In March 2004 I had my 5th child, and I wanted one of the 'do it all' strollers this time! My older children are 11, 10, 7, and 6 and strollers have changed and advanced enormously since my 11 year old was born. When my oldest son was born, purchasing a stroller that
reclined was a treat. By the time my 3rd and 4th children were born, the stroller/car seat combos were starting to appear. My first experience with one of the combo packages was with my 3rd child, and it was a stroller where the car seat fastened on top of the coordinating umbrella stroller..nice for a while, but what about when the baby is out of the car seat stage and ready for the stroller, but not quite yet ready to sit himself up?
I had a six year break between my 4th and 5th children and I was amazed at all the new items companies have come up with! Maybe not 'new' in the 'just being made' sense, but new to me nonetheless! Over the past few years I had seen the car seat/reclining stroller combos and thought to myself, "If I ever talk my husband into another baby, THAT'S the stroller I'm getting"!
As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I purchased the Eddie Bauer All Terrain Stroller with Car Seat. Seriously, as soon as I found out I was pregnant! That's how excited I was to get the opportunity to try one of these puppies out! They just look so cool! Almost like a MacGyver invention!
Right before the birth of Madilyn I finally opened the box I had been looking at every day for the past nine months! I was so curious to see how it worked, if it actually had a good turning radius, how the suspension was, etc. The stroller needed assembled, which was very easy. I got my new stroller all put together and it was beautiful! The car seat snapped into place...the suspension was awesome...it had a completely closing canopy which is great with newborns~I don't mind for people to look, but I can't stand strangers touching my new baby! The materials used to make the stroller and car seat were all nice and thick, with 'windows' so I could see into the car seat when it was attached to the stroller with the canopy covering it.
After Madi's birth I realized the whole car seat/stroller combo wasn't quite what I had anticipated. The car seat base was the first clue that this wasn't going to be smooth sailing! The car seat is supposed to snap right into the base, but it didn't work out that way. You had to manipulate the bottom of the car seat to get it to actually fit into the base first. This jiggles the car seat around quite a bit and makes a happily sleeping newborn less than happy. Removing the seat from the base is supposed to be as easy as pushing in a button on each side of the seat to release it from the base, but it takes pushing, pulling, pushing some more, twisting a little, pushing and pulling quickly to release! Eventually, the car seat base was retired and I resorted to buckling the seat directly into my van.
As Madi got a little bit older I started using the car seat/stroller combo, but not very often. I found it much easier to just put her car seat in the grocery or shopping cart as opposed to wrestling with the bulky/heavy stroller and trying to snap the car seat into the stroller. I had the same problems with snapping the seat into the stroller as I had putting the seat into the base. I used the car seat/stroller combo a few times, but not hardly enough to call it 'handy'.
As with all of my children, Madi got to a point where she's not very comfortable being in her car seat for long and she wants to be out. When I had the car seat/stroller combo together on shopping trips, it was difficult when Madi wanted to be out of the car seat because I had no place to put the seat so I could lay her in the stroller. This would usually happen when she had been sleeping and I would put the car seat into the stroller. Inevitably, she wouldn't wake up as we walked away from our van but rather as soon as we were quite some distance from the parking lot to where it would be a chore to go back to put the seat back in the van! So I ended up carrying Madi in my arms, and trying to push and empty stroller around a mall/store or where ever we happened to be.
By around 4 or 5 months, my children always wanted to be out of the car seat and in the stroller. This stroller is a very nice, comfortable stroller but it is HUGE! It takes up the entire back of my mini van. Not only is it huge, but it is HEAVY! Now that Madi is sitting up enough to be in an umbrella stroller, I will most likely purchase one of those and retire the stroller/car seat combo.
At almost eight months, Madi is also close to being too big for the car seat that came with this combination. My advice after going through five children of car seat/stroller ages is to purchase a car seat made for newborn through 30+lbs, and a separate reclining stroller that doesn't weigh 50lbs! That way, you will only have to purchase one car seat, where with this combo you will need to upgrade car seats when your child reaches 22 pounds. I could have purchased a longer lasting car seat and a lighter stroller that I would have used more frequently AND had cash left over for the $150 that I paid for this combo.
Overall, it is a nice idea but not the easiest/most practical, nor the most cost efficient!
