When did you move your LO into their forward facing car seat?

[AlmondFrangipani]

I know all the advice but just wondered when everyone actually did it. We've got a 10kg 9 mo who hates his rear facing car seat. Tempting to change him into the other seat but holding out as long as poss!

When he reached the max weight of the infant car seat at 15months. We also used a dummy a lot.

How mind-bogglingly, unbelievably stupid to deliberately not choose the safer option because of 'internet santimommies'.

Let's spell it out. You use a car seat for your children because of the chance, remote luckily, that you might be involved in a serious crash. In a head-on collision at speed, a forward-facing 9 month old wouldn't stand a chance. Physics, not sanctimony.

A lot of people in the UK don't know this. I found out about erf seats via a mumsnet 'sanctimommy' and having looked at the evidence I'm bloody glad too.

As for money, of course that is an issue for some. Until last year we had a car without airbags because that was all we could afford. That made it more likely we would all be badly injured in a crash, but I didn't go round arguing that only sanctimonious twits say that airbags are a good idea. And if you have a car that fits an erf seat (most do), and can afford the 1000s a year that it costs to run a car, then I reckon 120 on a car seat (if that's what they now cost) is also likely to be within reach.

I have been posting about rear facing seats for all the years I have been on Mumsnet, and I am always shocked that the reaction is often anger rather than being (like zoemaguire) bloody glad to have found out. Many parents seem to assume that if they were so much safer then the government would have done something about it. When I was small, babies were put in carry cots on the back seats of cars. They died in collisions, so eventually , many years later, car seats became law. There will be a time in the future when all small children will have to be rear facing I am sure, and just because our government is dragging its heels, is no reason to bury one's head in the sand about it. Have a look at the films on www.rearfacing.co.uk anyone in doubt about why we need rearfacing to be law here.

Hear hear helly and zoe :)

DS is 3.8 and he's still RF. DD is 15mo and we'll be keeping her RF for as long as possible.

I don't think the prices are "extortionate" for the quality of seats. DS loves being able to get a great view out the back window as he's so high up compared to a FF seat.

"How many fatalities in car accidents among children under 5 are there in the UK? I have no idea how much of a risk it actually is."

308 children 0-4 died in car accidents in 2012. (The table doesn't divide that group into pedestrians, car users etc but gives that data as groups separately.) It also doesn't give the number of significant injuries that occurred but didn't end in death, the number of which I'd expect to be much higher.

Link: www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/ras30-reported-casualties-in-road-accidents (Table RAS30062)

Our 2.6 yo twins are rear facing and will be until they grow out of their Cybex Sirona seats - but I don't know anyone else with ERF seats (in real life) - all my friends, NCT group and all the twins club (so about 20 parents in total) went ff as soon as they could and we often get comments like its the strangest thing in the world to keep RF after about 12 months.

I forward faced my dd at 12 months, buT I never knew the implications of doing this. I wasn't educated about what could happen upon impact. Now I am and I regret putting her in that position.

Thank goodness we never had a crash.

If I ever went on to have another child, I would RF them for as long as possible.

We bought a £220 ERF seat for DD. It was worth the £20 per month we put away from her birth to her actually needing it.

I am so glad to see and hear people discussing ERF seats as without this site and those who are advocates of it, I would never have known. The fact that manufacturers are now able to supply them at a slightly lower price is testimony to the fact that they are vecoming more popular.

It also doesnt help that a lot of people see turning your LO forward facing as a sign of development. This really couldnt be farther from the truth. A forward facing baby is at great risk of internal decapitation and death in a high speed collision.

To pass "legal standards" forward facing seats have to withstand crashes of up to 30mph.

I got a cheap ff seat once DS1 outgrew the infant seat as we didn't have a car at the time so there was no point in getting a really expensive, hard to install rearfacer to use occasionally.

You're right Think. People do seem to see it as a milestone. Most odd

I think if it is so much safer then people in the UK need educated about it.

