drinking and driving

Yesterday, I had a doc appointment and did my glucose test. They make you drink this bottle of some sugary drink and then you have your blood drawn. The nurse told me it tastes better cold and suggested we go downstairs to Starbucks and ask for a cup of ice. The barista gave me a big cup and I thought it'd be too much. Boy, was I wrong. Look how much I had to throw down in 10 minutes!

The test shows how well your body breaks down the sugar or something to determine whether I have gestational diabetes. People have said the drink tastes really bad but it just tasted like fruit punch to me. In fact, it kinda tasted like McDonald's fanta fruit punch, which I love. Fingers crossed that I don't have gestational diabetes! We'll see...

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After that, Brian and I had our very first baby class. It was the car seat safety and installation class. I scheduled it first so that Brian and I have a better sense of what to look for in a car seat/travel system. It kinda seems silly to take a class for this stuff but I've heard that car seats can be tricky and it was part of our baby package at Swedish so I figured, why not?

Turns out, the class was very useful! The lady who taught it is a former EMT and certified in all this safety stuff. She says 80-90% of parents don't have their car seat and/or baby placed in the car seat properly. She showed a video with crash test dummies, showing what can happen when baby isn't in the car correctly -- scary!!! The value of "rear facing" and having kids in the backseat until a certain age/weight is brutally apparent in these videos.

She talked about the different kinds of car seats, different features (very helpful!), different ways to install the car seat (lap belt, over the shoulder belt, LATCH system) and even had a book to look up our make and model of car to see what we can and can't do. The LATCH, which is a feature in cars made after 2002, is pretty much useless. They recommend having babies in the middle seat in the back which is usually the seat that does not have the latch installed. Car makers put the latch system on the two outside seats. Makes no sense at all. But when we tried the different ways to strap down the car seat, the LATCH was the flimsiest anyway! Most cars have a lap belt in the middle seat and that works well. If you ask me, LATCH is just plain stupid.

Most interesting things I learned:

• Car seats have expiration dates! The plastic contracts and expands with the temperature and after 6 years are deemed "expired."
• Cars made before 1996 have seat belts without a locking feature which means you have to use the locking mechanism on the car seat when strapping your kid in.
• Rolling up dad's t-shirts to place around babies head/shoulders work better than blankets cause baby can smell daddy and bond. (who knows if this is true, but it couldn't hurt!)
  

At then end of class, I asked for her recommendations for top brand/type of car seat. She couldn't really say (kinda annoying actually, it's not like you work for Graco or something) but she did say the Chicco Keyfit and Graco Safety Seat, now the Snug ride 32, are highly rated.