In what scenarios do car seats need to attach to pram?

[Luckyelephant1]

FTM here and I'm starting to research prams/car seats/travel systems.

It's a minefield and the whole stuff about car seats and pram adapters boggles my mind a bit.

In what scenarios is it important for a car seat to fit onto the pram chassis? All I can think of is if baby falls asleep in car seat while you need to run errands such as grocery shopping. But even then only for short errands as babies aren't meant to be in car seats for long anyway?

So am I missing something else completely? My plan was to keep the car seat in the car most of the time, and mostly use the pram with carrycot or a baby carrier for the first few months.

FYI we live in a village near a large town, lots of walks and parks nearby, most amenities are a short drive away and we almost never need to use public transport. Any tips would be great!

@Twizbe

I never had a car seat that went onto a pram. Had no need of it with either child. A fixed car seat worked just as well

Hey @Twizbe sorry if this sounds dumb but when you say 'fixed' car seat does this mean you don't even take the car seat out to bring baby in and out of the house etc?

We had a ERF car seat that went birth-4, so was massive and stayed in the car. I can see how the clip on car seat / prams would be handy, but for me, possibly to handy. I prefer not to have the option so I couldn't be tempted over use it. Newborns are only ment to be in car seat for around 30 minutes, so by the time you've got the seat in the car, driven somwear and got it out and onto the pram, you would only have 5-10 minutes before you had to get them out. I can totally see sleep deprived me being tempted to leave them in too long, especially if they were sleeping. Besides, what do you even do when you get them out, just sit on a bench with them until they can go back in to drive home?

Once they get head control and can be in the seat for 2 hours, it would become more usable, but still awkward for a day out, and you can bet they will go to sleep after 1 hours 50 minutes. For short trips like dropping older DC at nursery, I used a strachy wrap, put it on before leaving, then just lift straight in, 9 times out of 10 DD wouldn't wake up on the transfer.

You only need to take them out for a few mins and you would generally need to feed/change them although yes, 30 minutes is prohibitive. But we rarely went anywhere at that age anyway! Just appointments really. I think we went out to dinner once.

The spin car seats all come with a fixed bases so stay in the car. You can leave the seat in the orientated towards the door so it's easy to put the baby in the seat even with changing bags, hand bag, muslins, blankets

Some of the car seats weigh 4.5 kg, it's fine when your baby is 3 or 4kg but it soon becomes heavy and difficult to hold and juggle bags etc as well as the baby in the car seat.

My lo wakes up as soon as we pull up on the drive so it's not as if taking her out of the seat wakes her up

@Luckyelephant1 yep. We have a joie all stage car seat. It goes from newborn to them not needing one anymore. It's fitted in the car with the seatbelt and we just leave it in there all the time.

I didn't want to pay £££ for a car seat only to have to pay £££ again when they grew out of it.

When my youngest was born we got a seat for him that didn't have the newborn stuff and used his old one for number 2.

All I'd say about the fixed ones is that they are generally accepted as being not as safe as the traditional ones you can carry. There's a trade-off- the less specialised the seat, the less safe for a given age group.

Which says, of the Joie Every Stage:
'This child car seat has passed the regulatory tests required by ECE R44/04 to be sold as suitable for children from 9-36kg. But in our own tests, which are conducted at higher speeds and forces than the standard requires, this seat scores poorly for frontal-impact results when used in Group 1 mode.

Our tests generally show that multi-group seats that try to do too much compromise on other features - and the Joie Every Stage is no exception. It does its job as a Group 2/3 high-backed booster seat when belted in, and gains an acceptable score for a Group 0+ and an extended rear-facing car seat when belted in. But it scores poorly in frontal-impact crash tests, when used as a forward-facing Group 1 car seat.

The overall total test score is limited to 39%. Any car seat scoring 45% or less will become a Which? Don't Buy'

I’m on baby number two and although very occasionally I think it might have been useful to be able to put the car seat on wheels, it really hasn’t been something I’ve missed. DD is 10 weeks old and has probably only been in her pram (which is just our old running buggy with a carrycot on) twice as I find a sling much more convenient.

I only put the car seat on the pram a handful of times as eventually it just got too heavy to lift them in it.

With hindsight I wouldn't have bothered with a travel system and would have got a car seat that stayed in the car from the outset as it would have saved me so much money!

I did find it useful for DD when we lived in a terraced house and often couldn’t park outside our front door- I could get DD settled in the car seat, fling all our paraphernalia for a trip out (nappy bag, coat, shopping bags etc) in the buggy basket and pop the car seat on top, then wheel everything down the road to the car on one trip. This was particularly useful when DH was at work and I was on my own - otherwise I would have had to leave DD unattended at some point in the process. It’d be less of an issue now as we’ve finally moved to a house with a driveway! 😂