Rear facing car seat - After 9 months old?

BaileyB

Hi,

Our son is coming to 7 months old and nearly growing out of his baby car seat (rear facing, and very tall for his age) so he be out easy by 9 months old.

My Wife has been looking at car seats and now seen that rear facing car seats are better, the only issue is they are not that common is this country.

My question is if these are better and safer why are they not common is this country?

Has anyone got one? are they better, safer than the front facing ones?

Any advice would be grateful

Nicki

withabix wrote: »

Rear facing car seats aren't 'better'.

Why would they be??

Because in a forward facing seat the impact and trauma on a baby's neck are several times greater. If you google, babies in forward facing seats have a far far higher risk of serious brain injury and death as a result.

OP at 7 or even 9 months old, your baby's neck will not be strong enough to sit forward facing. There are quite a few rear facing ones which should be suitable until about 18 months, but relatively few commercially available in this country for older children. Different makes suit different cars better. Your best bet is to go to a large Halfords or baby equipment shop and get advice for the make and model of your car, even if you then end up buying the same thing online.

Peanuckle

I would assume that above a certain height a rear facing seat wouldn't leave enough room for the child's legs, this is probably one of the reasons that finding a rear facing seat for a child older than about 18 months is all but impossible?

dizziblonde

They're harder to find in this country but http://www.rearfacing.co.uk has a stockists section. I seem to recall having read lots of people going to Milton Keynes to track them down.

I'm also sure I've read that squished legs aren't a problem in the small baby seats - it's when their head's getting to the top that's the point you should change more than leg length.

Gillyx

They are becoming more popular, and you can get rear facing up until 3 now I think. Apparently there is talk of the government making it compulsory soon.

I know the BeSafe Izi Combi X3 has brilliant reviews

GobbledyGook

Is he tall with a long body or with long legs? His car seat is safe until the top of his ears are near the top of the car seat. His legs coming over the bottom isn't unsafe at all.

I have a rear facing seat for my son. My younger daughter was in hers until she was nearly 6 (she's petite). I only heard about it through a Swedish friend of then husband's who was quite shocked at how young babies are turned forward facing here.

One of the biggest reasons they are not big sellers is because of the cost. The first rear-facing seat I bought for my first daughter was over £300 and nearly everyone I knew thought I was mad because "they all conform to a standard".

Having been in a bump I feel they are considerably safer, that's just my personal opinion. My son is in a Maxi Cosi Mobi and my daughter used to be in a Recaro. The Be Safe Izi also gets great reviews.

One thing to be aware of if you check things like the Which? reviews. Sometimes the rear-facing car seats appear to get bad reviews, but you need to double check that they were reviewed as rear-facing and not forward-facing like the others.

rearfacing.co.uk or Securatot are good places to start looking.

grey_lady

I think it's only the BeSafe Izi Combi X3 that has a decent Which? review, the others don't and their car safety testing is far more thorough than the legally required tests.

But agree about keeping LO rear-facing for as long as possible.

Its possible to get a trial for the Which? site for a £1 btw which has lots on car seats.

*depressed*

this might help - http://www.rearfacing.co.uk/facts.php xxx

GobbledyGook

grey_lady wrote: »

I think it's only the BeSafe Izi Combi X3 that has a decent Which? review, the others don't and their car safety testing is far more thorough than the legally required tests.

But agree about keeping LO rear-facing for as long as possible.

Its possible to get a trial for the Which? site for a £1 btw which has lots on car seats.

The Which? report tended (It's 2 years since I bought a car seat so they may have changed their way) to test stage 1/2 seats as both rear and forward facing as many of them tend to be that way. However this pulled the scores of the rear facing seats down as they are not designed to be forward facing.

http://www.rearfacing.co.uk/testresults.php

Tweetinat

Yes, the Which reports score Rear Facing seats lower because they test them forward facing and also because they are more 'fiddly' to install than a standard FF. Installed correctly and RF they are significantly safer than FF. I second making a trip to Milton Keynes and the stockist there are they are excellent at giving you the best and most upto date advice on RF and FF car seats. I wouldn't recommend Halfords, sorry.

We have a Britax Two Way Elite which was the cheapest RF. Sold to us based on it being the best fit for our car - nothing to do with the cost. That happened to be a nice surprise (£180, so not that much more than a MaxiCosi Tobi for example). They spent a long time ensuring that the seat fitted properly in the car and also showed me how to fit if I ever needed to remove. When we upgraded our car, they also contacted the manufacturer to confirm it was still safe with the other safety features in the car (Volvo) when we had been unable to get an answer from the dealership.

Can't recommend them highly enough and well worth the 4 hour round trip.

GobbledyGook

Something to bear in mind though (because I know some of the RF seats are out of the budget of some people) is that the single, main thing for a car seat is that it's correctly fitted.

It's reckoned that something like 6/10 car seats in the UK are not fitted correctly. A scary statistic imo.

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