WHEN Zoe ten Broek left her house with her 10-month-old son Jaxon in July 2020, the mum thought it would take about 20 minutes to drive to her parents' place.

But two minutes into the journey, the then 21-year-old, from Melbourne, was involved in a collision which left her baby fighting for his life in hospital.

Speaking to 7News, the mum explained how Jaxon suffered a fractured skull, a brain bleed and a torn neck ligament in the horror crash.

However, she believes it could have been even worse if she hadn't placed him in a rear-facing car-seat.

Zoe said: "If I hadn’t known to keep him rearward facing, he definitely wouldn’t be here the doctors have told me."

After strapping him in, Zoe also did a "pinch test" – where she tried to place a couple of fingers underneath the seatbelt – to check if it was tight enough.

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Zoe doesn't remember the crash itself and only has a faint recollection of being moved to an ambulance.

After spending a night in hospital for her own injuries, Zoe was finally allowed to see her son – but wasn't able to give him a cuddle.

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"Nothing could have prepared me for seeing my little man in that massive bed with so many tubes and wires everywhere. His poor face looked nothing like it used to," she said. "Everything was swollen, from his eyes to his fingers, to his poor little toes."

During his one-month stay in hospital, Jaxon had four major operations and fortunately won't have any permanent side effects.

The mum said: "Not a day goes by where I don’t think about what life would be like if we weren’t so lucky.

"When I got pregnant I entertained myself with reading and planning things online. For whatever reason I dived rather deeply into car safety and really educated myself,” she says.

“I don’t know why I specifically obsessed over car safety, but I’m very very glad that I did. If it wasn’t for my own research I would have had zero reason to do extended rearward facing."

Zoe is now bravely speaking out about her experience in the hopes that the Australian government will reevaluate their car safety guidance, which states babies can be placed in forward-facing seats from six months old.

In the UK, parents can legally have their children in a forward-facing car seat after 15 months.

How to safely fit a carseat:

• Make sure the seat itself is fitted as securely as possible, with no excessive movement.
• You must only use a child car seat if your car’s seat belt has a diagonal strap, unless the seat is either specifically designed for use with a lap seat belt or isfitted using ISOFIX anchor points
• You must also deactivate any front airbags before fitting a rear-facing baby seat in a front seat and not fit a child car seat in side-facing seats.
• And make sure the seat's buckle is clear of its frame – because otherwise it could snap open if you have an accident.
• With babies, harnesses should be pulled tight, with no more than two fingers' space under the shoulder straps at the collar bone.
• The harness buckle should be as low as possible, to keep the lap section of the harness across your child's pelvis, and not resting on his or her stomach.
• Check the harness and chest pads are adjusted according to the instructions

For more real life stories, this woman always knew she was adopted but she was stunned when she met her biological mum & discovered she’d kept her SIX other siblings.

And this single mum who only earns £16k STILL managed to pay off her debt in 18 months.

Plus this mum had an unplanned home birth in her bath and paramedics rush to her side – they were amazing but made a BIG mistake.

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