What do you do when...?

[June Mommy]

I'm really concerned that my DS will grow out of his infant seat before he is able to sit up. He's already about 13 lbs. and 22 inches at 8 weeks. The limit on our Baby Trend Latch-Loc is 20 lbs. and 26 inches. How do you handle restaurant highchairs and shopping carts without an infant seat if your baby can't sit up yet?

[Joolsplus2]

Keep your seat in the car (Strapped in or in the trunk, you don't want it flying around loose in a crash), and use it when you go somewhere where you need to put him down...It's still perfectly ok to use when you aren't using it as a restraint, but just as a seat (keep using the straps tight, though, kids can slip down in loose ones and strangle!).
Also, those "floppy seat" things are pretty good even for babies who are just barely or not sitting up, they really pad the whole highchair or cart and support babies reasonably well.

:)
Julie CPS Tech and mom to 2 in seats
http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/RFAlbum/SarahMA.aspx

[kijip]

We used a sling or Baby Bjorn. Toby rode in his RA from 3 months, long before he could use the highchairs. Also some shopping carts have built in infant seats (Target and a lot of grocery stores do!).

[rottiemom]

As long as there is still an inch between the top of your wee ones head & the top of the seat itself you're still OK using the infant seat. My little guy is 29" long and still has an inch & a half of space between his head & the top of the seat. The height limit on my snugride is 26" but my little guy obviously has a lot of his length in his legs. I have a new, convertible seat waiting for him, I just can't bear to give up the infant seat yet! Keeping the infant seat in the car to use when grocery shopping, etc. is a great idea.

Nina

[amp]

This happens a lot, and it happened to us. It really will probably be only a couple of months at the most that you need to concern yourself with this. As others have said, a front carrier (Bjorn, Kelty, etc) will be a possibility. Also, keeping your child in the stroller when feasible. And, keeping the carseat around just as a carrier is also helpful. It's just inconvenient to have to lug it around. And just carrying your child more will happen more than you realize. Also, we avoided restaurants and shopping just a bit more during that time, and used the above mentioned options when we needed to.

[whittyanne]

This happened to us as well (also have a big baby.) He was out just at 4 months and he didn't sit up until close to 6 months.

We used the Bjorn a little for that in between time... but we also got a Floppy Seat for shopping carts. As he started to get strong enough, it worked out well to put him in there - the Floppy Seat is padded so he could lay to the side.

You can also keep your infant seat in the trunk of your car to still use when you go shopping as well.

[HHCs Mom]

We are currently in the exact same situation and I have just kept the infant carrier in the back of my car. DS outgrew his SnugRide at 3 1/2 months and he is now almost 5 months. Not yet sitting up, but too big for the infant carrier. We get out the SnugRide when we go out to eat or when DS and I go to the grocery. It's a little bit of a pain, but not that bad. He'll be sitting up soon enough and we won't have to deal with it anymore. When we are just running in somewhere quick, I carry DS and don't bother with the infant seat.

I have a floppy seat thing that we've never used. Guess I need to get that out now! :-)


Kim
~~ Harrison 04/06/04

[ett]

This happened to us too. DS outgrew his infant seat at 4 months before he could sit up. We tried to use the stroller as much as possible. We ate at restaurants that was roomy enough to accomodate a stroller at the table. We've also used the infant car seat as a seat for DS. Surprisingly, we got a lot of use out of the car seat just as a chair until DS could climb out of the seat at which point we officially retired it.