My 2 and a half month old hates his car seat! As you can imagine this can be very troublesome as it pretty much confines us to the house and distances that his pram on foot will allow. And when I say hates, I mean absolutely loathes. It usually starts with some crying and whimpering as you strap him in, but by the time you get around to the drivers seat after latching him in place in the back seat he's turned into a full on scream. its horrible to listen to, its the kind of scream that you'd associate with him being in pain. He turns red, has real tears, and stops breathing for a couple seconds until he starts choking. we've tried toys, we've added a lining to his seat, we've sat with him in the back, and we've installed a mirror so that he can see us in the front. The crazy thing is that once in every 4 or so trips he's perfectly fine as he falls asleep and will stay asleep until the car comes to a stop or slows down. Usually these are longer trips that don't require stopping at stop lights. And when he does start having his meltdown, it stops the minute you take him out of the seat.
Its a Peg Perego car seat, we haven't tried a different one yet but will do when we find one to borrow. Whenever we ask our friends with babies what they think they tell us that the car seat was their baby's favorite place and they'd fall asleep almost immediately. While we're happy for them, you can imagine it doesn't really help us any.
We thought it might be the fact he doesn't like being constrained, but he loves being swaddled with his arms at his sides. We thought maybe he was just uncomfortable but he will fall asleep sometimes so that can't be it. He has been through a couple "traumatic" times with is circumcision and his shots (he screamed bloody murder at both), could he be associating those nasty events with his car seat?
If anyone has any advice here we're all ears! Thanks.
