Obligatory “this didn’t happen today” disclaimer. This happened a few years ago when my eldest was a baby and we were living in the Goldfields in Western Australia - think desert.
tl;dr at the end.
As first-time parents my husband and I were pretty useless with the car seat and constantly faffed about when we got the baby in and out. The car seat was in the centre of the backs and we always grabbed him from the rear passenger door as the buckle for the tether strap was on that side. After the baby was born there had been a few times we had gotten distracted and forgotten to lock the car thanks to the aforementioned faffing, so we started “pre-locking” the car with the remote as soon as we got out, even if a door was still open. Our car at the time (Hyundai Sonata) would allow this, and then once all doors closed it would arm the locks.
This solved the problem of accidentally leaving the car unlocked but I started to worry that we would accidentally lock the keys in the car, so I began dumping my gear on the boot (trunk), hitting the lock button, then attending to the baby. That way I knew the keys were safe outside the car and the car would be locked once I closed the door.
So on this one particular day I go out, grab some lunch on the way home, and roll up home around 1pm. It was mid-December, so not the height of summer, but it was definitely at least mid-30s (95F). For some reason, probably laziness, I open the rear driver’s side door to get the baby out instead of the rear passenger side, but can’t reach far enough over to loosen the side tether strap. I get onto my knees in the back seat to reach over and the door slightly shuts behind me. I awkwardly get the baby out and try to open the door and it won’t open. I figure I’ll just pull it all the way shut and then I’ll be able to open it. I pull the door shut and see the indicator (blinker) lights flash as the car arms itself.
I have a tiny moment of dread remembering that I’d locked the car with the remote, but figure I will just manually unlock the door and get out.
The lock won’t budge.
At this point I have a flashback to the scary advertisements on tv about how the heat in a locked car rises the most in the first five minutes so it’s never safe to leave your dog in the car and I look down at my 6-week old newborn and think, yeah you’re fucked. I then figure, well maybe it’s because I’m in the backseat, so I go-go gadget my short stumpy arms to reach the front door and that one won’t unlock either. I think, this is fine, this is fine, the central locking button surely will override this, I’ll hit that. But I can’t reach it so I dump the baby back into the seat, which at this point is a massive, unbudging obstacle of stress in my need to reach the central locking button as this enormous baby seat is blocking the gap between the front seats and I can’t reach the damn button from the side so I just rip out the head rest out of the driver’s seat and contort myself over the seat, jammed up against the roof, wriggling until I can finally reach the fucking button AND NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS.
And at this point I accept that I am locked INSIDE the car with my baby in the hottest part of the day like a fucking idiot.
We lived in a complex of units so luckily for me I was parked in a shared lot, but there was no one around so I immediately start Bear Gryllsing this shit and figure, well I’m breastfeeding so he’s not immediately a goner – I’ve got wet wipes in the car, I’ll strip him down and blow air on him and let him suck every bit of moisture out of these nips and we’ll survive that first five minutes of pre-heating in this oven and I’ll figure out what the fuck I’ll do after that while we slow roast to death together. That was probably about 10 seconds of panic before I thought to beep the horn. Clearly being faced with imminent death all my senses super focused like a fucking genius mamma ninja and I had the presence of mind to remember that the night before a car alarm had gone off in the middle of the night which my husband and I had ignored so I thought, make the beeping random so that apathy towards car theft doesn’t keep people from coming to investigate. So I start riding the horn and then giving it short, sharp bursts and just descend into a hysterical horn blowing mad woman until finally the creepy neighbour we always see smoking out the front wanders out. I see him and frantically point to my keys that are sitting on the boot next to my bag of Hungry Jacks (Burger King) and he confusedly unlocks the car and I fall out thanking him and trying to swallow the urge to drop to the ground and kiss the burning bitumen ala Kevin Costner kissing the shore in Prince of Thieves so I just sort of try and explain what had happened but he just backs the fuck out of there and never looks me in the eye for the rest of the time we lived there.
Everyone I’ve told this story to says why didn’t you break a window? It didn’t even occur to me. Afterwards all I could think was thank FUCK it wasn’t my old car (Mitsubishi Mirage) – that car the horn didn’t work without the key!!
tl;dr: I inadvertently locked myself in the car with my newborn baby by opening the back door, pressing lock on the key remote, leaving the keys outside of the car, and accidentally closing the door behind me while I got my baby out, causing the car to lock and, unbeknownst to me, unable to be opened from the inside.
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