A mum whose infant son was left fighting for his life after sustaining a fractured skull in a crash has issued a warning to other parents about the safest way to use car seats.
Zoe ten Broek had been on the way to her parent’s house when she and her 10-month-old boy Jaxon were involved in a horror car crash.
The terrifying incident left her baby with a bleed on the brain and torn neck ligaments.
Zoe said Jaxon wouldn’t have survived had he not been strapped into the car, facing the rear of the vehicle.
The mum, from Melbourne, Australia, has been placing baby Jax in the car backwards ever since he was born, she said.
She said she had put the baby in his seat and done a pinch test on his straps before starting to make her way to her parent’s house, just like she had done many times before.
“Though this time we never made it there,” she said.
"Instead, the next thing I remember was men putting me in an ambulance and telling me that I had been in an accident.
Following the crash, 23-year-old Zoe was rushed to a hospital with a broken collar bone and minor concussion, according to The Sun Online .
Meanwhile, her son was airlifted an hour away to the Royal Children’s Hospital.
Zoe said the next 24 hours were an “agonising blur” with the mum stressing over whether Jax was going to be alone.
She said: "My parents went with him but I couldn't.
"I was wondering what kind of a state he was in because emergency crews weren’t telling me anything. It was that bad.
"I had thoughts running through my head like how bad is it? Am I going to lose him?"
Eventually, Zoe was discharged and able to rush to her son’s hospital bedside, to the “terrifying” sight of the boy hooked up to life support.
The mum-of-one said “nothing” could have prepared her for seeing her baby in a massive bed hooked up to “so many tubes and wires”.
Zoe said: "He had a swollen head and eyes and was all bandaged up.
"There was even a big sticker that said he had a piece of bone in his head removed.
"It was terrifying. It was really terrifying."
Doctors told Zoe that Jaxon had sustained severe brain trauma injury.
He had fractured his skull, which had resulted in a bleed and torn ligament in his back, she said.
While it was “touch and go” for a while, a number of weeks later, after four surgeries, she was able to take him home without any permanent issues.
The crash had occurred when an oncoming car had clipped the tyres of her volkswagen Golf, causing it to spin out of control and into the path of a third vehicle that T-boned her at 100km/h (60mph) “exactly where Jax was sitting”.
Doctors told Zoe after the crash of how young Jax wouldn’t have survived had he been facing the front of the vehicle.
"If you have already started forward facing your young child please reconsider,” she warned.
She added: "It is safest to keep your child rearward facing until they reach the forward-facing markers on your car seat.
"The research has shown time and time again that young children are very top-heavy and if they’re forward-facing, their head will smack forward and literally break their neck so they will be instantly dead."
She went on to explain that when a child was rear-facing, this didn’t happen as the car seat absorbs all of the impact.
"So, if young children get into severe accidents like this, they could actually survive it,” she explained.
Jaxon had recently had an MRI done and had been given the all-clear by neurosurgeons, Zoe said.
While he was developmentally behind in talking and was very delayed in walking, he was otherwise an average toddler, she said, and was thriving in all other areas.
"I’m very grateful I still have him in my life and I can still hear him laugh and watch him grow,” Zoe said.
