FORWARD FACING CARSEAT

[Klara]

Sorry guys - this has probably been asked before but i have no idea how to search by topic! Bit dim with computers [roll eyes]

Ds2 is now 7 months, nearly sitting up and at 9.5kg getting very big for his maxi cosi backward facing car seat. Now that he can crawl (fast) and is trying to sit up - is it too soon to put him in the forward facing car seat? in many ways it would make life so much easier

klara

[MKG]

Where are you located? In the US the law is 1 year and 20 pounds for a forward facing seat. Check the manual that goes with new seat. You can get a convertible seat that is larger than your infant seat that will face backwards now and you can change direction later.

[hunkermunker]

He should be sitting up for at least half an hour before you put him in a forward facing one.

[hunkermunker]

I mean able to sit up for at least half an hour - he doesn't have to sit up for half an hour before each time he's put in his car seat!

7m is too young IMO. Necks still too snappy

[lemonaid]

It's much safer to be in rear-facing - look at the crash test footage at the bottom of this page . Official advice in the UK is that you can move them to forward-facing once they can sit up unaided and are over 9kg (so your DS2 isn't quite there on the sitting up yet) but that preferably you should keep them rear-facing until they are above the maximum weight for the rearward-facing seat or the top of their head is above the top of the seat.

There are very few convertible seats available in the UK, MKG -- only one that I came across when looking into this last year, and no one actually seemed to sell that.

[Klara]

thanks...to be honest I was worried about the whole floppy neck thing. Their heads are soo heavy in relation to their bodies at this age.

It's also the thing that always annoyed me about the plane when we came home to the UK (we are in Holland) as they wanted him to sit on my knee facing forwards at 3 months...only after throwing a wobbly and explaining to them how floppy his head was would they let me put him in his rear facing car seat strapped in to the plane seat - was much nicer for him too as he slept the whole flight.

Lemonaid - don't think I want to watch the footage...will take your word for it!

Oh well - he will just have to continue to squeeze into the rear facer for another few months...not much room left - he's very tall!

[lemonaid]

It's not grisly or anything, just that in the forward facing seat the baby-dummy does that standard forward-and-back thing that we all think of as the typical thing to happen in a carcrash. In the rear-facing seat in an identical crash the baby-dummy literally hardly moves at all -- you get the impression that, actually, he'd probably be able to sleep through it. It's logical, when you think about it, that it would be that way, but I found the visual iamges of the two tests really helped it sink in what a big difference there was.