It's reached that time where, the car seat that we brought our precious 4lb 4oz baby home from the hospital in, the one that he was swimming in, has become too small. He's over 14 months old already. Quite a petite baby, or at least not a 'big' baby so we have had the luxury of a little bit of time to save up!
Car seats aren't cheap and depending on the one you choose needs to be changed every few years as your child grows.
In our family we have a little problem. Neither of our cars has IsoFix. Both being older than 2007 when every car has the metal bars that an IsoFix car seat attaches itself to. IsoFix is the european safety standard. It's the other option to attaching your baby seat using the seatbelt. When I first did my research I was worried that we wouldn't find a seat that I would be happy with that would fit but we did. We bought the Maxi Cosi Pebble. It attached to our pram and it has served us well, easily moving from car to car as we have needed. I went straight for the top of the range with car seat number one. Our first baby, the lack of IsoFix. The quality is fantastic and I really felt that baby PCG was safe and cocooned. They aren't light but I very soon learnt, once baby PCG wasn't so fragile, that I didn't need to take him everywhere in the car seat. For me it was worth it for the peace of mind.
It was with this in mind that I began my search for the next car seat up in size. You go by weight of the baby so it all depends when you actually need the next stage up.
We started with what I believe to be the Rolls Royce of car seat manufacturers They don't come cheap, in fact they are amongst the most expensive but they are top of the range. Independent award-winning and not just meeting all safety requirements but significantly beating them.
Maxi Cosi also offer quite a choice of seats for toddlers which all can be fitted to a car with a seatbelt and if I am going to have to use the seat belt option then I want the strongest and most durable. We went for the Axiss in the end. In black. It doesn't have a separate base so the whole chair gets transferred from car to car but that's easy - especially when it's not me doing the transfer! It isn't the safest out of the options available from Maxi Cosi with four out of five stars in their rating but it also, amazingly, rotates ninety degrees to make it easy to take your little one in and out of the car and it has five different seating positions from reclining to upright so our little angel can relax when he wants to. Lastly, for the inquisitive toddlers the seating height is high. Something I have always championed with our pram especially. Why shouldn't my little prince have the best view!