Can a newborn travel in a car?

Not to mention delays and too many passengers.

you don’t get free choice of the hospital you can give birth in

And have people coughing and sneezing and possibly jostling the baby? No!

My son had severe reflux and slept in his car seat !

You don't always have a choice. My last pregnancy was considered high risk.
We didn't a choice of hospitals. I was assigned one.

But!
New burns aren't made of glass. They can travel in baby car seats. It's takes a bit longer to travel but not the end of the world. I was lucky that my husband drove us home after an emergency caesarean section.
Otherwise I would have had to ask family/friends for help.
Public transport including transfers would have been possible but far less comfortable for me after a difficult birth.

Fair point I just was thinking if they thought it was guaranteed 3 days just for Csection.

fair point I didn’t think about other issues I just thought they thought it would be 3 full days due to Csection. I just wanted to point out for a Csection it can be less.

Get a lay flat car seat and sit in the back with your baby. I had a convertible pram that had the basinet for the car and used it shopping so I could see baby and as he got older could sit up, similar to the old fashioned prams it was lovely. I would get home asap don't stop. Baby will be fine. Good luck!

Your child will be fine in a car sear fit for age with breaks.
Don't overthink it or consult your midwife.

1. Your have no idea if it's a choice. The longer than average stay is also indicative of a specific reason why baby may need to be born there.

2. many (though not all, by a long shot) would be fine with that length journey post c section. Me being one of them. We travelled almost that long on day 5 because we fancied going to see some friends (an hour there, then a short trip to a cafe, then an hour back) and it was painless. It's not necessarily going to be hellish.

It's not a choice if there are medical reasons for her having to deliver at that hospital. Sometimes quite literally in order to ensure a good outcome the mother has no choice about where to deliver her baby.

For instance, my nephew has a kidney condition that they diagnosed before birth. After birth, he had to have some blood tests and a scan which is routine for that condition, so they knew that would take at least a day. So even in the best possible circumstances, they'd be in the postnatal ward for at least 24 hours after birth, probably 2 days. Turned out they came out when he was 5 days old due to the weekend.

The OP has already said that she will be in for 3 nights for specific reasons. The same reasons that mean her baby needs to be born in that hospital.

Well it doesn’t appear to be the OP’s o closest hospital so it’s always a choice. I’m just highlighting that it’s not only the issue with the drive for the baby but the worst bit will probably be the 2.5 hour drive for the OP post c section.
As someone who has had 2 sections a drive that long and having to stop making it longer again would be hell on earth so there’s a balance for the benefits to this hospital vs the negatives due to the distance.

Surely it depends on whether you know there's other reasons for you to stay?

You’re not guaranteed 3 days in hospital, I had mine late on the Wednesday night and was home for 9am on the Saturday. No way could I have got on a train, just the steps at the station and then getting in a train seat. what if the train is jam packed? I’m sorry but I think it’s bonkers. Book an air b&b for a week afterwards. The midwife will visit a lot too.

For god's sake, @northerngirly , don't take the train with a C-section a couple of days before. Moving between platforms and down carriages - it would be a nightmare. That's major abdominal surgery. Train seats aren't exactly built for comfort.

Even in the car it's extremely uncomfortable for long (take a pillow to go between you and the seatbelt!). Needs must, obviously. I had to go 2.5 hours by car on day 6 so I sympathise. Regular breaks for a little while and you'll be just fine.

Very best of luck for you and your baby.

They do (or at least did) car seat tests on premature babies to make sure they're safe in their car seat. And these tests are for 60-90 mins. If OPs baby is of a normal size and healthy 90 mins in the seat as a one off should be fine.

I live rurally and so our closet hospital is 2.5hrs away. I’ve been driven home with 4 of my babies from there and just stopped for a break twice, after 40 mins each time, quick feed and back in the car. It’s really not a drama, it’s literally what people do every single day. 3 of these have been post section too and while they’ve not been my favourite journeys, it’s really fine.

I guess work would need to be done on amount of time a baby on average spends also in the car in a day compared with on a flat surface.

But it's easier to terrify new parents by guilting then into inconvenient rules. I rear faced both of mine until 4&5 because I was content that the science was there to support it. I'm not sure the same can be said about this.

There is surely possibly an argument from these stats if it goes lower than 3% that babies are in fact safer in car seats than lying flat.

It just sounds like another way to make new mums’ lives even more stressful to me if you can’t leave a happily sleeping baby in a car seat for an hour these days.

Yeah fair enough that's not what I was referring to. But each to their own!

Fair enough in that case, but people upthread say they still sit in the back with their 2 year old DC, which seems odd to me

I looked into it above.
10 year retrospective study in the USA. The 348 babies were the number of SIDS deaths in that period who died in a sitting position. Not necessarily in car seats. Not anything to do with a '30 minute rule'

Well you don’t but if the OP’s worried then it’s more sensible than taking the train or carrying the baby in her arms in an uber.