A mother who lost her infant son in a car crash wants to warn parents about using infant car seats incorrectly. Holly Wagner’s 11-month-old son, Cameron, sustained fatal injuries during an accident after being placed in a front-facing car seat. She didn’t know she was doing anything wrong at the time and no one advised her of the mistake, even after posting a picture of her son on Facebook.
As reported by Yahoo! News , the American Academy of Pediatrics have updated their guidelines and advise parents to place infants and toddlers in rear-facing seats until they are two years old or until have reached the height and weight recommended by the seat’s manufacturer. This was information Wagner was not aware of and no one had told her any different.
The picture she posted of Cameron shows him in his seat, facing forward and his head flopping over because he was asleep. When the accident occurred in May of last year, her son was in his car seat when her car, driven by her boyfriend at the time, ran a stop sign and was struck. Cameron was ejected from the car seat, went through the windshield, and landed in a ditch.
According to Wagner’s blog , her baby was dead at the scene but he was resuscitated and sent to the hospital. He underwent eight surgeries the first three days there and was in the ICU for a total of 16 days. She choose to remove life support because Cameron’s brain was damaged beyond repair and his body was no longer absorbing nutrients; he was starving to death.
As ABC Channel 15 News reported, Wagner, who lives in Colorado, wants people to warn parentsif they have a child facing the wrong way in a car seat.
“If your child is not secure in his seat, it could be fatal. I make sure to educate as many people as I possibly can so they don’t have to deal with what I’ve had to deal with.”
Not only are some parents and grandparents using car seats incorrectly, but they are putting children in them dressed in puffy coats. Big puffy coats give too much slack for the harness of a car seat and children can be ejected because they are not restrained properly.
Children shouldn’t be left alone in a car, even if they are restrained properly in a car seat. As the Inquisitr reported, a Connecticut man was charged with criminal neglect after he forgot his son in a car seat on a hot day, resulting in the child’s death.
[Image provided by Holly Wagner]
