Carseats to fit different cars in my family

[deliajh1]

I am having some serious problems with working out what car seat to get

I have a W reg Punto, my dad has a 05 plate Zafira and my mum has a 10 plate Zafira.

As we will all be taking my child out in our cars we need to get a carseat that either works with all of these cars plus my friends cars or get a base which is easy to move between cars.

Which would you recommend and if it is the base option how easy are the bases to remove as we also use our cars for cubs so cant have a base just wedged in the car all the time.

What age is your child?

Sorry forgot to put this in... My baby is due 8/1/16 so I'm looking at 0+ carseats at the minute

Ok! Congratulations!

Well in that case I would just go for an infant carrier without a base. People normally leave the base permanently in the car, maybe buying two bases (one for each car if they are a two car family). But it sounds like you are going to be using a few different cars, so it's going to be too expensive to buy a base for each car and you've already said that you can't leave a base in permanently anyway. If you're going to be taking the base out each time then that's going to take longer than just fastening the infant carrier in directly with the seatbelt. Bases are just for convenience anyway, using the seatbelt round the seat is just as safe.

The Maxi Cosi infant carriers are very popular, but I had a Britax one and liked that better (I did use a Maxi Cosi CabrioFix for a time that I had borrowed from a friend). The Britax one was bigger (longer up the back) and wider at the top (so more space for the baby's shoulders as they grow taller). My DD2 is very petite and actually didn't outgrow the Britax BabySafe by height until she was 2 1/2!

The two main things to look for with belting an infant carrier into the car is that short seatbelts could be a problem and also if your car has seats that slope backwards then that could mean the infant carrier is tilted quite 'upright', which isn't good for a newborn. But the 'tilt' is more of a problem when using a base, because the angle is rigid. If you belt the seat in there is a little room for manoeuvre to alter the angle of the seat slightly.

If you are not bothered about having a baby car seat that you can carry around there are a lot of good birth to 4 years car seats that are better value for money than buying an infant carrier (called a Group 0+ seat) and then a bigger toddler (Group 1) seat. I have had a Britax First Class in the past, this is used rear facing to 13kgs like an infant carrier and is then turned to face forward for 13-18kgs. Alternatively I have just bought a Joie Stages for my mum to have in her car, this one is better because it can be used rear facing right up to 18kgs and then can also be used forward facing up to 25kgs as a high backed booster.

We have a maxi cosi pebble. We use it with an isofix base, but it can also fix with seatbelts (which is what our nanny does). I know they have changed the design slightly recently, but it might be worth considering.