When I went to Babies R Us a few weeks ago for a shower gift, I had glanced at the car seats on my way to the clothing section. I was amazed, and most definitely overwhelmed, at all of the options available. I knew that at some point I would have to look for a car seat, but honestly, I have just been too intimidated.
But since my shower is next week, I figured I’d better get our registry together. That is what forced me to put aside my fears and head over to Babies R Us on Saturday afternoon with our Baby Bargains book in hand and our hours of research fresh in my mind.
Little good that it did me.
The CPA came along to help but as soon as we were faced with the dozens of car seats that lined the aisles, all of that previous research went right out the window. Thankfully, we found a sales associate who was very knowledgeable and helpful and he gave us the low down. Basically, we had to decide if we wanted to carry the baby in a car seat, or if we were going to leave the seat in the car and carry the baby in our arms or in a sling.
If we’re going to use a sling exclusively, we don’t need an infant car seat per se, which babies grow out of anywhere between 15 and 32 pounds.
Instead, we’d go straight for a convertible seat. These seats can be used for newborns until any where between 40 and 80 pounds, depending on the seat. Obviously, this one would be used a lot longer and you’d definitely get your money’s worth, but it is stationary, meaning that you have to take the baby in and out of it, you don’t actually move the car seat from the car like you could the infant seat.
When the child outgrows his convertible seat, then you get a booster seat which looks very similar but is made specifically for larger children.
Hmm…. Such decisions. Can you see why I was confused? And with at least 10-15 car seats available in each category, it’s no wonder that we were overwhelmed. But the first thing to do was to decide between an infant seat and a convertible seat.
We figure that we’ll probably use a sling at some point but we’d also like the option of using a car seat as well. I’ve seen moms carry their babies in their car seats at church and it’s nice because they can sit the car seat on the floor and let the little guy sleep for a while before moving him. So even though it will cost us more money to have to buy an infant seat and then move to the convertible seat, it makes the most sense based on how we’ll likely use it.
So with that decision made, we tried to choose an actual seat. There are many brands available that range in price from $90.00, like this Graco car seat,
to several hundred dollars such as this Peg Perego seat for $274.
They all looked great, but before deciding on a particular seat, we had to figure out with what stroller we are going to use it. We could go for a travel system, which are quite popular these days, and that look something like this:
(Travel systems include the stroller and the matching car seat.)
But from what I’ve heard, you either love the travel systems, or you don’t. Some people say they’re big and bulky and hard to wheel around. Others love them because they typically look great and have lots of fancy features. Also, once your child outgrows the car seat, you can continue to use the stroller as just a regular stroller.
We liked the look of the systems, but the way we figure it, we’re having a winter baby and probably won’t be taking him out a lot for the first few months. By the time we start taking him places, he’ll be close to sitting up on his own which then allows us to look into more stroller options. Plus, we’d like to figure out just how often we’ll be using a stroller before we sink a lot of money into it. Based on that idea, we registered for something called a stroller frame.
It’s made to go with the infant car seat that we finally chose and at $70.00, it’s a reasonable alternative to the big stroller systems. Best of all, it’s light and easy to maneuver which was important for us.
And once the baby outgrows his infant seat and doesn’t need to recline, we’ll be better able to determine what we need based on how we use it at that time. I’m leaning towards this stroller though:
It’s the City Mini by Baby Jogger. Cool, huh? It’s got good ratings and is supposedly lightweight and easy to maneuver and at $250, it’s not a bad price.
So. After all of that, which car seat did we choose? The Graco Snug Ride 32. We picked it because it had good ratings (Baby Bargains) and it’s a decent price ($135) and we figure we’ll use it between six months to a year before having to switch seats. Not too bad, all things considered.
Shew – finally! It only took us hours to read up on all of our options and then another hour at the store trying them out, but we finally made our decision. That’s one more thing we can check off our list, which is nice.
Now on to cribs – I had no idea that buying baby stuff would be so hard!
Did you use an infant car seat? What do you recommend?
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