How do I secure my infant in a rear-facing child safety seat?
Once you get the rear-facing safety seat at the proper angle, which for a newborn is halfway back and for an older child is more upright, you put the child in buttocks-first so that the baby's back is carefully lined up along the back of the rear-facing safety seat. That not only makes the child safer, but also makes the child more comfortable. Next, you want to make sure that the rear-facing safety seat straps are in slots that are at shoulder level or below shoulder level for the rear-facing position. The reason for that is, when that rear-facing safety seat tilts in a crash, the harness straps keep the baby's body lower in the safety seat and prevents the child's head from shooting out of the top of the rear-facing safety seat, particularly if it rotates quite a bit down, which it's allowed to do. Once you have the straps in the correct slots, you put the straps on the child's body and make sure that they're snug. You adjust the harness, and then attempt to pinch the fabric of the harness between your fingers, just as if you were trying on a skirt or a pair of trousers to see if the waist fits you properly. Take a pinch. If you can pinch fabric between your fingers, you need to snug the harness more tightly. After you get the harness snug enough, push the plastic retainer clip, or harness clip, or chest clip, it may be named any of those things, until it's at armpit level. This means it will be high enough to help position the shoulder straps properly on the child's body, but not too high, so that the child's neck will not fall on the clip, should the child fall asleep. You want to adjust the angle of the rear-facing safety seat so the child's head lies back naturally and the back of the child's head is faced towards the front of the vehicle, not so flat that the top of the head is faced toward the front of the vehicle.