Yes - and retailers as per someone's post but ... we knew about it over 15 years ago. A fairly cursory google nowadays on seat safety will tell you what is safer, and why.

We've just put 1yo DD in the Cybex Sirona in my car. We have a Kiddy ff seat for DH, which we will use when we can't cram her into the infant carrier any more!

She is too small for the Kiddy seat though, no matter how desperate people might be, you couldn't use it yet. The impact shield was up to her neck! She is 10kg and about 65th centile for length, so not tiny.

Our problem was the length of both of our ds.ds1 was moved into his ff seat at 9 on the not because he was too heavy but because be was far too long . With feet squashed against seat and head above back which isn't safe or comfortable. I think we will have to do something similar with ds2 as at 5 months he's already scrunched in but he needs to be heavier before he moved up

Cybex Sirona are fabulous

Buttercup it is possible to keep them rear facing in an ERF seat which has a much higher back. Legs are irrelevant as they bend at the knee to make LOs comfy.

Buttercup the next stage rf seats are not like the baby seats, they are designed for older, taller kids. Someone upthread kept her kids rf until 7 years old!

My elder dd is nine, we found out about rf when she was ready to move to a forward facing seat, which we'd just bought, I think she was about 18 months or so at the time, so that is over seven years. That is an awful lot of lives that could have been saved in that time. It really upsets me that babies are still being put into ff seats. We were in Sweden earlier in the year, it was really nice to see all the rf seats in cars. (Here, when we were pulled over for a routine police check, the PC was rattling dds car seat, he really thought that we had put it into the car the wrong way round, as he had never seen a small child rear facing).

It was me whose 7 year old is still rf. I would post a pic of her in her seat if I had one handy. DD1 is nine and only moved into a ff seat 18 months ago. (My children are light though, weightier children would stop sooner, but would still easily fit until 5).

Both of mine stayed in the baby seat until about 13 or 14 months and then went into a RF Britax Multitech. Due to DH's height, and therefore driving position, we could only fit one RF seat in so DD stayed in this until she was about 3, when DS needed it.

They are both now in Kiddy Pro seats that had the impact shield rather than the five-point harness although they both now have just the seat belt.

I also drive a Volvo and safety was a big consideration when buying it.

I am slightly obsessed with car safety.

I don't doubt that ERF seats are safer in a crash.

However, shock horror, sometimes I choose the option that makes DD happier or more comfortable over the option that makes her safer. I do this when I think the risk of injury or death is very low whereas the risk of her being uncomfortable or miserable is high. So for example I keep her warmer than the SIDS advice says, because she is clearly too cold and will not sleep at the "recommended" temperatures. Same applies to RF car seats. We travel by car rarely, usually in town at slow speeds, and she hates RF. I decided the additional risk of injury in a crash from being FF was outweighed by her clear dislike of being RF (and the additional risk of crashing if she is yelling).

Many ERF devotees seem to think that if RF is safer in a crash then that makes the choice obvious. I'm saying there are other factors to take into account, and sometimes those may outweigh crash performance.

Oh and I live in an area where money for a ERF seat wouldn't be a massive issue for a lot of people but I'm still the only person I know that had one, so I think saying that they are expensive is a bit of a red herring.

'devotees' makes it sound like a cult.

It's your choice. Like seat belts used to be.

ERF info

My dd is 2 and a half and in ERF be-safe seat. I am the only person in real life who I know rear faces though, my in laws think we are very odd.

I'm pregnant with number two and whilst waiting for my 12 week scan I was really pleased to see that they were promoting rear facing seats on the tv in the hospital waiting area. It was advertising, I do appreciate that, but you wouldn't have seen any promotion of ERF to a mainstream audience a couple of years ago.

It also doesnt help that a lot of people see turning your LO forward facing as a sign of development.

I really don't get that one. It's not like it actually involves any ability on the part of the child (or baby in some cases ).