Car seats and safety

Hi all your beautiful Yummy Mummies.

Car seats are an issue dear to my heart... and I want to give you all the opportunity to research and decide for yourselves what is best for the precious little bundle you are carrying.

In our country the safety standards are incredibly low. We are lead to believe that the car seats sold to us are the best protection for our kiddies.

So many of us forward face our babies as young as even 6 months even though Plunket recommends rear facing till 1 years old.
Overseas the story is different. Sweden has the lowest fatality rates for Children worldwide... they recommend rear facing till 4 years old. In the US they are changing the law to rear face till 2years.

I will attach some links so you can look into this yourselves.

www.carseat.se This is the site that I purchase my car seat from. It is really informative. And no I am not advertising or earning anything for this... I am just a Mum who wants the best for our kiddies.

http://www.bumbles.co.nz/products/Radian-XTSL-Car-Seat.html This link is for a product you can buy in NZ...   It is highly recommended by lots of Mums.

There is also a forum specifically about rear facing here on oh baby.

Congratulation of being the Mummy of a little tummy bundle. I love being a Mummy!

Oh I hope so Aethalia... I really don't intend to scare...
I just wanted to educate to give Mums the option to investigate before they are too busy with their little bundles.

Thanks for the Support Aethalia,

Agree with you Alley-cat. It's good to get that information out there, so parents are informed. Before my brother told me all about rare facing and how much safer it is - and about the cheaper car seats, I was completely oblivious. The government needs to make it more of a priority to get it out there.

I had a friend who front faced her baby as a newborn (this was 7 years ago). This was a S&S seat and she didn't read the instructions. I hadn't known about it either as I was only 17 at the time. But now I know how completely dangerous it was.

Good info, alot of people really need to be more aware when it comes to car seat safety....

My almost 3 year old is still rear facing, and will be for as long as possible. I got my seat from www.carseat.se as well, I would def. reccomend them!

Lillybets Quote
" Before my brother told me all about rare facing and how much safer it is - and about the cheaper car seats, I was completely oblivious. The government needs to make it more of a priority to get it out there. "

Like you I too was oblivious. It was my Mother who drew my attention to the issue of rear facing.
My little girl is a Special needs baby too, so I was very aware of her need to remain rear facing. As she has very little head control.



Edited by Georgiegirl

Georgiegirl you make a valid point about the difference between 18kg and 25kgs, however I have looked at what the weights of a child would be at a predicated age and made a decision from there.

I just had a another look at the charts and the age at which a boy would reach 18kg ranges between 3-7yrs with 50% at 18kg by 4yrs 10months. For us with our DS being such a long lean baby sitting on the 5% mark for weight it would take an extreme change of growth rate for him to outgrow the seat before he was 5 due to weight.

For your piece of mind the age at which a boy would reach 25kg is between 5-10yrs (50% by the age of 8) so you should have no problems making it to 5 with the Britax

I know that for those with children on the other end of the scale the seat might not reach the desired 4 years, but for those with kids on the lighter end of the scale it is alot cheaper than alot of the other ERF seats, I think I paid $350 on sale, which might make it a better option for those on a tight budget, but still want to do the best they can.

Of course it could be a hard decision if you wanted to purchase before baby was born but we like alot of people I know used an infant capsule to begin with, so hopefully by the time they need to move on from that you have a good idea of their predicated growth.

Having said that if we could get everyone rearfacing to even just 3yrs that would make a huge improvement on current practises.

I turned my son ff when he was 1 and he is alot happier in his carseat now. I did do alot of research and that was the decision I came to.

I think its great to bring this topic up on this thread as we need to get the information out there to parents before they buy there seats. Especially from places like baby factory/baby city, where the majority of employers don't know anything at all about the carseats or carseat safety.
How many parents research the perfect colour scheme for the nursery, or the nicest pram out there. All of which is important, but SO is safety in the car.
In a small child ie under 2-3 if they are involved in a crash they are more likely to sustain upper spinal/neck injury, as there heads fall forward, while the body is restained in the carseat. Not good!
Look for a carseat that rear faces over 15kg! And that allows you to use all the strap heights on the carseat!
Also check that they will fit in your car.
There are some decent carseats that allow you to rear face till 16kg, that are $200 to carseats that will cost $590.
So preggy mums, look into extended rear facing.
My boy is in a brio, and is happy as! He can see perfectly fine and loves looking at everything going by.

I don't think it's a matter of Plunket etc making the knowledge available that simply gets parents to choose a carseat that ERF. The cost is also something HUGE to consider. I had to buy two carseats, and went for SnS Omega which RF till 12kg - even on sale it was $600 for both. My girls are FF in them now and have been for about a month. But I needed somewhere that we could use finance (in my case, Mum's Farmers card) as paying off 2 in the space of a short 3 months (on layby) just wasn't possible at the time. We don't have any stockists around here that do the Cosco either.

I know about the online stockists Georgiegirl, but personally, I would rather see and look at something I am paying big bucks for. Plus needing somewhere that I could use finance - I don't have a credit card, so had to rely on my parents. I also needed to make sure they would fit in our vehicle that we had at the time. So there's so much more to it than just having the knowledge.

My children's safety is paramount, and I have done the best possible within the limits I have, and that is what is important. So more than people just looking at ERF, they need to look at getting the best carseat possible that they can afford, even if it DOESN'T last until 16+ kg RF. I totally agree that RF is better than FF, but I also understand that sometimes it just isn't possible and therefore it's better to do the best you can.