Where to check your car seat before or after security

You can check your car seat when you check your bags and receive it back to you with your bags at the end of your trip. Or you can check it at the gate just prior to getting on the plane and receive it back to you on the jet bridge with your stroller. This is your choice. Either way has its benefits. For my family we will be checking our car seat from now on at the gate just prior to entering the plane. We just had one of the worst traveling experiences when we checked our car seat with our luggage. The short version is our plane was several hours delayed (already waited over 4 hours and it just kept getting pushed backed farther and farther). We rebooked our returned flight home for another day. A request for our luggage and car seat had been put in when we rebooked. We went to baggage claim. Every 45 minutes either me or my husband went to speak with someone in baggage claim explaining to them of our need for our car seat so we can leave this airport. Our pleas where on deaf ears because nothing happened, we left 4 hours later with nothing, no baggage, and no car seat for our one-year-old. They finally told us we can deliver it to your hotel. Fine except we have a one-year-old and you have our car seat. We rented another car went to our hotel and rented a car seat from the rental car agency. Never again will we check our car seat with our bags.