I recall vividly sitting in my doctor’s office after a tense moment spent trying to locate the heartbeat of my seven-month-old belly bump. Breathing a sigh of relief when she found it, I said, “When do you stop worrying about them? When they’re in college?”

“When you’re dead,” she said. And that pretty much sums it up. You start worrying about your kids before they’re even born, and you stop when you die.

In between, you drive yourself a hundred kinds of crazy worrying about everything from which brand of diaper is softest on their little tushies and how old is too old for a num-num to how much to sock away for college to whether she’s going to marry that jerk. Let me at least help you worry a little less about what baby Bump is going to mean to your driving life.

Don’t wait until the nurse is OK’ing your car seat as you leave the mat ward with newborn twins to think about where you’re going to put them. For the first year of your babe’s life, he or she or they will be strapped into a rear-facing car seat in the backseat of your vehicle. I cannot stress this enough — you do not want to be driving a two-door car.

If you currently have one, sell it. I mean right now. Go sell it, then come and finish reading this. I’ll wait. Trust me, not only will it give you a hernia every time you have to get Bump in or out, but you will end up resenting the car for it. It makes no difference how much you love it now, you will hate it by the time she’s six months old. Let’s go car-shopping.

Four doors are good; sliding doors are even better. I know, I know, you’re having one kid, not a litter, but don’t write off a minivan just yet. Perhaps have a look at the Mazda5. In a crowded parking lot, sliding doors can be your best friends.

2012 Mazda5 GT (Photo: Matthieu Lambert/Auto123.com)

Those rear-facing car seats are huge. They also sit practically horizontally in your backseat, so don’t be fooled into thinking an SUV is automatically your best bet. You may be better off in a sedan. Take the car seat with you when you go test-driving, and get your husband/baby-daddy/life partner/mom/whomever to install it on the passenger side in the backseat while you check out how much of the front passenger’s legroom disappears.

You’re going to be riding everywhere with that thing (the seat, not the baby) for a year, and you will have a love-hate relationship with it (because it’s awkward and heavy, but very handy in the months before Bump can sit up on his own). You do not want to have a love-hate relationship going on with your new car too. You want a love-love relationship.

I've still got tonnes more to share with you. Hang on as part II will be coming your way shortly.