You had a baby and you need food! What do you do with the baby in the store? If putting the car seat on top of the cart seems tempting (or if you’ve done it in the past) this blog is for you.

Putting an infant seat on top of a grocery cart isn’t safe because:

• Your infant car seat is only supposed to click onto its base. The bars on the grocery cart aren’t the same size and shape as the ones on the base, so it can damage the locking parts on the bottom of the car seat that keep it safely on the base.
• An infant car seat can make a grocery cart (even one with a dock) top heavy and it could tip over. From 2008-2012, emergency departments saw over 107,000 children under 5 for shopping cart related injuries. 14,700 of those were babies under one!

Here are four ways to grocery shop safely with your baby:

1. Wear your baby! Put them in a wearable baby carrier so you can have your hands free to push the cart.
2. Put the infant seat in the big part of the cart with the carry handle all the way back in the “stabilize” position. The car seat isn’t correctly reclined, so always keep an eye on your baby to make sure their head doesn’t fall to their chest.
3. Dock your car seat into a stroller with a large carry basket and use that to shop!
4. Order ahead and use grocery pick-up! Target, Aldi, Safeway, Kroger, Walmart, Wegman’s (my personal favorite - shopping there is fun), Whole Foods, Albertsons, Publix, Sprouts, H-E-B, and more offer grocery pickup.

Guest Post by Britney Schroeder, CPST (@buckleandlatch)