Sometimes I see babies at church sit in their infant car seats, aka “Baby Buckets” for the whole service and then sometimes through Sunday School too.  They get upset and their parents do their best to comfort them – while they’re still strapped in!  I don’t have any children and I apologize if I’m upsetting any of my readers out there who are mothers but I still get so frustrated when I see this.  I think, “For Pete’s sake, just hold your baby!”  I realize it’s easier to leave them in there but it just doesn’t seem to be right.  And I know enough women (namely my three sisters-in-law) to know that it’s very possible to parent a baby without using the infant car seat as a holder.

And so here’s some scientific proof as to why it’s bad to leave your baby in the car seat for longer than necessary – basically, it makes their breathing less efficient and so the oxygen saturation level in their blood goes down.  The recommendation is to only keep infants in their car seats for the amount of time that they are in the car – in other words, use them for what they were created for.