What kind of car & where will baby go?

[Sophiasmomma]

We have a Honda Mini Van that I love.. But I was thinking of where I really want to put baby ? I was thinking of putting my DD 5 and DS 3 in the last row and baby in the middle row so I can sit with her/Him when DH drives and neither "big" kid will feel lonely back in the last row- is this what Mini van or SUV Mamas do??? TIA

[KatWozBlue]

Right now I have a Volvo S60 which since this is my third will be going bye bye and we are looking at the Honda Odyssey. We looked at it recently and I think I'll put my oldest in the back and my daughter in the front with the baby, I like the idea of having one of them next to the baby so they can help him/her if need be. Good idea about having the room to sit with the baby, I'll have to see which model we end up getting, but both in the back is not a bad idea.

[ScarletBegonias]

i wish we could buy something new, but we need 4wd, or at least awd, and it makes cars so much more expensive. i want a pilot, but i don't want a car payment! we just paid off my subaru last year. dh wants to get me one, but we are getting ready to build a house and possibly buy another house and i do NOT want a car payment.

so we will be buying 3 new carseats. $900 for 3 radians sounds a lot better than $30,000 for a new pilot!

[ProtoLawyer]

Aging Saturn sedan. No LATCH.

Baby will go outboard--probably driver, as my husband is TALL and I can't imagine getting a rear-facing car seat behind him. I also can't imagine getting any sort of decent install in the middle--it's a TIGHT seat. (Not to mention--it's not a huge car, and if we go with a bucket, I'll probably hit my head or the seat 8,000 times trying to get the bucket out of the middle.)

Stepdaughter (7, tall, in a backless booster) will go passenger side, where there are headrests.

If it's twins, I need a new car. I'll probably need a new one soon anyway, and it won't be a minivan or SUV because the bigger the car, the more freaked-out of a driver I am. I'd probably be looking at another sedan.

[MissAnnThrope]

We will be getting a mini for sure. I'm trying to wait to get it until this summer. I plan on putting the older two in the back and the younger two in the middle row.

[megviolet]

We have a chevy HHR that i adore. Right now DD is behind the driver's seat so i guess baby will go behind the passenger seat.... hmmmmm.... or maybe the other way around so i could reach back to the baby (i'm usually the passenger). Good question. Or maybe DD shouldbe moved to the middle... i need to FF her seat sometime too....

[crbyard]

I have an Odyssey and will have three children when this one arrives. I have played around with seating since I sometimes take a friend's son with us on playdates. I think I'll have my oldest 4 year old dd in the very far back with the seats split. I can install her Britax Regent on the single seat and fold down the other two in order to make more cargo space. Then, I'll have my two year old on the passenger side, second row and the baby behind the driver. This way, I'll still be able to transport my BOB Revolution Duallie in the back without having to totally break it down. I love my minivan!

[mamakaryn08]

We have a Dodge Caravan with LATCH. DS (22 months, about 23-24 lbs) is still rear facing and is in the middle seat on the side that is not exactly behind the passenger but not behind the driver (you ladies with off-center bench seats kwim?) so it doesn't really matter at this point whether we keep him right there or move him over. DH is very tall though, so with a RF seat behind him, he's not going to be able to move the seat back as far when he drives.

I doubt we will be getting an infant seat since we have two nearly identical convertibles and one of them is not currently being used. My parents keep it at their house in case they need it but they rarely do and I'm sure DH is going to demand that instead of letting them keep it we will be taking it back for the new baby.

I'm hoping I can convince him to let them keep it so we can buy another one (a girly one if this is a girl!) and they can also buy another one. I don't like having to move them. It's a PITA!

ETA: DS is skinny but he is very tall and there is a possibility of him needing to switch to FF before baby even comes due to outgrowing his seat height requirement. If that's the case, he will move over behind driver's seat and baby will go where his seat is now.

