Cars.

I was about 8 months pregnant when I experienced what could have been a disastrous car accident. I was with my mother and father. My dad was driving and we just picked up some food for dinner. Upon leaving the parking lot, the south bound traffic was nice enough to leave enough space to leave the parking lot while they were stopped at a red light. So naturally my dad waved to thank them, and pulled out just enough to look for northbound traffic. Unfortunately he wasn't expecting a southbound car in the northbound lane. Did you know that if you are making a left hand turn, and an accident occurs, you are always at fault? Even if the car that hits you is on the wrong side of the road?

Anyway, that was nearly 3 years ago.

I don't consider myself to be Catholic. My father was raised a Catholic, but my parents didn't really raise me to follow any particular faith. I want my daughter to be informed enough to follow whatever faith suits her, so we started sending her to church with her father's family. Every Sunday, my daughter, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother go to church. It's a 20 minute drive, and this past Sunday it was snowing.

The mass they attend starts at 9 am, and at 9:30 (far to early for them to return) the neighbors across the street come and knock on the door. What I didn't see through the window (which I can see from the couch) was that they had my daughter with them. Her father answered the door, and the first thing I heard was "where was she?" Then a bunch of mumbling as my daughter runs to me with an expression on her face I had never seen before. He thanked them, and proceeded to tell me that his family was waiting for a tow, because the car is in a ditch, and that they hadn't made it to church.

It's not uncommon to wind up in the various ditches here, the roads are narrow, and if you have to pull to the right slightly for any reason, you're going in.

Brushing it off as no big deal, I was only mildly annoyed that the neighbors knew something about my daughter before I did. Her father, thinking the same thing, immediately got on the phone. We were informed that his grandmother was in an ambulance because of a pain in her right shoulder, that the car had actually rolled off the road, and was totalled. My daughter had been looked at by a paramedic before she was sent home with the neighbors, unscratched, and relatively unfazed by the events that had taken place.

I'm a little paranoid when it comes to car seats, and just recently pushed myself onto my friends showing them how to correctly adjust their car seats, and I have to say I've never been so relieved. The car seat clearly did it's job and if I could find it, I would definitely recommend it (seems they don't make it anymore). It was a Cosco brand convertible car seat (one of their more expensive seats) with all the cushions and whatnot, it was black and metallic blue in colour.

Monday evening I went on a quest to find another one. With the intention of buying the exact same model, I bought one that appears to be similar and received excellent reviews, though I did go with the Safety First brand, seeing a Cosco wasn't available locally. The new seat is brown faux suede with light blue plush accessories. It hasn't been installed yet, since we are now minus one car, but upon adjusting it, and seating my daughter in it to fix the straps and test the sizing, I'm content. I can only hope that I'll never find out if it holds up like the last one did.

I'm grateful that no one was seriously injured, though great-grandma is still very sore. The more I learn about the event, the more I feel sick to my stomach. I've seen the prints in the snow from the car, and I've seen the car from a distance. Grandma hit her head on the window, and came home picking glass out of her hair.

My advice? Read your instruction manuals for your car seats, and check them regularly to see if they need to be adjusted. Shoulder straps should come from shoulder height, they should not feed chair from the middle of the back. The head rest should be behind the head. It seems like common sense, but as kids have growth spurts, and you buy new clothes, a lot of people forget that the car seat has many different set-ups.

Also, take care of yourself, I feel at this rate I'll have my first heart attack at 26, if I haven't has a series of minor ones already.