I’m attempting to pick out my first car seat but I am getting overwhelmed by the plethora of information and reviews..

It seems to -me- that small infants won’t fit into most convertible car seats due to the lowest strap-setting being too high for them. Like, the Britax Decathlon is an awesome and very safe car seat and fits an infant with 9-10" (at lowest setting) shoulder heights.. but I’m concerned that infants tend to be smaller than that when newborns?

Do you think YOUR newborn would’ve fit into the Britax Decathlon? Is there some other convertible car seat with lower shoulder settings?

Did any of you use a convertible car seat from day one and have no issues with it?

If not, and if ya’all think that going with a classic infant car carrier/seat is best..

Which one?! I don’t like these base-things. I don’t like the idea of any extra moving parts. Extra moving parts means extra parts to FAIL.

I read on one consumer-reporting site about consumer complaints about safety .. Britax convertibles and Evenflo Triumph convertibles had very few (only a couple hundred) complaints .. whereas Graco Snugrides, Safeseats, and Chicco carseats (the plastic seats with bases) had thousands of complaints involving cheap materials, ie. they break easily, infants tear up the foam, latches come undone or break.. (And these seats are not what I would necessarily call CHEAP) sometimes causing injuries.

It could just be that Britax is used a lot less often — but, somehow I don’t think so.

Somehow, I think they must just manufacture their seats to higher standards.

That being said, I don’t think my mother-in-law will buy me the infant Britax (Companion) since it can only be used up to 22lbs. She won’t like spending 300$ on a carseat that could possibly only be used for about 5 months if my child ends up large.

Most likely she’ll insist that I get a cheaper car seat if I think I must use the newborn carriers instead of a convertible.

She wouldn’t mind spending 300$ on a car seat that I could use for possibly 3, 4, or 5 years, though. Like the Decathlon.

Sooo..

Decathlon? Newborn? Anyone?

We paid quite a lot of money for our babies car seat and it fits perfectly into our car seat and dosent move an inch when it is fitted. My mother in law on the other hand got one that was really cheap and to me it dosent feel as tightly secure as mine does, ours is pretty heavy and hers is really light. Are car seats all just as safe as each other because they need to meet certain standards or do you think I should be concerned about it and maybe ask her to use mine insted? I do kind of want to ask her to use mine but I dont want to be rude, I dont know if I am worrying for no reason, as you can tell I’m pretty confused! What do you think I should do?

My daughter turned 5 in May and she still uses a booster. She was going with my mother-in-law and her cousin (who is same age, actually just turned 5 in July) to a sleep over and she said "I don’t use a carseat anymore, I haven’t for a while." I thought they were supposed to use them until they were like 7. Please let me know. Thanks.
Just to clarify, my daughter absolutly used her carseat and will continue to do so, it was her cousin who didn’t have one. Of course my daughter cried cause after her cousin didn’t have to use one, she didn’t understand why she should either. Thanks for the answers.

My sister-in-law is having her first baby. My mother-in-law threw her a baby shower 2 days ago and invited the entire family. It was a large shower. Today in the mail I received an invitation for another baby shower for her that is being thrown by a close friend who was in attendance at the first shower. I already bought a gift for the first shower. Do I have to get her another gift or even attend the 2nd shower?