Help! Is my carseat ruined? TMI Alert!

[merianne16]

We have a Britax Marathon seat. My 18 month DS gets violently carsick (that's a long story for another post) and on Saturday night we had a terrible incident. He threw up so much he was literally sitting in a puddle inches deep because it was straight liquid. The carseat straps were completely saturated in several spots. I've read before that you shouldn't get the straps wet and I've always sponged them clean but what now? Is the seat still safe even though the straps have been saturated with liquid in multiple spots? I'm fine with buying a new seat if that's what's needed but I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars unnecessarily either. What do you think? Thank you!

[KDsMommy]

Uggg, I'm so sorry you have to deal with that! Hopefully one of the experts will chime in, but I do know that you can purchase replacement straps from Britax, you do not have to replace the entire seat.

[flashy09]

I was just going to say the same thing. It's probably easiest to order the new harness.

http://www.britaxusa.com/store/detai...ckle-set-black

I don't know if that's the right color, but it's a link to the store and a black harness that will fit the Marathon G3

[Percycat]

We had this happens years ago -- DS is now 10. It was an awful mess, but we were able to clean the seat. Our marathon was obviously an older model. We carefully removed the seat cover and unthreaded the harness and soaked in our laundry sink. We hosed down the base and worked diligently to reassemble. I think we got everything put together correctly -- although it was tedious rethreading -- and used the seat for many years after the incident.

FYI, it may help to take a series of photos as you disassemble the seat to help you figure out how to put everything back together once it is clean.

Sorry you have to deal with this on top of a sick little one. I hope DS gets well soon and no one else catches what he has.

[queenmama]

You're not supposed to soak the straps as it voids the warranty (it ruins the flame retardant), so you definitely need a new harness.

Lara

[kep]

Yes, you can totally hose it off, Nature's Miracle the seat/foam, and order a new harness. However, I may or may not have just replaced the car seat when this happened to us years ago with Roto virus. I got a good deal, and it just wasn't worth it to me to deal with that amount of yuck.

[merianne16]

Thanks for your help everyone. I've ordered a new harness set and thankfully we have a cheap Cosco seat to use until they come. I was able to totally clean the rest of the seat and it's as good as new. Thank goodness he's not actually sick with something germy- it was just motion sickness!