Traveling & The Car Seat

We just got back from our first big trip with Baby M-- airplane, hotel room, rental car, the whole enchilada. Baby M did quite well. He didn't cry at all on the airplane, although he didn't sleep either and was constantly climbing between our laps and the floor. Unfortunately, he also did not sleep much in the hotel room which resulted in someone brushing her teeth with diaper cream instead of toothpaste. Yech! Despite the fact that he was sleep deprived, Baby M maintained a relatively sunny disposition throughout the long weekend which included a rehearsal dinner, a wedding, a hike through the forest and countless meals where small town restaurants tried with varying success to accommodate 20 out of town diners.

In preparing for the trip I went back and forth on whether or not to bring our car seat. Most people I spoke with and most of the information I read online overwhelmingly said I should take my own seat. I heard horror stories about the vomit-covered, recalled, broken car seats being offered by the rental car companies. But there were two things pushing me towards renting a car seat: (1) My car seat was professionally installed in my non-LATCH vehicle. I'm not sure that I could get it out, let alone put it back in after our 4 day trip; (2) My Britax Marathon is huge and I hate traveling with lots of luggage. Even on my 3 week honeymoon to Europe all I took was a carry on bag. So we decided not to bring our car seat, but even so we still ended up needing to check our bags. Babies need a lot of stuff-- between our suitcases, stroller, baby and diaper bag we just barely had enough hands between the 2 of us to get through the airport. How does anyone travel with more than 1 kid? And take 2 car seats? I'm baffled. And it turns out my aversion to checking luggage is well founded, Horizon airlines managed to loose both of our bags. Eight hours later the bags showed up, apparently they did some sight-seeing in Portland.

We had reserved a car and convertible car seat from National and when we showed up at the counter the woman working there all but threw a blue Cosco Convertible car seat at me. The seat was covered with crumbs, but not disgustingly dirty. Still, I wonder how much time it would have taken to vacuum out the seat, I mean they vacuum the cars anyway, right? When I made the reservation the representative had assured me that although National, along with every other major rental chain, would not install the car seat due to liability issues, they would provide the car seat manual so that we could install it ourselves. When we asked for the manual we were informed that it was lost and that this was the only car seat they had, so we'd just have to figure it out on our own. Eventually, after about 30 minutes, we did and were on our way.

Really, it was not a terrible experience, but I wonder why some car rental company doesn't try to differentiate themselves as the "family friendly" car rental company. There are plenty of families traveling and with some states requiring car seats for kids up to 80 lbs there should be quite a few travelers needing child seats. I would definitely pay a bit more to have a certified car seat installer install a clean, functioning car seat in the car and have it ready to go when we arrived.