How hard is it to adjust the shoulder straps on DS carseat??!!

[Northerner]

I have a maxi cosi priori car seat for my ds, as he has got a little taller I need to adjust the shoulder straps to the next notch. Being the unorganised mother that I am I can not find the instructions. I have been into my local mothercare and even with the instructions the staff were not sure how to do it. I was there for 32 minutes and I had to pretend that I knew what they were doing just so I could leave the store!

I have called maxi cosi and they are sending me a new instruction booklet, but can anybody give me any tips. There MUST be an easy way to do this surely???

No. Have one. Have the instructions. Nightmare job and am hoping ds will grow r e a l l y slowly so we don't have to do it again for a while. Fab seat otherwise, though.

go to the maxi cosi website and you can download pdf format instructions for priori sps and xp seats or click here to take you there with the speed of the wind!!

If you can't read pdfs, I can download and email them to you if you get tech to send me your email address

oh, should have said, once you get to the site, click on the union jack that's listed under international sites as the other one doesn't work!

Just had to do this - like you without the instructions and boy did I curse it!

We were staying with friends at the time and eventually got friend's dh to help me - he's good at this sort of thing.

Turned out that the easiest way was to unhook the LONG straps under the seat. I thought it wasn't possible, but if you press the "tightening/loosening" button, then you can get enough slack to do it. You can then pull the strap through its existing notch to the "front" of the seat and then feed it through the next notch and back down to its fixings. I had had such a fight with it that I decided to put it through the TOP notch and be done with it (but I was WELL overdue moving it and ds is fine with it in the highest notch).

Inititally I taken the SHORT strap (ie the one by ds's thighs, rather than the one that went through the notches at his shoulders) off its fixing and then threaded it through the higher notch in the seat cover. I then realised I couldn't get it throught the hole in the actual seat! Having said that, once we had worked out the "proper" way, it was easier to to unhook the short strap to sort out the twists that we inevitably got in the straps.

It's difficult to describe, but I hope that helps.

Thanks. I will begin battle this evening after work!

Has anyone managed to take the cover off to wash it? After 2 years (!) I thought I ought to but after struggling for half an hour I gave up; if I re-read your instructions JanZ in the morning (I've had too many glasses of wine this evening!) will they help with removing the cover do you think?

Lindy - yes, because that is what I managed to do first! Althugh it'll probably be easier to "unattach" both ends of the strap (ie the short and long ends). I think I managed to do it the "hard" way.

Thanks JanZ - now that I'm sober (!) I'll print out your guidelines & have a go!