how do you park in a car park with a big bump and possibly even a toddler in tow?

[umboo]

hello

i'm talking about where there is no family parking. the normal bays don't always leave enough room if a car is parked next to you to get out of the car and ive got into a couple of pickles now! last pregnancy i had to once ask a passerby to get my car out from the bay as i couldn't get in from driver side OR passenger side. it didn't feel great handing over car keys to a complete stranger. today i had to ask a passerby to help get my son out as i could manage to get out passenger side (though the shifting over the gearstick and handbreak was a bit precarious!) but on the passenger side i couldn't get my son out from the back because the door wouldn't open enough for me to squeeze in with my bump.

last pregnancy i started to park across two bays but now we're living in london that's not an option with parking attendants who it feels like will ticket you for just looking at a car space that you're not allowed to be in

so what do you do? is my only option to just avoid such car parks and park in roadside parking? but then what about retail parks, they're often out of town...and they don't always have family parking.

any tips you can offer would be gratefully received.

I have a great big pick up truck which I drove when heavily pregnant and even in the tiniest of spaces managed to get in and out of it.

reallife I will try that suggestion and see how it goes, thanks. I guess you're right minus the bump it will be easier as I also won't be so protective about not squeezing my belly through a small gap:) sounds like it works for corabear too.

weeZie I love the measures your college thinks people are prepared to go just to secure adequate parking!![Grin]

Also I know lots of people here are saying they had this problem but then no one gets identical pregnancy problems to the next person. There are enough people here who have experienced the same as me to show this is definitely not an isolated problem even if you didn't have this issue:)

Sorry lots of people are saying they did NOT have this problem...(which doesn't make it invalid as I said above)

reallife... how can you complain about access to your car when you are deliberately parking up close to other people?

what about those of us who need access to BOTH sides of the car??

good grief

RealLife - sorry, but you're just being inconsiderate. What about people who need to access both doors?

Surely its not that hard to find a space at the end of a row where you won't inconvenience somebody else?

You're going to end up with a very dented car if you park on the edge of spaces like that!

It's every pregnant woman for herself TheMightyLois and Thisyesterday.

It's not nice to park that way, or considerate necessarily, but as a woman who had to take several small children shopping, or with me to doctors appointments while I was as big as a bus, I got very tired of returning to the supermarket and having the driver of car registered XYX987 paged and then waiting for them and asking them to move their vehicle, and so did my children, mostly under 5. I once missed picking up DD1 from school while waiting for a car to move from the hospital covered carpark so that I could get in. Huge hosp, no way to page the driver. I waited 1.5 hours in the cold, with two small children. End of a row doesn't work in an indoor multistorey carpark.

Anyone who needs both sides could presumably let the passenger(s) out before they parked if space was tight? And get out of the spot and then let their passenger into the car when leaving? If small children were in the car, you could surely use the driver's side to get them out and you wouldn't need access to both sides? I can't think of any situation where anyone would really need both sides in other words.

But what if there's someone in a similar position in the space next to you?

I've always managed to park and get in and out ok. The only time I couldn't get into my car was when I was 7mo pg and some arse had parked on the line in the space next to me, about 4" from my door. I had very bad SPD and had to climb in the boot.

They can find an end space or park way over to the side of their spot?

I thought end spaces didn't exist?

So why does the person who needs to access both sides trump me and my need to be able to get out of the driver's door?

All I expect from other drivers is that they park within the lines. That's reasonable. Other than that, I'm perfectly capable of parking so that I can get all the passengers in my car out. I'm sure other people can use the same level of intelligence, and if you can't get out of a space without scraping other cars parked legally within their bays, you shouldnt be driving.

Hmmm not convinced now about the parking on the passenger line now...I definitely wouldn't want to put someone else in the same situation as me. There's no guarantee the driver next to me isn't pregnant too.

No- there's not, but you are 100% pregnant and they are less than 1% likely to be pregnant. (50% pop is male, 60% female pop not of childbearing/driving age (assuming lifespan of 70 years and childbearing of 17-45), average 2 children, 1 yr of visible pregnancy)

If you had a massive RR which took up the whole space, you wouldn't worry about it would you, so why worry about parking your (eg) Golf over to one side?

If someone is massively worried about their own access they can find an end space just as easily as I can. I'm saying I'm not going to because I can work around it whilst parking completely legally. If I was straddling 2 spaces then I'd be unreasonable.

They don't exist and if they do there is only a small chance of finding one empty most of the time, so the only option really is to park over to the side of your spot in mid aisle.

You could tell if another parker was pregnant by eyeballing the space between her and the car next to her on the driver's side? If there's a small space then I think you could assume she could fit well enough to get out, though of course the car next to her might have parked after she did... And if a pregnant women parked next to you after you parked it would probably occur to her to park as far over to the left as she needed to to make life easier for herself.

Really, if other drivers are going to do whatever they like when it comes to parking, with nary a thought to pregnant women (that covers 99.99999% of drivers imo), pregnant women really have to look out for themselves and not wring their hands too much taking care of others.

Fro my experience of going back into supermarkets and paging drivers who had parked too close to my car, some were really PO'd to have their shopping interrupted and looked at me as if I had some nerve being pregnant while they were running their errands, but most were horrified that their parking had prevented me from getting into my car.

Oh for gods sake

I give up.

After three pregnancies and the resulting two toddlers in tow plus a baby I am happy to report that I have never once experienced difficulty getting in or out of my car

Additionally I don't think I've ever used a p&c parking space

Don't give it another thought OP, it's unlikely to ever occur