I’ve been feeling that special pregnant woman blend of “can’t quite breathe, can’t quite digest, can’t quite get comfortable.” The baby is moving around in a way that feels gross. Companionable, but gross. At this stage, I can tell the baby has BONES. When he pushes out from behind my ribs, it occurs to me once again how weird it is to reproduce like this. NO ONE should have access to behind my ribs.
The OB told me at my last visit that I need to stop going around blabbing to everyone that everything goes a lot faster after 30 weeks, because he says that point of view is “…unusual.” He says for most women, the last 10 weeks are the slowest. Oh. I’m trying to figure out how many first- and second-trimester women I’ve confidently reassured that things pick up speed later. Two million? Three? It is possible that many of them are greatly pissed with me. I didn’t mean to! I thought it was true! I find those earlier weeks so tedious and slow, but at 33 weeks I feel like things are going at a good clip, and the end is in beautiful, beautiful sight.
Which is good, because other things look a little grim. I tried to get the cloth cover off Elizabeth’s car seat so I could, you know, wash the barf off it, and I finally had to resort to reading the instruction manual. I’ll skip over the next part, which is where I go through every page saying, “Where! is! the goddam! part! about! removing the goddam cover!!!” and then spend five minutes complaining in a shrill, angry, panicking voice to Paul that every single page says, basically, “WARNING!! YOU ARE GOING TO USE THIS CAR SEAT INCORRECTLY NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, AND SOMETHING TERRIBLE WILL HAPPEN AND IT WILL BE COMPLETELY YOUR FAULT!!”
The first instruction for taking off the pad is to remove the eight Phillips-head screws from the back panel. That’s just wrong. WRONG. We chose this car seat because it’s the top-rated Consumer Reports convertible seat, but I think Consumer Reports needs to add a ratings column for ease of laundering. I’m all for safety, and I would choose the same seat again for safety reasons, but holy freaking crap, I couldn’t even get the screws unscrewed, and maybe that was for the best since there were about twenty instructions after that, including more warnings about how I would certainly put the seat back together wrong and it would cause SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH!! I resisted kicking the car seat, but I did “bump into it” on my way past so it would tip over. I tackled it with upholstery cleaner and a washcloth, and then I put it outside to dry and air out. But I am not what you’d call happy about it.
Edited for this correction: Tessie asked what car seat it was, and in looking up the details I see that we do not in fact have the top-rated seat as I’d remembered, though we have one of the top three. The seat we have is the Evenflo Triumph 5, and the top-rated seat is the Evenflo Titan 5, which, as an added bonus, is an estimated $40 cheaper than the Triumph (at the time of the May 2005 rating). But: the twins outgrew the weight limits on their infant seats before they were old enough to be front-facing, and the weight limit for rear-facing was higher for the Triumph 5 than for the Titan 5. (This might not be the case any longer–it was well over a year ago that we bought these, and all I can find now is “deluxe” versions of the Titan 5.)
Take the hose to it and give it a proper washing. :) If nothing else it will make you feel better. LOL
Don’t be coy! Which seat is it? We are looking for a convertible now that my daughter is too big for the infant carrier dealie. She will probably not graduate to the booster until approx. junior high due to her mother contributing the 4 ft 11 genes so this is an important purchase.
I have totally done the hose thing with our seat (poop incident) but if it’s more upholstery and less vinyl I can see why you went with the cleaner-and-rag method.
As a last resort…maybe rent a carpet shampooer? That totally worked for our pukey couch!
I don’t think it is unusual that you say the last weeks go so quickly–in retrospect, it totally felt like the last month and a half of pregnancy was like the down part of the roller coaster. Not that I wanted any more time to actually be physically pregnant–it just seemed that time whizzed by while I couldn’t get organized enough to get everything done that needed to be done before Owen arrived.
Luckily, the boy is still in his baby seat (the cover to which is easy to remove) and we’ve never had a barf incident yet. However, because I have now said this, as soon as the boy moves to the ‘big boy’ seat, you know he will have a throw up/blow out of epic proportions and I will have to figure out how to remove the cover.
Trena: Okay, so I have some agreement here! That’s exactly what happens to me: the pregnancy is long long long and it’s way too early to do anything for the baby–and then suddenly I’m out of time.
Tessie: It’s the Evenflo Triumph 5. It’s from their May 2005 car seat report, not from the more recent one that they have recalled the results because of a testing error. And now I have to go edit my post, because I see I have a correction to make.
Ah, yes. The removal of the cover. When Ben was a tiny baby, we had a cover that went over the car seat cover. I don’t know where it came from, it was a hand-me-down from my sister, but it was a life saver in many a diaper incident. Then when he grew into his first convertible car seat, it was the same as your experience. and I had to read the instructions EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I hate that car seat covers are so hard to get off! Don’t manufacturers know who and what will be sitting in them? Poopie diapers, bottles and cups of milk, fruit snacks of every color!
I’ve been trying to get the damn cover off the damn infant seat so I’ll be ready when baby comes. But I can’t get the damn thing off, damnit.
These past weeks are ZOOMING by for me. Where the hell did April go?
Ha! We have that same car seat for Darsie. Once upon a time, we had a puke fest and I couldn’t figure out to take the damn cover off so I ended up just washing it (as best as I could) on the plastic frame. Worked pretty well, as did copious amounts of Febreeze
Okay, I do have to agree, the last 10 weeks of a pregnancy crawls by for me!!
So you are very lucky if you feel like its going by fast. For me it felt like an enternity!
I have no advice about the carset cover, but I do know that it has to come off on the next carseat I buy! My little girl does the same thing when she gets carsick. No fun.
mmmmm brownies…
I think the last weeks go slowly, but they are bearable because the end is in sight. Looking back, they seemed to go fast, but a week and a half ago I would have said time was crawling…
Thank you for your blog! It was the only place online I could find any relevant info for removing the cover of this f- – – er! I can’t find my hard copy manual and can you believe Evenflo doesn’t post in online?! It saved me a night of searching for what sounds like would be very little help anyway, according to your account. I will start working on the screws on the back and see how far I get while watching a Friends rerun and having a glass of Merlot (don’t worry-my daughter isn’t nursing anymore and I’m not pregnant). At least her accident was only pee if I have to resort to hand scrubbing. Thanks again and good luck to everyone out there with new little ones on the way (and with the ones you already have)! Marcie
Marcie: I couldn’t find my manual, either, and I was mystified because I ALWAYS save those. Then I saw a note on some little piece of paper I did have, and it said something about the manual being stored INSIDE the car seat. It was behind the cloth cover (I think there’s a flap for access) and then behind a little plastic thingie. How very accessible!