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juliasdad
08-12-2003, 11:25 AM
Hi, all-

Starting in Sept., our little one (12 month) will be headed off for daycare while mommy and (hopefully) daddy return to work.

We're currently in a Britax RA in the Odyssey. Here's the upcoming situation:
1) Since Mommy's a teacher and her work hours are early, Daddy will drop off DD at daycare and Mommy will pick her up. Hence, we'll need a car seat in both of our vehicles.
2) DD will be at daycare two days per week. Two other days, she'll be at Grandma and Grandpa's house. So we'll need them to have a seat. The fifth day of the week, she's at Aunt P's house (a friend and stay-at-home-mom to 4)... hopefully, Aunt P has some sort of seat.

So, at a minimum we're looking at 2 more car seats if we don't want to fuss with reinstalling and moving them from car to car.

Since she'll be a year old, and especially since she's way off the charts size-wise (she's at 50th percentile for an 18-month-old), I'm thinking the best option would be belt-positioning boosters for the "extra" seats... we could then use them as her full-time seat when she outgrows the RA.

Would someone please check my thinking on that? Does it make sense? And are we really looking at buying 2 of these??? I can't think of another good solution. We also need to be careful with spending, as Daddy's been part of the high-tech unemployed for the last few months and we're *assuming* that something will come along soon.

If this kind of booster is what we're looking for, what are the top picks? I know the Ultra CarGo gets good reviews... others?

Thanks,

-dan

KathyO
08-12-2003, 02:29 PM
Do you mean belt-positioning boosters (which only use the adult belts), or toddler-booster (aka combo) seats (which harness up to a certain weight, and then the harness is removed and you start using the adult belts with the seat)?

I VERY strongly recommend the second option. Your daughter may be unusually large for her age, but her skeletal development will still be that of a one-year-old, and even if she were actually an 18-month-old, she would still need the better distribution of crash forces that a 5-point harness will give across her chest and pelvis, and a 3-point adult belt won't.

As well, even a normal 18-month-old would be liable to come out from under a 3-point belt (partially or entirely) if the vehicle rolled or spun at all.

Personally, I would look for a toddler-booster with "wings" around the head area, since as a young toddler, your daughter's head is disproportionately heavy, and the more confined it is in an accident, the less likely is severe injury to the spinal cord and neck as the head gets whipped around. Remember, she is only barely old enough to front-face at all at this point. The ideal configuration would be to keep her in a convertible for a while yet, so the toddler-booster offers a compromise in terms of length of usage for money invested.

I hope that helps! Another cost-saving option would simply be to buy fewer seats, and give folks a tutorial in proper installation, if you think that's feasible for even one of your "secondary users". I'm amazed at how quickly I can install and reinstall the RA after a few sessions of practise.

Cheers,

KathyO

juliasdad
08-12-2003, 03:36 PM
> I VERY strongly recommend the second option. Your daughter
> may be unusually large for her age, but her skeletal
> development will still be that of a one-year-old, and
> even if she were actually an 18-month-old, she would
> still need the better distribution of crash forces
> that a 5-point harness will give across her chest
> and pelvis...

Thanks, Kathy. Yes, I did mean the boosters that have 5-pt harnesses built in... I was reluctant to use the term
"convertible" since that implies a different type of seat, but
I wasn't sure what these combo boosters w/ harnesses were called.

I considered the idea of swapping seats; however, given what
our schedule would be like, I have the feeling that we'd quickly
tire of doing this. And we'll already feel like we're suddenly
getting to spend almost no time with our daughter, and I don't
want to add another 10 minutes to the day swapping seats! On top
of that, I'm not sure I trust others to correctly install a seat
every time, so I'd rather install one semi-permanently into
grandma's car for example.

Thanks for the input!
-dan