A Little Moore: Car Trippin' It : Parenting outside the guilt

Part of the reason Durham sounded so appealing to me is that we can hop in a car and drive to see family. Sure, the flights from Seattle to Indiana ended up taking up a good 12 hours of our day, and sure, the drive is close to the same amount of time. But, we aren't reliant on when the airlines decide we can come and go. We can just come and go.
With that in mind, driving 10.5 hrs+ with a two year old scared the tar-nations out of me. I think I just gave myself away because obviously, judging by the fact that I just used tar-nations in a sentence, we did it! At the last second, Ruthie and I broke the ice, packed up and drove to Indiana (and brought back a little southern Indiana slang to share with these edu-eecated Duke folk.) It wasn't bad at all! And we had a great time visiting with Mimi, Papa, Nana and Dadaw! The hardest part was mentally preparing.
Here was my debacle: Ruthie is still rear facing in her car seat. Before you judge me, see why we are doing this. She's about 4 pounds away from the maximum weight to rear face in her particular seat. I'm a little weird with car seats, but don't get me wrong, I judge no one for turning their child's car seat around earlier. Unless you are my sister, then I'll make you late coming home because I had to fix a car seat in your car to keep you from thinking it is unsafe to continue to rear face and get all weird about it to make up for the fact that I may or may not have accidentally dropped said toddler from a chair - just a hypothetical situation here.
I could easily turn her around and not feel too guilty about it. However, if I'm honest, here's my real issue - I didn't breast feed as long as I wanted, I didn't have a drug free pregnancy or birth, I couldn't even hold her in until full term, I haven't only fed her organic free range food foraged in the local woods (just mostly,) and she knows every Disney show in the western culture. With these let downs in mind, I felt determined to keep her rear facing until she turned 16, or met the maximum weight on the car seat. It's the one way I could actually follow through!
Preparing for this long trip got me thinking, am I doing this for her safety, or because I feel guilty that my body and will seemed to fail her in other promises I made to myself about parenting. I shouldn't parent based on pride, but based on her needs. Should I turn her around so she is more comfortable for the car trip? I wanted to ensure I was doing this for her, not me.
I thought it through and talked it over with Danny. Is there a real reason to turn her around? Ruthie hasn't complained a bit, and she is still within the weight to rear face. I remembered that after giving up breast feeding too early, I had made myself a promise; if I ever want to quit anything, give it another week (or try) and then decide. This cuts out any decisions made out of haste, and ensures they are for the right reasons. So, Danny and I made a deal. We'd give it a try for the trip, and I could always turn it around at a gas station if need be. And, we did it! She didn't complain even once, except when she was too tired and I couldn't draw her a picture of a tiger while driving. I'm fairly certain that drawing and driving might be more dangerous than texting and driving.
Why am I saying all this? Because someone should tell Chrysler that they should continue to make wood paneled station wagons. Wouldn't that fix this problem? They could ALWAYS face the back, and the wood paneling would be totally vintage. The 80's were on to something!
Also, and maybe slightly more importantly, as a recovering guilt-stricken person, it's important for me to parent outside the guilt. I struggle with three different forces in parenting: other moms, my own guilt, and our family's needs. Why is this even a struggle? I need to make decisions based on our families needs, not make decisions in haste due to what other moms think or say, or continuing with something out of pride just because I decided to do it years ago. She's rear facing now, and if I decide to turn her around next week, or in 14 years (more than that would be ridiculous, how would she learn to drive?) it will be because it is our family's decision, not because I'm winning some bet against myself.
Decisions are only going to get harder from here on out, and I need to get a hang of making decisions this way. If not, I'll be forcing her to be home schooled by myself because I had once decided to do this after watching a particularly convincing 19 Kids episode. We all know I completely love the Duggars, but I don't live in Arkansas, I would be really awful at teaching my own children, and the child needs a prom and a high school mascot in her life.