Car seat help!

[Hollynesss]

I am overwhelmed by all of the options! My daughter is 5 months old, and she is currently in an infant seat that is part of a travel system. She is growing like a weed and will be outgrowing in the next couple of months. What I love about the infant seat is the ability to take it out of the car with her in it. Having a base in both cars means we only needed to buy one seat.

My daughter will be starting daycare in January. My husband will be dropping her off, and I will be picking her up. Is there such a thing as a convertible seat that can be taken out and left at daycare for me to put in my car when I pick her up? Or will we need to buy one seat for each car? Which is the best, but reasonably priced ($350 or less) seat in your opinion? What features do you love, and which can we do without?

Thanks so much!

 

[marmoset]

Honestly we love our Cosco Scenera Next (cheapest convertible seat out there, I believe they're exclusive to Walmart). We've used it since LO was born as we don't own a car so getting a bucket seat didn't make sense for the little we'd use it.

Anyway we load it in and out of friends' cars, taxis and the occasional rental car with zero issues. It's super light and really simple to use (I always use the seat belt to strap it in but it does have some kind of latch thing I'm too lazy to figure out).

I know there's way fancier stuff out there and I looked at all of it and ultimately went with the easy, lightweight, cheap option. No regrets at all!

 

[DandJ]

Good question - curious as well, so I Googled! Found another blog post with someone who has the same issue as you will but the responses say Convertible car seats are not meant to be portable:
https://community.babycenter.com/post/a24722335/portable_convertible_car_seats

 

[Hollynesss]

I figured we would probably have to buy 2, but figured it would worth it to ask. Thanks for the link!

 

[LoveCakes]

One thing to consider is that by the time she outgrows it the combined weight of the seat and her will be too hard to carry far, so this feature will be less important. I've had big babies but am already struggling with my 4mo.

Also we tried just having one seat but bought a second quite quickly as it was so much more practical.when you've been at work all day the last thing you want to do is faff with the car seat.