Car seat dilemma

[Cymru82]

Can anyone recommend a forward facing car seat. My baby is 9 months, so we're starting to research seats.
Any recommendations grateful

My DD has a Britax duo plus. It's been in my DH's car since Christmas. My car which is the one used most during the week and trips out with her, still has her maxi cosi pebble. She's 20 months old and I more than happy keeping her in it. She's not overly big, weighs about 10kg and definitely not squashed in it so not taking it out yet! Will only swap her over when DC2 arrives in 6ish weeks.

Please consider keeping rear facing for longer.

Hi, remember that just because they are a certain age it doesn't mean they're ready for a bigger seat. Don't move them out their infant seat until they've grown out of it either by weight, or if their head goes over the top. DD didn't grow out of her maxi Cosi infant seat until she was over 2 - she didn't meet the required minimum weight for the next stage until then. There's lots of car seat stuff on the products talk board. Which magazine and website have loads of good car seat advice, have a wee read.

Just wanted to add that even if your child hates their group 0 car seat and wails in it and you attribute that to not being able to see, the group 1 upwards ERF seats are in a totally different position so mean they can see so much more. My DS hated the maxi cosi cabriofix, cried whenever he wasn't asleep really, but is now almost 3 and totally happy in a britax two way elite (which incidentally as the name suggests can be used fwd or rear facing up to 25kg I think)

Waterrat you get a Mirror to put on headrest!

Bang. Bang bang.
Better keep banging my campaigning over last four years has finally starting to bring around change and I'll keep banging til forward facing seats arent the norm.

I'd be interested to know if the OP even knew about ERF prior to this so many people don't. Mumsnet educated me.

Whatever you go for, it's definitely worth having it fitted by someone who is trained to do so. I will let the MN jury decide who that might be...

FWIW, the extended rear facers are much higher up than the normal rear facers, so the view is far better. My child screamed her head off for 12 hours on a journey that should have taken 3 hours. The reason it took so long was all the stops we made to comfort and check her. She was in her maxi-cosi cabriofix and 7 months old. We moved her into a Besafe extended rear facer the next day, and she was fine. It wasn't the direction of travel that was bothering her, it must have been something else. She was 7 months old, she couldn't tell us what, though. From then on, she was ok in the car.

What I am trying to say is that until you have actually tried your child in an extended rear facer, you can't know that they would scream all the time. They have never known a different direction of travel.

If the argument you choose to use is to do with how likely you personally are to have an accident in any given set of circumstances, you could equally argue that a car seat isn't necessary at all. As they say, it's not you that you need to worry about, it's every other bugger on the road!

All car seats that are certified for use in this country have been rigourously tested to reach a certain standard. It just also happens to be the case that some exceed that standard by a greater amount than others.

For independent reviews, there is a lot of good information on the WHICH website. Of course here on MN, parents are happy to share their own experiences and information that they have been given, including their own reasons for the choices they have made.

I would also recommend kiddy. We have the infinity pro. Very easy to install.

Cymru82 to come back to your initial question 'Can anyone recommend a forward facing car seat?' the correct answer is and should be 'no'. Nobody should ever recommend a forward facing car seat to any parent whether their child is nine months or three years old. It is simply not as safe. A forward facing seat offers 60% protection in a frontal crash and a rear facing one 92%. That means that if 100 forward facing children are involved in a crash 40 will be hurt or killed. Out of 100 rear facing children only 8 will be hurt and none killed. Only one or two children die in car crashes in Sweden every year and those children are always involved in accidents that were so serious that it didn't matter which way they were facing. But in more common crashes at slower speeds Swedish children are rarely hurt.
The reason for this is that the bones in a child's neck are not strong enough to support their heavy head in a forward facing seat. In a crash their head is thrown forward with so much force that the spinal cord stretches far enough to snap leaving the child paralysed. In a rear facing car seat the back of the seat protects the neck and spine making these seats the only safe option.
So please Google 'Rear Facing' and find out what seats are available for your little one. At nine months you still have quite a few months left to do some research. But please don't rush into forward facing.

I have 3 children, who are and have all been, rear facing until 4 years old. I currently have a 16 month old rear facing and a 3 year old rear facing. My 9 year old is in a booster.

I agree with RearFacingToddlers. There is nothing safe with forward facing a small child. It has to do with physics and children's anatomy, not personal choice.

There is tons of factual information available to you on www.rearfacing.co.uk

The British Medical Journal recommends rear facing.
I quote hem here:
"Many babies are switched from a rear facing car seat to a forward facing seat at 9 kg (8 months of age for a boy on the 50th centile)
Excessive stretching or even transection of the spinal cord can result if a child is involved in a head-on crash while in a forward facing car seat
Rear facing seats are safer than forward facing seats for children under 4 years old
Parents and guardians should be advised to keep young children in rear facing seats for as long as possible"

You can read the whole thing here: www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b1994

It is not true that ERF (extended rear facing) car seats are few in England. Quite the opposite. England actually has access to ALL ERF seats on the market. They are ALL sold at the In Car Safety Center:
incarsafetycentre.co.uk/category/extended-rear-facing/

Several high street retailers also sell extended rear facing car seats, and there are several private retailers of extended rear facing.

