To forward face 15 month old

[Ohtoeisme]

I know from the point of view of an accident we aren’t as safe; the problem is she has become car sick when rear facing and apart for it being unpleasant for her it’s also a choking hazard.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable but I am worried about judgement, stupid really. I guess I’m wondering if you would judge!

Having been in a horrific crash last year and seeing how badly damaged our back seats were (other driver was drunk, passed out and hit us at over 80), I would do whatever is recommended safety wise. We were fortunate we didn't have anyone on the backseats or they'd have been seriously injured. Police had thought it might be a double fatality when they arrived on scene and were shocked we'd both made it out of the car without serious injury, but the damage was all to the back.

Don't want that to sound judgey in any way OP and obviously my views are shaped by that experience, it's just that a lot of people think it'll never happen to them but there really are so many dangerous and reckless drivers on the roads now.

If you can try to manage the travel sickness through other means then I'd give that a go first, although appreciate it's not always that simple. Maybe ask the health visitor or GP for some advice?

We did the same. DS gets very carsick. One of the ways to help is to get them to look at the horizon, you can't do that unless they're forward facing. Everything is a balance of risks and, for us, it was a risk worth taking. That said, we don't drive very often at all.

Yeah ... I'm not really here for anyone who tries to make women feel bad for doing what's right for them under legal guidance. So you can leave me out of your comments, thanks.

I do appreciate how much of a stressful situation it must be, but being travel sick is not worth catastrophic injuries, do you have a mirror you can use to negate the risk of choking?
It's been determined that travel sickness isn't necessarily exacerbated by the direction of travel and there are other steps that can be taken before making such a drastic decision.
No child of any age should forward face in a harnesses seat due to the strain on their tiny bodies in a collision.
Could you get replacement covers for your seat so you always have a clean set while you wash the others?

@KeyWorker

What on Earth have you that impression??

I cannot travel backwards 🤮

It might not be catastrophic injuries but I’m not going to have her being sick every day, that really isn’t fair on her.

I hadn’t planned to turn her around but the other day her seat was covered so I put her in her brothers (he was at home) and she was so so much happier forward facing. I have never been particularly passionate about rear facing (which isn’t intended as an attack) but fifteen months does seem very out, I agree. The car sickness has been a spanner in the worlds u didn’t anticipate though.

There's more of a distinction than 'safer than'

It means the difference between horrific injuries or even death dependent on the circumstances of a crash

I don't want to pile on, if you've made up your mind, you've made up your mind 🤷🏼‍♀️

But you won't find anyone who understands car seats to agree it's a good idea to put a 15 month old in a forward facing seat.

To be fair to @KeyWorker it is a much touted myth, it isn’t the first time I’ve heard it.

Mine both started forward facing from 15 months. DS frequently vomited when rear facing, and DD was very tall for her age and visibly uncomfortable until then.

@mumbleberry thats fair enough but equally it’s not a good idea to have a baby being sick most days and being unable to get to her (choking risk.)

As with most things it is a balance of risk and the choking one is more prevalent than the accident one I would say.

I would. RF might be safer if there's a crash but you're probably more likely to be in a crash if the driver is distracted by a baby being sick.

Perhaps a compromise would be to front face on everyday local journeys where any accident is likely to be at slower speed. Then rear face on longer motorway journeys, possibly using travel sickness medicine and with a second person in the car to look after the baby so the driver can focus.

People who have not dealt with an extremely travel sick child do not understand the reality of the risk-balancing that has to be done here. The literature can say what it likes about rear-facing not increasing sickness, for many people lived experience demonstrates otherwise. Travel sickness medication is not available in the UK until at least 2yo, and even then there are minimal options until 3yo and above.

To answer your question of whether you’ll be judged, I certainly wouldn’t give it a second thought. I started forward facing at 15 months, mostly because I wasn’t really aware of the advice, and nobody commented. TBH I think that there are plenty of people like me, and I think that if your baby is being sick every time they’re in the car it’s probably the lesser of two evils.

Travel sick medicine never worked for me, but we can try it when she’s two.

While car seats do, of course, save lives, and rear facing is safer, serious accidents are thankfully rare - I suspect that most posters have never been in an accident where the type of car seat would have made a difference. We take risks every day - rather more children are killed by cars they aren't in (i.e. they're on the pavement), but no-one suggests we shouldn't go out. Given the risk of an RTA is low, and vomiting is unpleasant for everyone, I would forward face in your circumstances.

Have you tried a mirror so she can see you? Or those crazy liquid glasses? The liquid stays at a horizontal position no matter what position the head is at. They can work fantastically.

However I completely agree you can't have her covered in sick all the time. It's not fair on her or anyone else in the car! I'm
Sure it's not exactly easy driving to a tune of

"MUUUUUMMMMYYYY SHES BEEN SICK AGAIN AND IT SMELLS SO BAD'

Incredibly dangerous is such an over exaggeration. If that were the case so is just being in a car, even as an adult. She'll still be restrained in a protective seat, and so long as height/ weight requirements are met, only marginally less safe in the very unlikely event of a crash.

It is safer to rear face. However, what's often not included in this discussion is that the risk of a serious car accident is thankfully not all that high. I remember looking up the stats on this for a previous discussion and there were something like 10 fatalities of under 16s as car passengers in a year in the UK. Obviously that's a terrible tragedy for those families, but it implies a low absolute risk, when you think how many under 16s there are travelling in cars every day.

So the bottom line is that the reduction in absolute rather than relative risk from rear facing isn't very big. Of course if you want to reduce that risk, that's great, but it's absolutely fine to decide to balance that risk against other things like car sickness. Worth remembering as well that if the child being sick is distracting the driver, the child is almost certainly safer overall forward facing and not being sick as they're at less risk of a crash in the first place.

There was a sensible suggestion to rear face in the front seat, this would be the best thing to do to alleviate your choking worry. Remember to turn off the airbag.

Even the one you can technically give two years olds isn't very nice - it made dd so drowsy she was slightly out of it the whole day. We forward faced her from 15 months for exactly these reasons. She still gets occasional travel sickness but not every journey like it was before. At that stage she had also developed absolute refusal around going in the car as it made her feel so poorly. So driving anywhere was a massive ordeal. It was not sustainable to force her to rear face and vomit constantly. So solidarity to you in the face of all those who militantly insist RF is best.

I absolutely cannot rear face on a train or bus or anything without being really sick so I totally understand. In these circumstances I would consider forward facing to see if it makes a difference.

My second DD suffered terribly with sickness and we forward faced her at 14 months. She has always been in the 90th+ centile so while I didn't make the decision lightly, I also knew that she was a sturdy girl and I'm usually driving around the village at about 20mph (as are the other village folk).

Unfortunately forward facing makes no difference to car sickness at this age.

Try putting newspaper on the seat. It does something with friction apparently.

Ask the pharmacist about the use of sedating antihistamines (which also help with sickness) for long important journeys

You have no experience of how horrendous travel sickness can be and it shows.

It makes a difference when you're older - it's to do with eye sight and vestibular development. But not at your DC she