Forward Facing

At 2 years and almost 2 months, Zig and I finally made the decision that it was a good time to turn Emmy around and start forward facining her. I will try not to be too preachy when I write this post, because this is a totally positive expereince for us and I don't care what you chose to do either way. We chose extended rear facing for many reasons, but the biggest reason was because it was truly what was best for our Emily and our family. Plus I watched way to many videos that showed the way the impact of a crash is distributed through the body of a child rear facing vs. forward facing. Emily is petite and her safety was far more important to us than her reaching any other milestones. Honestly, this was just not a milestone we wanted to rush. Was she ready earlier, probably. We knew that we wanted to rear face for at least 2 years. I am so happy we made it past that. And I can honestly say, that if we were not expecting another baby in less than 2 months (OMG), we probably would have kept her rear facing longer. My car would just not allow her seat to rear face anywhere other than the middle seat, and with 2 seats next to eachother, things would have been tight. It's funny because I received a lot of criticizing questions and comments about our decision. I got a lot of "it seems cruel to make her sit like that, she must be so uncomfortable sitting like that, or she must be so bored" Fact of the matter is, she was not uncomfortable and she was not bored. When her legs got longer, she just crossed them. Kids are super flexible. Heck, she is still sitting with the crossed half the time when I look back at her. And there is not a single documented case of a child's legs, hips, etc being injured or broken during a crash while rearfacing, yet there are plenty of cases of spinal, head and neck injury in forward facing children. And to the bored comment, she doesn't know any differently. So no she was not bored. I don't judge those who choose to forward face earlier, so it always irriated me that people chose to judge me. Even though I think people make up ridiculous excuses to turn their children around earlier. To me, it was about Emily and Emily alone. By the way, the AAP does recommend rear facing to 2 now, just sayin. So is extended rear facing for everyone. Maybe not, but I do encourage people to research the topic a little bit before making the decision that is best for them.

So how is Emmy doing with it. She thinks it's great. She tells us all the time that she really is a big girl now. And she likes that she can see us. She tells me countless times on our 15 min drive home from school "I see you Mommy." So she is doing great and we could not be happier with our decision!