Is my baby not fitted in her car seat correctly?

[Listen2YourMother]

What am I doing wrong? She sits up, I can’t stop her, her head won’t stay against the back of the seat. My friend made a comment about it not being fitted properly but according to the cosatto manual everything is as it should be. Any advice? It’s a cosatto all in one rotate if that helps

Can you provide proof of its poor safety score please?

Well the old model was recalled in 2022 due to buckles failing. Mine was one of them.
Cosatto as a company only test to UK standards, nothing beyond or extra.

You need to look up your seat and watch the
installation video from cosatto, if in doubt contact cosatto directly. You've got lots of people here telling you conflicting things, I'd only follow manufacturer's instructions. I have 3 kids still in carseats my youngest is only 2 but I still wouldn't feel best placed to comment on what looks right on someone else's carseat. Don't risk guessing with a carseat.

Agree. Also, could it recline a bit more? She looks v upright

Some of the advice you've had here is well meaning but incorrect.

What's happening is that this seat is reclined, but she's a normal curious 7mo and wants to sit up. Unfortunately you must use the reclined position for rear facing in this seat.

Do raise the headrest if needed, (this is likely-it should be sitting just on her shoulders) and check the guidance on the inserts. But the main thing is that when you put her in the seat, get her to lie back by tilting her hips forward and then hand her something over her head so she will look up, reach up and therefore lean back. If there is enough slack in the harness, you can fully loosen it and do it up first and then do the toy offering, then quickly tighten them while she's lying back.

If you just try to tighten the harness with her sitting normally, they always go for the buckle, you'll pin her into the sitting position and it won't be right.

To tighten the harness properly first ensure the shoulders are in the right place in terms of headrest and her lying flat against the seat backrest. Start with it loose, fasten the buckle, tighten it up while holding the shoulder pads in place. They should be flat over the shoulder and down the front of her chest. Then you can grab the webbing just above the buckle and pull up to get the slack out of the leg straps and pull the long strap to tighten again.

The safety is about average. Nothing to be scared about. It's not the most safety conscious brand, you can buy seats with more safety features, but it's ok, certainly not bad enough to go around advising people to chuck it away! Rear facing is the most important thing at her age and it can stay rear facing up to 18kg which is great. The size of the seat is appropriate, it just needs to be adjusted correctly. If it's the one with top tether, make sure the tether is attached. If it's the one with support leg then you don't need to worry about a tether.

Let us know how you get on!

Have you pulled the straps as tight as you can with the cord at the bottom of the car seat once she is strapped in? Usually its by theit feet.

Jumper is too thick as well, i would just do tshirt for now until youbare confident she is in properly

No, it doesn't. This is a myth. The required speed is 30mph because this represents the majority of car accidents that are considered survivable, and because a 30mph crash is pretty significant, if you can build something to survive that then it's likely to offer at least some protection even at higher speeds.

You've got some really good suggestions already so I won't repeat what's already been said. I'll just share my experience.
We had a really similar Cosatto for our daughter years ago and had very similar issues. The straps always felt a bit loose, the whole seat just seemed way too big around her and I never felt convinced she'd be safe. Ended up changing to a Britax. Yes it looked boring by comparison but the safety mattered more than the cute pink car seat.

But that was your specific model number of seat, now I’m not saying the seat is the best but we don’t know how it performs crash test wise because it hasn’t been independently tested but it’s rear facing which is the most important. No need to scaremonger

OK I have just looked at the picture again and can see a support leg in the photo, so no need to worry about the top tether as there isn't one.

I know you didn't ask, but the headrest of your other child's seat looks like it is probably too high, see the diagram @Lavender2021 posted from your car seat manual. It's more important to have the headrest set correctly when forward facing. That child looks like they might be small enough to rear face too, which is a good idea as it is much safer. Or maybe I misunderstood the photo.

Basically if the headrest is lower than the top of the shoulders it's too low, and if you can fit more than 2 fingers between the child's shoulder and the bottom of the headrest, it's too high (in the majority of seats. There are a few where it does need to be a bit higher, but not Cosatto.)

There is a good photo at the top of this review (shown in preview) showing how a baby of approx 7 months should fit correctly in this seat :) Only minor issue in this photo is the strap pads being different lengths, but that's not a huge problem.

It does look like he has most of the insert in, just the head part removed. Back in contact with the seat, straps flat against the body, headrest resting on shoulders.

https://www.motherandbaby.com/reviews/car-seats/cosatto-all-in-all-rotate-i-size-car-seat-review/

However, I should note the mum in the review should not have her baby FF at just 7 months old! They need to stay RF until an absolute minimum of 15 months in this seat, preferably longer. And inserts are usually prohibited FF in two-way seats.

