Car seat for newborn / taxis

[Cyas]

Hi there,

I’m currently looking into buying a travel
system pram for our baby due in the autumn. We don’t have a car and we have no friends around us with kids so no idea about what’s needed. We’ll need a car seat to take her home from the hospital and any taxi rides after that - does anyone have experience doing this?

i read about isofix bases, are they compulsory or is a seat belt okay too? Do taxis normally come prepared / equipped for transporting babies / kids?

thank you!

Can't offer advise about taxis I'm afraid, but some carseats can be strapped via seatbelt OR isofix. The system I used actually the isofix base wasn't supposed to be used for the first 6 weeks.

I would really recommend that you go to a shop like Smyth's or something and talk to the carseat experts there. They are really very well trained and have a massive knowledge base on the kinds of carseats available

If you are using it in multiple vehicles a seat that attaches with the seat belt is far better, I didn't have a car either and used a lighter infant carrier at first - we then bought a car and a car seat that stayed permanently in the car at around 8 months

Seatbelt car seat will be fine as you can’t guarantee the taxi will have isofix clips.
if an isofix base is needed that is totally impractical for transferring between cars( and really expensive.

just make sure you know how to do the seatbelt correctly- I became a master at it 🙂

Definitely a seatbelt one. We just have the seat that clips onto the pram base, which makes it really easy to (for instance) get a train somewhere then taxi at the other end.

I've been looking into car seats too for baby due in Autumn! I chose to use the fixed base since we've (just!) got a car and it lets us clip the car seat in place. But without a car I'd have ditched the base since I found if a bit of a faff to install, and just used the seatbelt instead.

I would get a belted one. As others have said some car seats provide both options now. My Isofix base (and I'd assume most others) is very bulky and heavy and not something you want to be carting around with you - you would usually install them in your car and leave them in place, they just provide a quick way at securing and removing your car seat. Most newer vehicles do have an isofix point but every car has seatbelts so you can't go wrong.

The avionaut pixel pro can be belted or placed on isofix (we are using it with just belt) It's one of the highest rated for safety and it only weighs 2.5kg so it's also one of the lightest. We've got one for our baby who is due any day now.

We had a travel system for DC1 and we didn't have a car. We just had the car seat that was part of the pram travel system. We used the seatbelt to strap it in to taxis/relatives cars etc.

Thanks so much everyone, that is super helpful 😊Looks like just getting a standard one we can use with a seatbelt will work better for use with taxis / rental cars. I just wanted to double check that there isn’t some regulation that says to only use isofix bases.

thanks again 💜