On her first day back to work after maternity leave, Rebecca Boyer asked her husband, David, to send her “hourly updates” on baby William’s first day away from her.
One of those text updates was a photo of William snoozing in his car seat—and what Boyer calls her “nagging wife reply” to her husband may have saved the infant’s life. When she saw the photo, she noticed the straps of the car seat were too loose and the chest clip was sitting too low on William’s body.
She asked her husband to fix it; he did, and within 15 minutes, he and his son were in a car accident. A woman pulled into traffic to turn left and David didn’t have enough time to stop and collided with her SUV at almost 50mph. “My precious little bundle of joy was so well restrained in his car seat, THAT HE DIDN’T EVEN WAKE UP,” Boyer writes in a Facebook post that has gone viral since she posted it last month.
Her husband broke his foot in three places and dislocated three toes and their car was totaled, but William received only “a minor jolt—so insignificant that he was able to continue on with his nap,” Boyer writes, pleading for other parents to insist on car seat safety even if they feel like it makes them “super annoying” and “overprotective.”
Her post, in which she shares tips about rear-facing seats, five-point harnesses, unapproved car seat accessories, and making sure to discard any car seat that has been in an accident, has been shared more than 34,000 times.
“I will just never forget the feeling I had when I pulled up to the scene of the accident and saw with my own eyes that they were OK,” Boyer recalls to Today.
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