They are not more pricey then forward facing car seats, that is unless you feel comfortable strapping your child to a washboard from ASDA with a small piece of cloth attached to it and calling it a car seat... (yes I'm talking about car seats for £25 and up)

The cheapest ERF car seat you can buy is the Joie Tilt (RRP £1oo) ,the Joie Stages (RRP £150), the Joie Steadi (RRP £130) all rear facing to 18 kg, that is the average 4 year old child. These are all belt fitted.
For ISOFIX we access to the Hauck Varioguard (RRP £180) and Joie Anchor (not released yet).

These are the affordable priced ones, but they are all better then any forward facing car seat you can buy.

The cheapest rear facing car seat that lasts up to 25kg (average 6 year old) is the Britax Max Way RRP £215.

And believe it or not, in car seats, you DO get what you pay for.
Like stated before they have all been tested to the same MAIN test in order to be sold, but some have gone through a lot heavier testing and passed, making them far better.

Also please read the FAQ section as it takes care of all questions you might have regarding myths of "my child can't see out the window" to the other common one "what about their legs?".

Happy car seat hunting and I hope you take at least some of this information into account when looking for your next stage car seat.

I'm very pleased that people 'bang on' about rear facing car seats, because I would never have known about them if they hadn't. The information does need to be shared and it's not a personal attack on people who have chosen ff.

When I was looking at car seats I just wanted to know the facts. I wasn't particularly interested other peoples personal choices tbh. I just wanted the safest seat for my child and when you look at the crash tests ff vs rf on Youtube it's a no brainer for me.

DS was in his infant seat until about 18 months - he was nowhere near 13kg by then but his head was at the top of the seat (I think he was between 25th-50th centiles for height and weight).

We got a Kiddy GuardianPro seat which is forward facing and will last until he is 12. He weighs about 15kg now at 3.5 years and it uses an impact shield until 18kg and then just the adult seatbelt. It is very easy to install and switch between cars which was an important point for us.

I did look at the Joie Stages but it had very poor safety scores in the rear facing position according to Which.

We have the Joie Stages and it's an excellent seat. Really easy to install (we have to move it from car to car twice a week) and comfy for my lo. It's not like a bucket face RF, it's much higher up so dc can see out the back and side window. My lo HATED her bucket seat and screamed every time she was in it but she loves the Joie Stages.

We got it online for £120.

lilyaldrin - I think Which has bad reviews of many RF seats which are not based on the crash tests. Someone knowledgable about carseats told me to ignore Which reviews about all RF carseats as they were not accurate at all!

The Joie Stages got, like most rear facing car seats, bad score on WHICH because WHICH is a consumer based testing.
They score a car seat 50/50 on crash testing and colour to put it frank. They are not something to go by when choosing a seat.
They can give a nice overview, but when you look at the fact that they scored the Joie "poor" because it was "hard to install", and the Joie STages installes the exact same way as an infant car seat without a base, that makes you wonder..... An easier install is hard to find...

WHICH is as I said consumer based, they use I think it is, 5? test families who test seats and it's up to that family if the seat is "good" or not. Then comes the crash test and here the Joie scored high on front impact, which accounts for over 80% of crashes and is what we protect the most from, and poorer on side impact, but so does any seat installed that way. It didn't score horrid, and it sertenly is far safer then any forward facing car seat.

Impact shield?....no................no.....no....!!!!!!

NOW THAT is a seat that used to be illegal for a while. ;)

I urge you to read about why a 5-point harness is what is recommended:
www.britax.co.uk/car-seats/why-five-point-harness-britax/five-point-harness-facts-figures

And why Britax STOPPED producing the impact shield, and why they didn't start it back up again when it became a "trend":
www.britax.co.uk/car-seats/why-five-point-harness-britax/history

I don't recall the Joie Stages scoring poorly on ease of installation (though some rear facing seats did) but specifically on crash tests in rear facing modes. I don't have access to Which anymore to double check though.

Here it is on which

It gets a poor score of 26% as a rear-facing Group 0+ seat. Front-impact protection is excellent but the side-crash protection is poor.

It's better when you turn the seat forwards for Group 1 and 2, although it's only average for safety in both of these modes, scoring 55% and 58% respectively.

I've noticed that some people who are very passionate about ERF seem to be defensive about all rear facing seats and won't consider that some are better than others That doesn't make much sense to me.

Is it possible to hire an ERF seat anywhere so as to see how DD takes to it?

Is that always the case though MoreSnow? Is a rear facing seat that does poorly in safety testing still going to be safer for a 3 year old than a forward facing seat that does very well in safety testing? How much safer?