How do you make sure you'll never forget the baby?

Sobering post on hot-car deaths by Erin Manning.  

Every year as many as 40 children die this way. Most of the children are under the age of two, still buckled up in car seats, which have to be in the back seat and which sometimes, in the case of the youngest victims, are turned to face the back of the seat. Much of the time, the child was not left in the car purposefully (which is obviously a bad thing to do, even if the parent only intends to be away momentarily), but was overlooked somehow.

Many of the cases involve the kind of change in parental routine that's easy to understand. A father might not usually be the one who drops the baby off at the sitter's house or the day care--but today he is supposed to. A stay-at-home-mom always goes to the grocery store alone while Daddy watches the children--but today the eighteen-month-old asked to come along, then fell asleep in his car seat on the way there. Are all of these cases fatal? N0--and that's one reason why we can maintain the comfortable illusion that it only happens to one kind of parent: the bad kind. We never hear about the cases where mom and dad enter the house or the grocery store and realize five minutes later that the infant or toddler is missing.

The one thing that most parents don't want to accept is the one thing that could save children's lives: it could happen to anyone.

As I wrote in the first comment, no denial here:  I always read these stories with the horrible knowledge that I might be the sort of person to make such an awful mistake.  I know all too well what it's like to run on autopilot.   

The other hypothetical that I worry about is arriving at the gym with all the kids, late for swimming lessons, and Mark and I each taking some kids, and each of us thinking the other one has gotten the baby out of the car.

 I might seriously consider buying one of the alert systems she links to in her post.   For now, I think I'll vow never to unload groceries before unloading the baby, and I'll commit to wearing the empty baby sling when I drive as a reminder that I'm supposed to put a baby in it after I park the car.

Comments

[MelanieB]

I'm like you. I always think: there but for the grace of God....

[Christy P]

We have joked before about how slings are baby forgetting prevention devices along with being carriers.

[Kate]

I'm with you..that could so easily be me. Except that the fact that this sort of thing scares me makes me a person who has to check her kids whereabouts every 5 minutes, so it probably won't be me. :-)