I had twins recently, and I've been thinking about how the hospital handled the car seat test. My water broke 4 weeks early, before we had a chance to install the ones we'd bought. My husband doesn't drive, and I had to be transferred to a hospital 250 miles away. When it was time for discharge, I had no car seat to test. The hospital gift shop sold car seats for about $175.
Since we had neither a car seat or a car, and we weren't going home right away (we were in temporary housing nearby), I planned to refuse the car seat test. The hospital refused to release my son without a car seat, and I didn't want to spend $175 for a seat I couldn't use. We had no friends or family in the area with kids, so we couldn't borrow a car seat.
In the end, I was discharged without my son, and Hubby and I went on the Target Run From Hell to find a suitable car seat. This was right after the big Graco Recall, and it was a Saturday night, so it was only by pure luck that we found one. Our son passed his test the next day, and was released that night.
The experience left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn't the lack of a car seat so much as the fact that we were being coerced into buying an expensive one. The seat we bought was about $130. My local hospital gift shop sells them for $55. The only suggestion we got as an alternative was buying a seat for the test, then immediately returning it.
How does your hospital handle the car seat test for families that don't have one?
