Help! Advice for best 1,2&3 (or 1&2) Mamas & Papas car seat

[JessicaChamberlain78]

Help!! I'm fortunate enough to have been gifted £85 of Mamas & Papas vouchers by my work and have been saving these for when my baby girl had outgrown her travel systems rear facing car seat.

That time has now come but I am bamboozled by which car seat to get from Mamas & Papas (their brand or not). (However, it must be a car seat that can be fixed by seat belts alone.) I don't want to compromise on safety if I can't get a good one from there but finding a car seat is far more overwhelming that I thought...!

Is the '3' purely the booster seat?? In which case would a 1&2 be better? (Taking her to what age approx?)

Any and all advice would be very gratefully received 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

[JellyTipisthebest]

I would get a joie stedi or stages and keep your baby rear facing for as long as possible. You need to check the the seat fits your car. If you have a bit more to your budget I would buy something else from m and p and go to a different shop that has a bigger range of seats. Belt fitted rear facing seats go upto 25 kg which will be at least 4 might be 6 years old.
You want to go to an independent shop to get a good range and advice. Where are you, someone one here will be able to recomend somewhere

[AliceMum09]

Yes to everything that Jelly said!

Also Group 1-2-3 seats are not the best choice for a baby coming out of their infant carrier. They tend to have little or no recline, and often you have to decide whether to have it reclined or not before you fit the seat in the car and then it can't be altered mid-journey.

I'd go for a Group 1 (9-18kgs) seat, or some of them cover Group 2 too (up to 25kgs). And definitely rear facing. You need to look at the growth charts in your daughter's red book - if she is above the 50th centile for height or weight you definitely need a seatbelt fitted rear facing seat because these (apart from the Joie ones) go up to 25kgs. But you will have to go to an independent retailer for that. ISOFIX rear facing seats are pretty widely available now, but they only have a limit of 18kgs, so for a heavy child you'd still need to buy another harnessed seat once they reach 18kgs to bridge the gap until they are 4 1/2 and ok to sit on a high backed booster.

My daughter went into a Britax Multi Tech II rear facing seat when she was 11 months old and she's still rear facing in it now at 3 years 8 months old.