@Ohgodmylegmyleg you may be right. I've just had a look and I'm misremembering the ADAC score, which is low overall for Cosatto

arent the adac scores for specific seats that’s the Adac has chosen to test rather than for a brand over all?

cosatto wouldn’t be one if recommend of someone was shopping for a seat because it would appear they test to the bare minimum (could be wrong) and we don’t know how those seats perform (precisely because they haven’t been adac) tested

Halfords have “in store experts” who come out to your car and fit car seats purchased in their store. Even though it’s unlikely you bought yours there maybe you could choose a quiet time in the shop and ask them very nicely if they might come out and advise you. Tell them you need safety advice and you’ve been told how helpful they are in that branch. Worth a try.

It looks like the shoulder straps need to be higher and tighter - if they're tight enough she won't be able to sit forwards like that.

She looks at though she is sitting "on" the seat instead of "in" it and it really doesn't look like it would offer any protection

I wouldn't bother, they're no more 'expert' than anyone on this post... The rearfacing safety groups on Facebook have the real experts!

I think what they mean is that Cosatto seats have previously had not great scores on ADAC tests.

From memory the ones which have been tested are:

Cosatto Come & Go i-Rotate (tested as Heyner Multifix Twist)
Cosatto Hug isofix
Cosatto Hold
Cosatto Den (tested as Foppapedretti Uniko i-size)
Cosatto Ninja is the booster-only version of the harness+booster seat Heyner Multi Protect Aero, which has been tested.

The reason some of them appear under different names is because Cosatto do not design their own seats, they buy from a B2B car seat factory and put their fabrics on. All the safety testing and so on is done by the B2B company. You can tell that it's the same model under the covers because they have the same ECE approval number, meaning that they perform identically.

The Hold did well in testing, but that doesn't tell you much as it's an infant carrier and most do.

The Come & Go and Multi Protect Aero each got a "Satisfactory" safety rating which is OK but not great, the Hug Isofix was "Sufficient" (ie, just about passing) and the Den completely failed and flew off the seat base. Cosatto continued to sell it! You can buy it right now on amazon. Luckily it was never very popular because it had a weird height limit.

Combined with the fact that all-stages seats generally get mediocre scores (Sufficient or satisfactory) - only ONE out of the 16 models they have ever tested since 2002 got a "good" safety score. It's quite likely that all the other Cosatto all-stages models will be mediocre as well.

That's not to say they are awful. I think people get a bit of a skewed view if you spend a lot of time on the ERF car seat pages, because yeah, if you're comparing average to the gold standard, top performing Swedish plus tested models, then the average ones are going to look shit. But that doesn't mean that everything below that standard is equal. These seats for example, they rear face up to 18kg/105cm, they are isofix + support leg, they have really nice deep side wings, the instructions are alright (they aren't garbled or badly translated) and they even have the side impact pop out things. I honestly don't think Cosatto are the worst out there by quite a long way. They are probably about on a par with the more basic Joie seats, and people on those car seat pages LOVE Joie (while hating Cosatto). It doesn't make logical sense!

It's all about the perspective you're looking from really. If you go back 10 years these seats would have been better than the majority of options on the market. If you have £300 to spend on a seat today, I wouldn't direct you to Cosatto, because there are far, far better options for £300, or equivalent options for much less, but they aren't terrible seats. I would much rather see someone using a Cosatto seat rear facing than the flimsy forward facing Disney seats.

I know its been said but i think the insert needs to come out, and id take them chest pads off the shoulder straps personally

The chest pads can only come off if the car seat manual says that they are removable, usually they are supposed to be left on.

Ahh ok,
I have chest pads on mine but they dont seem as bulky as them ones

That was precisely my point. If OP said I’ve got £300 to spend point me on the right direction then yeah wouldn’t say cosatto but seeing as she’s got it right now there’s no need to scare monger as most importantly it’s a rear facing seat as you said

The adac rating for safety is one things but it’s seat specific for instance graco has one of the worst boosters around (can’t recall the name but it’s the one that’s in asda) but as a brand they are ok because they tend to be the same as joie. I don’t want OP to despair thinking she’s got an awful seat and is putting her baby at risk when it probably performs ok because of all the reasons you said :)

Yes, I think we are on the same page here :)

I was just responding to the question about what the ADAC test results are like for Cosatto as a brand.

The head support part needs moving up,it should be just above her shoulders. Then you can sort out the straps