[hi_abbott]

I have a MINI, as in MINI Cooper, not mini-van. We also have a Pontiac Aztek. But the MINI is what I drive on a daily basis. I don't think it'll be too bad, but we'll see. For one thing, we just purchased the MINI in September. The Pontiac Aztek will be replaced at some point, but not with a vehicle I would want to drive to work every day. We go camping on a regular basis in the summer, and have to have a vehicle that will pull our little pop up camper. While it'll be nice to have a comfortable vehicle to travel in, I prefer to drive a gas efficient vehicle the rest of the time.

[Crazybean]

Interesting thread.. I had looked into a mini-van but the gas mileage was not something to brag about. I work about 45 miles away one way. This is only my 2nd so I'm sure I'll stay in my falling apart sedan

[violet_]

I drive a 4-seat, but only 2-door convertible. I'm thinking it will annoy me to climb back there, so I'm thinking of getting a new car. Now, my car is better than most 2-doors, and is fairly easy to get to, but still. Also, any new car would have 3 belts in back, so I'd have room for new baby and DSD and DSS, which is good.

DH's car also has only 4 seatbelts, and while this child is my first, it's his third. I told him it is incumbent on the one with 3 children to have 3 seatbelts in the back, so whether or not I decide to get a new car, he will need to. We've been wanting to get rid of his car for other reasons anyway, so this just makes it mandatory.

[Lizzardbits]

We have an Olds Silhouette mini van; it is older but has the two sliding doors, one with power sliding door on the passenger side. Our toddler sits on that side, and the older two kids take turns in the other captains chair and back seat. Once babe is here we will play the car seat shuffle in a counter clockwise move. Babe in passenger middle, toddler in drivers side middle and eldest two in back.

Uffda! It is a 7 seater but that back bench has only 2 shoulder belts and one lap belt, so in the future, if we expand any more, we may have to find a bus LOL!

I miss driving a sedan, my husband gets to drive the comfy luxury sedan...

[Surfacing]

We have a Toyota Corolla and think we have to trade it in or sell it... and get a Dodge Caravan or something. Unfortunately we're looking for a budget priced mini-van... probably used...

[wavybrains]

I drive a Subaru Forester and DH drives a kia rio. We joke that this means that we are done at two kids for sure.

When DD was little, we had her rear facing in a convertible seat in the middle of both vehicles. While I am sure that that is absolutely the safest spot for babies, we could never get a good fit in the subaru (it's old, no latch) or the rio (both driver AND passenger had to have seats way forward), so we ended up moving her to the passenger side on both cars--it makes it easy to hand her stuff and feed her bites and see what is up.

I have no idea where we will position the new one. If I do it on the driver's side, there's no possibility of one of us riding back there to soothe a fussy baby (I rode in back with DD through most of her first year as she HATED the car). If we do the middle, we have the really poor fit issues + Big sister trying to shove gold fish in poor junior's mouth.

SIGH. No easy solutions there.

And the carseat issue is a whole separate post . . . DD has two inexpensive carseats (one in each car)--the Graco Comfort Sport. However, both are in pretty worn condition--padding is going big time, rips where the straps come through, hard to adjust, never had a good fit with it. However, if we get the new bean a "premium" seat (although I really refuse to believe that $200+ is *really* necessary), then I feel like we "owe" DD a nicer carseat as well. She'll be almost 3 in july and is approaching 30 lbs so I don't know what we will do carseat wise AT ALL.

[chiromommy]

I have a jeep Liberty with 150,000 miles and DP has a Honda Element. His car only seats 4, but it's nice for his musical equip and such since it is essentially a box. My car will seat 5, but the the girls are both really tall (my 7 y/o is a hair shy of 5' and my 10 y/o is just over 5') and it would be really cramped with a car seat in between them. Sooo... we are planning on getting a Suburban to replace mine. A mini van doesn't meet our needs of hauling stuff around for the restaurants and such and we travel a lot for the girls extracurricular activities with all sorts of equipment in tow. I am hoping to wait until June to buy so I can get a the midwife paid off before I get hit with a car payment. My car has been paid off for a few years and the Honda has been ours for a year. I'm going to hate having a crazy high car payment again. I would like to buy a 1 or 2 year old model so I don't get hit too hard, but if I can get 0% then a new one may win. I'll figure it out when we get there.

