is within the normal range on the charts, don’t worry and keep doing what you’re doing. If they are not, seek help, don’t wonder too much. I want to reassure you though, one day your baby will tell you “I am full” “I am done” and “I want more” and you won’t have to worry one bit.

If you are relaxed about your baby’s eating habits, they might even love having food!

More likely than not, you are worried about your baby’s sleeping habits. Your baby either breastfeeds to sleep, takes a bottle to sleep, takes a pacifier to sleep, or gets rocked to sung to and danced with to sleep. You wonder if you are ruining his sleep for life.

Don’t worry, I just put my 2 year old to sleep by laughing himself to sleep after reading a book. He told me “mommy hug, I want to sleep”. The same boy that has breastfed to sleep, then cried to sleep, then listened to hours on end of Twinkle Twinkle to sleep. The same boy who acted as if car trips were torture. The same boy who drove me nuts doubting myself every day.  I have been you. Hopefully in a few months  you’d write a letter to the new moms telling them there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Or you might start telling people how much fun it is to snap together. And how your son now sticks his tongue out every time he sees a camera.

<3 Mirna

Speaking of car seats, my friend Chrys wrote a fantastic blog post about car seat safety