A very sad story.

A mother has shared her heartbreaking experience on why you should never let you child sleep in their car seat. Lisa Smith's daughter Mia was just one-year-old when she failed to wake up from her nap. The toddler had fallen asleep in her car seat and suffered positional asphyxia, an often lethal condition which causes a person to stop breathing properly when they are sitting in a certain position. According to Scary Mommy, Lisa received a phone call while she was at work saying that her daughter hadn't woken up. She and her husband both knew about the dangers associated with allowing a child to fall asleep in a car seat, but their child minder, unfortunately, did not. The RSA released a comprehensive list of ways to keep your child entirely safe in their car seat earlier this year. The safety measures include the following:

• Take time to get your child comfortably strapped in.
• Make sure the seat’s harness or seatbelt is correctly adjusted for your child.
• The harness or seatbelt should be quite tight.
• If a harness is being used in rearward-facing seats, it should be tight enough so that only two fingers can fit between the top of the child’s shoulders and the harness but your fingers should be unable to rotate (turn) in that position.
• If a harness is being used in forward-facing seats, it should be tight enough so that only two fingers can fit between your child’s breastbone and the harness, but your fingers should be unable to rotate in that position.
• clothing can affect how snugly the harness fits, so you should use blankets instead of bulky jackets in the winter. This makes sure that the harness is making contact with your child’s body and you should check this before every journey.

Each car seat has different instructions for insertion into the car, so you must read the instructions carefully before attempting to fit it in. According to the HSE, by law, "all children under 150cms in height or 36kgs (79lbs) in weight must use a child restraint system (CRS) suitable for their height and weight while travelling in a car or goods vehicle (other than a taxi)." If you want to read more about car seat safety, you can visit the HSE website here, or the RSA handbook here.