We've Been Carrying Car Seats The Wrong Way The Whole Time
Your back will thank you
Lugging around an infant car seat is both awkward and painful. There’s basically two options: The cradle carry or the one arm-hook. You can cradle it in both hands, but then you can’t open a door or hold the hand of your toddler. Most of us opt to hook it over our arm like a giant picnic basket instead, shuffling along until the pain from our arm and hip gets so bad that we have to switch sides.
It turns out there’s actually a much easier way to carry your baby’s car seat, and it’s been right under our noses this whole time.
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Dr. Emily Puente of Bridge Family Chiropractic in Mansfield, Texas shared a video on Facebook showing how a simple switch in hand placement can forever change how you feel about hauling the car sear around town.
“It’s not going to hurt your shoulder, it’s not going to hurt your hip, and you’re not going to have to use your knee to swing like I had to do with my two [kids],” she says before showing the technique. “Someone taught me this before, and it’s been the greatest thing.”
Rather than hooking her elbow through the handle of the carseat, she slides her hand through the handle and down towards the base of the carseat, then twists her wrists and lifts it up from the bottom. “As soon as we switch to this,” she explains while demonstrating, “it’s a completely different change in how I’m using my body, to be able to use and distribute this weight from this carrier to be able to carry it around.”
The video has been viewed over five million times, and shared over 57,000 times. People are helpfully tagging their friends with new babies, or lamenting the fact that they didn’t know about this back when their kids were babies.
In an update to the original video, Dr. Puente notes that not all infant car seats might work with this technique. And as one commentor said the position was uncomfortable, she suggests getting the all clear from your personal doctor “prior to trying any new regimen if you would like to ensure you are fit to perform actions like the one shown here.”
When I was pregnant I fantasized about getting bulging, Wonder Woman-esque biceps from carting around twin baby car seats. In reality all I got was a sore neck and a giant bottle of Tylenol. This trick would have saved me so many nights curled up with my heating pad.
Mind blown.
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