“I Couldn’t Get the Car Seat Off the ISOFIX Base”. No One Could Have Prepared Me For the Audacity

A real post-birth moment I wish I had prepared for.

There’s a version of new motherhood I’d pictured, dreamily, the soft-focus one you’re basically sold everywhere.
Cute pyjamas.
Cosy feeds.
Warm baths.
Recovering with nice food, baby snuggled on my chest like a sleepy postcard.

That isn’t what happened.

My son’s first midwife check-up was my breaking point, which considering the lead up is both surprising and unsurprising. And it wasn’t because of the appointment itself… it was because I couldn't get the car seat off the damn ISOFIX base.

But let me back up.

The Anxiety No One Tells You About

No one explained that after birth, your brain can turn into a 24/7 alarm system.
I’d just been through a labour that almost became an emergency c-section. I hadn’t slept for 72 hours. Breastfeeding wasn’t going the way I’d hoped. Every time I wasn’t physically touching my baby - even just going to the toilet! - I could still hear him crying.

I checked his breathing constantly.
I worried he wasn’t getting enough milk.
I didn’t have the picture-perfect freezer stash of meals ready to go.

Normal stuff.

And then we had to leave the house.
In August.
In that heatwave of 2020 where the UK felt like it had moved closer to the sun.

The Car Seat Battle

I strapped him in, already fully stressed because his chin kept falling to his chest and that “off” feeling was plaguing me even though I didn’t have the language for it yet.

I was sweating.
He was screaming.
We were late.

By the time I parked at the midwife clinic, I was shaking.
I pulled the release handle on the ISOFIX base.

Nothing.

Pulled again.

Nothing.

My newborn was crying, I was trying not to cry, and every second that passed made me feel like I was failing at yet another thing.

Why hadn’t I studied this car seat…!

I genuinely thought it would “just make sense.” But when you’re postpartum, exhausted, hot, overwhelmed, and scared… nothing makes sense.

I ended up phoning my mum in the car park, half-panicked, half-embarrassed, fully sobbing because I simply could not work out how to lift the seat off the base.

Eventually I figured it out. One point for me, a zillion points for postpartum brain fog and sleep deprivation. Anyway. My point is, I’ll never forget that moment.
That feeling of, “How did everyone else just magically know how to do this? And why didn’t I?”

And That’s the Part No One Prepares You For

The car seat wasn’t the problem.
The ISOFIX wasn’t the problem.

It was that I’d gone through the biggest event of my life, and then been handed a tiny human and a pile of safety-critical equipment I was expected to understand, in 30° heat, on no sleep, with hormones doing backflips.

And I didn’t.

Most parents don’t.

And that’s exactly why SeatSmarts exists.