I recently received a phone call from my sister that is a new mommy. She and her one week old baby were out running some errands and she was using her new travel system, specifically the stroller, for the first time. She called me because she could not get the infant car seat out of the stroller. She was in such distress, that I went up stairs and pulled my infant car seat out of the closet and lugged it outside to fit it into our stroller (we have the same travel system). Clearly something was not lined up properly and had gotten stuck. As I pulled and tugged on my infant car seat in the stroller trying to give her suggestions of how she might get her infant seat to release, she was getting more and more distressed. After about twenty minutes of trying all sorts of things to release the infant seat, aside from kicking it, my sister was ready to give up and call her husband, she was almost in tears. I gave her one finally thing to try and amazingly it worked. She gratefully hung up so that she could get her baby, infant seat, and stroller back in her car to head home. I on the other hand was a little distressed. While I was poking and prodding at my stroller and infant car seat, I realized how dirty they both were. The stroller had dried coffee all over it (thanks to my husband) and the car seat had sweat marks left by our son (even though he has not used the infant seat for over a year). I was determined that I needed to get both pieces of baby gear cleaned up and ready for our daughter. While I had washed the seat cover and inserts for the infant seat several times, I had never washed any of the fabric parts of the stroller. Removing the “machine washable” parts required a screwdriver, some muscle, and strategy (since I would have to put it back together!). After about an hour of pulling, tugging, and unscrewing, I finally got all of the “machine washable” parts off both the stroller and the infant seat. All it took was the gentle cycle on our washing machine and some fan assisted drip drying, and our infant seat and stroller were clean and ready for the arrival of our baby daughter. What a relief!
