Choosing a Car Seat for 1 Year Old

Some folks have asked us about car seats so I thought I posted our experience here.

In November 2005, we had been using the rear facing car seat for the past 11 months and Russell seems to be outgrowing it. His legs then could reach the back seat and he was getting easily bored looking through the back window and at the back seat. We could hardly keep him in his seat for more than 10 minutes before he started whining.

We had been searching for forward facing baby car seats for 1 month. I think we must have seen about 50 models and went through 10 different shops and department stores. We had also been through the Internet and Ebay to look at different seats and reviews.

Here's what we found.

The selection criteria we have set are

1. Must be easy to install by One person
2. Must be secure and not wobble
3. Base must be smooth so that it doesn't scratch the seat
4. Must be easy to recline with one hand especially by the driver
5. Must have side protection system to prevent injury from side impact
6. Must be deep and wide enough to accomodate a baby up to 25Kg
7. Must have neck cushion for resting his head
8. Must have good water resistant material that is easy to clean
9. Can be mounted on passenger side or middle seat
10. Must be cost effective not more than SGD400

We narrowed down the brands to Eddie Bauer, Cosco, Mothercare Britax and Maxi Cosi.

Here are the comparisons

www.alvintoh.com/reviews/carseats.htm

We chose Maxi Cosi in the end as it fulfill most the criteria. What won us over was the ease of operation. It's no joke when you have to install and adjust the child seat regularly by yourself especially if you use your car for business and home use. Lina has found it a tremendous pleasure to be able to recline the kid sitting in the back seat from her sitting at the driver seat. Russell has found it so comfortable he tends to fall asleep in it half the time! What bliss...for both of us.