jemjabella

Extended Rear-Facing Car Seats and Volvo

Motherhood is full of decisions. How to feed your baby, how to dress your baby (apparently if it wears sleepsuits during the day, you're a neglectful mother; who knew?), how to wean your baby, how to transport your baby. The last has been something of a discussion in our house over the past few weeks, as Isabel is outgrowing her first car seat (she's still within the weight range but is quite tall).

In the UK, when a baby outgrows their first car seat it's fairly normal to buy a forward facing seat and flip them 'round. However, what most car seat retailers won't tell you is that if the worst should happen and you are involved in a typical car smash, in a forward facing seat the neck is subjected to a force equivalent to 300-320kg. However, in a rear facing seat, the force on the neck is equivalent to only 50kg (source)

It doesn't take a genius to work out that less force == less chance of injury. And so for us, the search was on to find a rear-facing car seat. Unfortunately this is where most people come across a stumbling block; most mainstream retailers (Mothercare, Halfords etc) will inform you that rear-facing is unnecessary, or that there are no rear-facing seats available in the UK. Those with supposed up-to-date training aren't generally aware of the statistics concerning forward-facing deaths and are more interested in selling you the most expensive car seat in store. We in the UK don't know about extended rear-facing, so shops don't stock those car seats, so less people then know the options are there — it's a vicious cycle!

Thanks to a tip off from a friend online, we discovered that Volvo sell rear-facing car seats. It makes sense; they're a Swedish car manufacturer and in Sweden, infants are normally rear-facing until around the age of 6. The Volvo car seats are re-badged Britax, but with the handy benefit of being about £100 cheaper than we could find anywhere else.

We went to our local Volvo dealership, in Shrewsbury, and a really helpful chap called Colin gave us an estimate for 'parts' and ordered the car seat in for us to look at. In less than 24 hours the car seat was in, approved, bought and home. Fantastic, friendly service and an excellent price at around £160 inc. VAT.

The car seat itself is rock-solid sturdy and well padded; you can easily see why Volvo stock this brand, it looks as indestructible as their cars. The support leg has a handy pressure-sensitive part on the bottom which allows you to see if it's properly placed, and the tether straps to keep it tied to the front seat are included too (they're not in some online shops). Of course, the acid test... does Isabel like it? Well, she fell asleep within 10 minutes of being in it, so it's got to be good!

Last Minute Holiday

It was decided at about 9pm last Thursday that a short holiday was in order, last minute booking of a family style resort in Wales ensued. Date to leave? The morning after! Nothing like forward planning... ;)

Isabel seemed to enjoy herself, and got to experience lots of firsts. First holiday, first swim, first beach trip, first taste of Grandma Rowland's scary holiday driving! Still, she took to the disruption to her normal everyday 'routine' remarkably well and impressed an elderly lady in a cafe at Portmeirion with the very grown-up way in which she was eating her sandwich. Smug? Me? Never!

Shame it was only a 3-nighter, although any longer and I don't think the pets would have forgiven us!

If you're interested, you can see the sights we saw via my dodgy (that's dodgy as in crap, not dodgy as in pornographic) photos in the Wales set on Flickr.

I Have Become a Mum

I know, you may find the title of this entry a tad obvious given that Isabel is 8 months old now (holy shit...) but I am just sat here evaluating my day and it occurred to me that I am a mum. I do mummy things. Today I went shopping for 'responsible' things and didn't get sidetracked by shiny crap I don't need. I changed nappies. I made salmon fishcakes from scratch. I made conversation with 2 total strangers. I got stared/giggled at by teenagers.

I think that last one was the key to my sudden revelation. I am no longer the carefree cocky starer, I am the older recipient of the disdain shown by "hip n trendy" emo types.

Fetch me my slippers and a paper, I'm officially old.

(I was feeding Izz in case you're wondering. Unless it was my hair they were staring at... thinking about it, I did have a pretty bad hair day.)

Favourite Layouts in July

After posting about my favourite layouts in June I figured this is something I could keep doing! And so here we are, my favourite layouts this month...

Rainbow Stuff

Ashley has added a personal touch with her cartoon representations of herself, husband (I think!), and cats.

Skylish

I love the splash navigation detail in this one. It's different, but without being all "mystery meat" like graphic site navigation of the past.

Kya's Blog Thing

Be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom with this one, hehe.

It's all too much

Juggling so much at the minute. Constantly teething baby (she's currently on her 4th tooth) coupled with crawling, dropping feeds and reverse cycling, plus she bit me for the first time last night :( / surprise visit from my Dad / work pressure (do I return or not? I have no choice, I can't afford not to) / websites... the q*bee, tutorialtastic still hasn't been sorted, new projects for myself and friends / money(!) my maternity pay runs out this month - I'll be getting £17 and that's it until I go back to work in November. Desperately trying to sell off old books etc so that I don't have to dip into my savings to cover the next few months.

So yeah, if I'm not posting a lot on twitter or whatever, it's 'cause I'm busy trying to extract my head from my arse :D