Caroline162
New member
This issue actually resolved itself, but I didn't know about this website at the time, and I am curious about whether there other options/ideas...
When my oldest daughter was not quite 3 years old, she had a tissue expander (like a very tough balloon under the skin, which is slowly filled with saline over several months - used to stretch the skin to cover an area that is being removed) on one of her shoulders. She was in a Britax Marathon at the time. The problem was that when the tissue expander got to certain size, her straps no longer fit - when I loosened the strap enough to fit over the tissue expander, it was so loose on the other side that she kept slipping that arm out of the strap! With all of her tissue expanders filled (she had several very large ones) she was over 35 lbs, so she was FF in the Marathon. This was NOT a good situation. I took her to the car seat tech at the children's hospital here in town, and she couldn't come up with any solutions. I ended up turning her RF again, even though she was slightly over the weight limit (the tech did say it was installed very well and fit perfectly in our Pathfinder - you couldn't wiggle that thing if you wanted to). I figured that if her straps didn't fit perfectly, at least RF wouldn't put as much strain on them and also seemed safer from the perspective of all the pressure a FF crash would have on her expanders. BUT it meant that someone had to stay in the back seat with her, in order to make sure she didn't pull her arm out of the side that was loose. Needless to say, we didn't travel in the car unless necessary. But her surgeries were being done out of state, so we were driving about 6 hours there and back every couple of months and she had other doctor's appointments in town. The whole situation was stressful. Luckily the shoulder expander was only that big for a few weeks.
I'm just curious - were there any other options? Are there any seats out there that let you adjust one strap independently of the other? Was RF safer than FF under the circumstances?
I'm not trying to second-guess myself or waste anyone's time, I've just honestly wondered about this a lot, and I love the knowledge and creativity of people on this board.
Thanks!
When my oldest daughter was not quite 3 years old, she had a tissue expander (like a very tough balloon under the skin, which is slowly filled with saline over several months - used to stretch the skin to cover an area that is being removed) on one of her shoulders. She was in a Britax Marathon at the time. The problem was that when the tissue expander got to certain size, her straps no longer fit - when I loosened the strap enough to fit over the tissue expander, it was so loose on the other side that she kept slipping that arm out of the strap! With all of her tissue expanders filled (she had several very large ones) she was over 35 lbs, so she was FF in the Marathon. This was NOT a good situation. I took her to the car seat tech at the children's hospital here in town, and she couldn't come up with any solutions. I ended up turning her RF again, even though she was slightly over the weight limit (the tech did say it was installed very well and fit perfectly in our Pathfinder - you couldn't wiggle that thing if you wanted to). I figured that if her straps didn't fit perfectly, at least RF wouldn't put as much strain on them and also seemed safer from the perspective of all the pressure a FF crash would have on her expanders. BUT it meant that someone had to stay in the back seat with her, in order to make sure she didn't pull her arm out of the side that was loose. Needless to say, we didn't travel in the car unless necessary. But her surgeries were being done out of state, so we were driving about 6 hours there and back every couple of months and she had other doctor's appointments in town. The whole situation was stressful. Luckily the shoulder expander was only that big for a few weeks.
I'm just curious - were there any other options? Are there any seats out there that let you adjust one strap independently of the other? Was RF safer than FF under the circumstances?
I'm not trying to second-guess myself or waste anyone's time, I've just honestly wondered about this a lot, and I love the knowledge and creativity of people on this board.
Thanks!