HELP asap! Baby with broken arm!

osumoose said:

She has a rear adjust seat (an evenflo) and I adjusted the good side as tight as I could. It still seemed pretty darn loose though. This is so frustrating!

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Did you try unbuckling it to tighten that last little bit then re buckling?

Can she unwrap the arm for just a minute to buckle her up then rewrap it over the harness? She would be unwrapped for only about the same amount of time as it would take to change her shirt.

If this isn't possible, I would say the next best option would be to see if a local hospital has a car bed with a cummerbund wrap available to loan.

The car bed might actually even be the best option if the problem is a broken collar bone, since I'm not sure that a broken clavicle would be sound enough to prevent ejection in a traditional carseat at all.

Do any car seats allow removal of the chest clip even if only in a special case?

Could you cut a slit in her bandage so you could thread the harness under the arm?

I would also use a car bed in this situation. I would see if your local NICU can loan you one.

The nearest NICU is 2 hours away. We will be there on Tuesday anyway, so I plan on meeting their SN CPST. We are very rural, so there are not car beds available. We also have a 7 seater suburban, and every seat is full because we have four children of our own. I can't unwrap her arm at all without her screaming in pain, and am not supposed to anyway, so that's out. I will try to independently adjust the straps on the RA seat she came with, and meet with her doctor tomorrow. Going to ask if he can do a cast on a lot more of her body because she will be transported so often.

She is wrapped in an ACE bandage style wrap (two actually) and I could leave room to slide it under, but the problem is that with her arm across her body I just can't get it tight enough. I'm also calling CPS tomorrow to request that perhaps they have very limited visitations because of the dangers involved with transportation. It's 30min one-way to the nearest town where visitations are held, so that's a significant amount of time in the car.

Thank you everyone for your help! This is one of those really tricky situations that I hope no one else has to experience!

Is there anyway to get the point across to the social worker that to go for visits/ unnessisary rides(non medical) it is indangering the child to be improperly restrained in the car seat(since there is no safe way to restrain her) And that visits should be posponded untill baby heals and can safely ride in a seat.

Just a thought.