Car seats and prams- feeling lost please help

[Needtolearntwins]

Hi Im 18weeks pregnant with what we think are DCDA twins- due around Christmas/early Jan. We have a Mercedes V-Class 7 seater and I have two older children.

With my two singletons we just had a maxi cosi but used slings 90% of the time and used the car seat adapters for the pram a bit in the early days.

I think its going to be a bit of a different ball game with twins. We are pretty set on either the mountain buggy duet or the Out n about double nipper for a pram (though the out n about is hard to get here in Germany), neither of which I think you can use car seat adapters for and I don't think I will be able to carry two capsule car seats anyway. So in light of that I have been looking at the swivel stay in car type.

We don't plan to do much driving at all in the first couple of months as I my husband will be off work so can do the school runs and in Germany the midwife does all the appointments at home. Also I can Park close to my house and im not in a flat so I don't need to go up stairs.

I have read some of what @BertieBotts has written about car seats (thank you). So I guess what im asking is it mad to go for a fixed seat strait away with twins, and will I regret the option to not be able to carry them in the car seat.

Also as an aside does anybody have experience with configuration of a 7 seater car- I was thinking 1 twin in the 2nd row with a older child and 1 twin in the 3rd row with an older child, but will it be really faffy to get a baby into the 3rd row should I just put them both together in the second row?

Thanks for reading all this I will also post in the car seats forum.

This doesn’t really answer any of your questions but I had a donkey for my twins and maxi cosi seats. The donkey is absolutely huge with car seats on and I had many awkward situations where I thought I was making my life easier by popping somewhere with just the seats but then couldn’t fit through the door etc. I bought a very cheap uppababy vista double for when I only wanted to use the car seats and that made life much easier.

You could get definitely get car seat adapter for two car seats for the nipper double.

if you still want a maxi cosy seat you can get the maxi cosy swivel infant seat the base of which can pair with both the infant seat and a next stage seat

https://www.maxi-cosi.co.uk/car-seats/pebble-360-pro2

Sorry link didn’t work!

I used to carry my twins in their car seats in and out of places lots. As it was easier to carry 2 car seats than 2 newborns. You can put a car seat on the ground to open and close car and house doors. Also carrying 2 newborns with no head control is difficult. So I would carry them in their car seats in to and out the house, playgroups, nursey drop off ( for older DD), relatives/friends houses etc. As if I didn't carry them in the car seat I had to do 2 journeys, which meant for example leaving 1 in a village hall playgroup on their own whilst I put the first in the car. I did this till around 8 months old. As by this point they got too heavy and as they had good head control by this point I could carry one on each hip

Thank you @JessicaPeach yes I must say the width of the donkey put me off though it does look a lovely pram in all other respects.

@businessflop25 thank you for the info and link, I will look up the car seat adapters as I did find them useful in the early day for quick pop journeys.

@Donimo That is a really good point about being able to pop them down when getting in and out of the car, thank you. I dont really fancy getting the pram out every single time.

There is a really good Out N About group on FB that is very active - its called Out N About Buy Sell Chat i think. Loads of twin mums on there, so you could ask what others do there as well. As far as I knew, you cant put two car seats on a double nipper.

Im not a twin mum but I do have an uppababy vista. You can pick them up second hand so cheaply - they really don't retain their value. £150 or so? Its rubbish as a double buggy when DC are in the seats due to the configuration options but with two bassinets or two car seats, it would probably be ok for you. You can also used to be able to trade in an uppababy to get £150 knocked off a new out n about - i cant find the website link now so maybe they've stopped the offer whilst the OnA v6 is brand new but you could ask on the FB group as well.

I found the maxi cosi car seat that someone linked above to be really poor. The inserts have a strict limit and if you have a small baby (like i did and which is more common with twins anyway), then they will be very unsupported when the insert has to come out. I used a FB group called Bump to Booster Car Seat Advice but I would look at the Avianaut Pixel Pro if you want an infant carrier. So supportive and the lightest seat on the market. You can buy separate swivel bases for the car if you want 360 spin feature. Or the avianaut sky, which is a seat that stays in the car but lasts until they are 125cm tall.