Strapping her down in a car seat and taking her for a drive usually rectified the situation.
I look forward to a future where this process can become more automated.
(/s, sorta)
That and a white noise machine (set it low, their ear canals are very straight so they're sensitive to noise, although babies get used to noise around them given time and sleep through it, which is more practical / useful.
You can also just do what people have done for tens of thousands of years: wrap your kid against your body and go about your business.
Putting your kid in a car (self driving or not) is putting them in the most dangerous situation they could possibly be in - car crashes are the number one cause of death for kids (in the US.)
I've learned a lot from your words here and none of it was good.
It would follow that since no children die each year playing in active volcanos that's the safest thing they could possibly do. Kindergartens should be filled with magma.
Source: an organization with a fleet installed some driver tracking gps's and looked at the data over a year or two.
In the SF Bay Area, you can have CHP check it for free. The full-time job of the officer that checked ours is investigating accidents where kids in car seats died. Almost all the child fatalities around here are due to improper car seat installation.
We had it dangerously wrong. Before the appointment, I read the manual twice and spent something like 60 minutes installing it. The seat used the latch system with a top anchor, it was a new car and we had a top-ranked car seat. All the straps were connected up correctly. During installation, I sat on it with all of my weight, pushed against the ceiling of the car with my back, pulled the tightening strap until it felt like it'd break, and then pulled harder. The straps were still too loose. I'm not small.
Our last car seat had a failure mode where one of the latch straps would just self-release every 1000 miles or so. I'm not sure if it was user error or not. It happened twice.
After that experience, I think part of the certification process for car seats and cars should involve proving that the majority of people that have never installed a car seat (i.e., first time parents) can get it right on the first try without reading the manual. The test group should include people with physical impairments, and should include at least a dozen popular car models going back a decade. (Car certification should be the same, but with multiple car seat models.)
Since you mention only SF, for anyone else who happens to read this, just go to your local Fire Department. They will 100% either know how to secure it for you or guide you to the correct place.
- "where the baby is secured correctly" => "Restrained", <1 age group and 1-to-3 age group
- car speed is <= 40mph : NHTSA does not separate out accident speed, or separate residential roads from freeways
[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... "Traffic Safety Facts, 2021 Data, Children, DOT HS 813-456"
Key Findings • Of the 42,939 traffic fatalities in 2021 in the United States, 1,184 (3%) were children 14 and younger. • An estimated 162,298 children were injured in traffic crashes in 2021, a 17-percent increase from 139,058 in 2020. • Of the 26,325 passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2021 in traffic crashes, 863 (3%) were children. Of these 863 child passenger vehicle occupants killed in traffic crashes, restraint use was known for 769, of whom 308 (40%) were unrestrained. • Of the 1,184 children killed in traffic crashes, an estimated 294 (25%) were killed in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes in 2021.
[2] From NHTSA: NCSA (National Center for Statistics and Analysis) Motor Vehicle Traffic Crash Data Resource Page https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/#/
[3] "DOT HS 811 144, November 2008, FATALITIES AND INJURIES IN MOTOR VEHICLE BACKING CRASHES" https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
A backover is a crash which occurs when a driver reverses into and injures or kills a nonoccupant such as a pedestrian or a bicyclist. Backovers can occur either on a public roadway or not on a public roadway, i.e., in a driveway or in a parking lot. The former are called traffic backovers and the latter nontraffic backovers. There are also “other backing crashes” that are not backovers, i.e., they do not involve a pedestrian or other nonoccupant, that occur when, for example, a driver backs into a tree or pole or when a driver backs out of a driveway or parking space and is struck by another vehicle. Together, backover crashes and other backing crashes are referred to as backing crashes."
Look at the table on page iv.: Fatalities and Injuries, by Type of Crash, Type of Vehicle
Swaddle - wrap the baby
Side/stomache - position like the womb
Shush - white noise
Sway/swing - walking or bouncing
Suck - a finger, a sucker, etc
These were a life saver for my son. Most nights it was just swaddle + sway, on bad nights it took all 5. I think the reason cars work for so many baby’s is that car seats, the rhythm, the white noise from the car, etc… these all do the same thing.
We also somehow got very very lucky in that he didn't need to be transitioned out of the swaddle, he just grew to dislike it so one night we just stopped cold turkey and it was fine. We've had friends that have had to do the one arm in / one arm out, swaddle the legs, etc. and transition over days or weeks to get any sleep at all.
Is this satire, or am I missing something (going by the serious replies)? Not sure I would ever use this phrasing to describe anything serious - much less about my own child.
If you've never experienced this, you are very lucky.
But it sure did feel like that was happening every now and then, despite our very best efforts and resources. And sometimes, something like a trip to the store ("HEY, DO WE NEED MORE EGGS AND MILK FOR TOMORROW?" "YOU KNOW WHAT? I THINK WE DO NEED MORE EGGS AND MILK FOR TOMORROW!" "OK! LET'S TAKE THE KID AND GO TO THE STORE!") was the the only thing that allowed for a return of sanity for anyone involved.
It was not the first option. We always employed all positive options first and had good support for finding new methods; we really did do pretty-OK at that time as non-robotic human parents, I think.
Going for a short drive was the last option before "Let her scream. It's hard work to make that much noise and she'll tire out eventually, and fall asleep [0]" would come into play after everything else has already failed.
[0]: We once got this advice from her doctor as a last-resort option. And maybe that was good advice or maybe that was terrible advice, but it was absolutely untenable advice for us when we were living in a stick-framed apartment building: Letting a kid scream like that for a prolonged period with a multiplicity of neighbors on the other sides of the walls is an easy road towards getting the police, CPS, and/or building management involved through no particular fault or misdeed of our own. And as a practical matter, when third parties become involved like that, now there are at least two problems (at least one of which is now an ongoing major problem) instead of just one relatively minor problem of a clearly-tired little human who chooses to scream instead of sleep.
I'm very glad that you never had the opportunity to experience this kind of thing. It's awful, and if it were easy to resolve I wouldn't have any of this to write about.
Maybe it’s the Silicon Valley but it’s cool they still care about details like this.
Oh wow! There is a non zero chance that was implemented because of some feedback I provided as a trusted tester many months ago. I napped my son in them a lot when they were free and just spent my time thinking up things they should do and reporting them in app.