Loving my new car seat!

Madam seems pretty happy with her new seat- which is good as it will be with us for a long time! This seat is an extended rear facing (ERF) car seat which means that she can stay rear facing till she is 4years old. After that it will turn into a high backed booster, and then a simple booster to last till she is 12. Job done!





ERF are not a popular choice here in the UK, and it is very difficult to get one even though they are unequivocally safer (actually 5 times safer!) than forward facing seats are. I have done plenty of research and initially I was expecting there to be a load of counter reasons against extended rear facing car seats to explain the resistance against them. Nope. From what I can find, the negativity around them here focuses on ideas about what people seem to think the seats are like, or fairly minor concerns but there is absolutely no one arguing that forward facing seats are safer or in any way perform better in a crash. Crucially that is the one point that no one quibbles about. So, if I'm going to spend money on a device which let's face it has the main aim of protecting my child in the event of an accident, surely I just want to buy the chair that does this the best? Hmmm. What upsets me most about the whole thing is that had I not happened to have looked at a few articles on line when I was pregnant, I might not have even known or fully understood ERF - and I think that MOST parents in the UK don't know much about it because retailers, while they quietly, under their breath acknowledge that it is safest to keep kids rear facing for as long as possible, do not actually sell car seats that allow you to do this, even if you want to! The original crash test data proving the improved safety of ERF for toddlers dates back to the 1960s and is based on fundamental physics so it is pretty sad that it is so difficult to get hold of these car seats here, and that uk parents are still being sold car seats that ultimately will not protect their children as well as they could. I was so cross about the lack of choice (and really that's the key thing here- choice) I actually contacted mothercare and halfords about it, and the response I got was pretty pathetic. It really hit a nerve for me, and made me even more determined to make sure that whatever car seat we bought it would be the one we were happy with, the one we felt was the best, and not just the best of what Halfords/Mothercare/Argos decided was good enough for us.
With any luck it will be a complete irrelevancy. I hope that we never have to know how good our car seat is, I hope that we get through without it ever being put to the test!