[Landover]

We bought a Honda Odessey last year anticipating this one and manybe one more.

My four year old will go in the back since he can do the buckles on his Froutier himself. I would not put my middle kiddo back thre because she will only be two, and I do not want to have to climb back there to buckle her in. I also get some cargo space if I need it this way by being able to fold down one seat.

My two year old will go behind me and the baby will go behind the passenger side. This way I can put the paci back in if I need be, etc.

I saw someone say they were looking at the Odessey. It is AWESOME and we seriously love ours. My husband says it is the most luxurious car he has ever owned (and he has owned some "luxery" sedans).

[ed_tricia]

We have an almost 4yo in the middle right now, and the plan is to keep her center (she's FF in a 5 pt harness, and will be for years) and put baby behind driver. We haven't tried the two seats side by side yet, but I'm really hoping they puzzle well. If not, we'll just do both outboard. I guess we'll have to switch the baby seat to the other side if DH drives my car b/c he's a foot taller and probably won't have room w/ a RF seat behind him. With only 2, we're gonna stick w/ the good gas mileage and avoid the minivan/suv for now. Since DD will be 4 1/2 and has always been super sweet w/ our friends' babies, I think it will work to have her next to the baby so she can entertain him/her sometimes.

[mamakaryn08]

Now that I realized how tall DS is getting, I'm thinking of actually buying him a new seat with a taller shell so he can stay RF longer... in which case, I'm not sure where he would go and where baby will go. My parents were talking about getting baby a new seat, too, just because I want one and I know DH won't go for buying one when we have 2 perfectly good seats available. But to have them both RF will make it so DH can't push his seat back completely like he's used to doing. Oh well...

[ArtsyHeartsy]

Originally Posted by Crazybean

Interesting thread.. I had looked into a mini-van but the gas mileage was not something to brag about. I work about 45 miles away one way. This is only my 2nd so I'm sure I'll stay in my falling apart sedan

That's true, the minivans don't get great gas mileage! They are better than SUV's, at least the one I have seems to be. My SIL got a crossover and it's mileage is worse. Not sure of the advantage in that thing. 5 seats and bad gas mileage.

I have the Honda Odyssey as well. Mine is older, no LATCH. I would buy another when I need a new car. One of my good friends just got a new one and I drove it, it is NICE! It's like driving a sedan, but with lots of seats and lots of power!

I will have baby behind passenger seat. I am always the driver (crazy car-sickness!) so I would like the baby where I can see him/her, and my arms are looooonnnggg. My DD will go behind me and dss will probably sit in the last row or the front since he's almost big enough. He doesn't mind having the privacy in the back so he can rock out with his mp3 player. I like having the younger kids in the middle row since it's the safest, though I feel safe with them in the back too.

I cannot tell you how many times I have climbed through the back of the van to install seats in the third row for the many nieces and nephews I transport. What a pain! Maybe I should get a smaller car so I don't have to do that anymore!

[rebeccalizzie]

Originally Posted by wavybrains

And the carseat issue is a whole separate post . . . DD has two inexpensive carseats (one in each car)--the Graco Comfort Sport. However, both are in pretty worn condition--padding is going big time, rips where the straps come through, hard to adjust, never had a good fit with it. However, if we get the new bean a "premium" seat (although I really refuse to believe that $200+ is *really* necessary), then I feel like we "owe" DD a nicer carseat as well. She'll be almost 3 in july and is approaching 30 lbs so I don't know what we will do carseat wise AT ALL.

She's probably going to outgrow the Comfort Sport before she's ready for a booster anyway (which is what happened with us, DS won't be 4 until August but just hit 40 lbs), so I'd consider getting her a Nautilus--we love ours, it harnesses to 65 lbs and then converts to a high back booster. And DS thinks it's the greatest, he loves his cupholder and toy holder.

As for me, I have to get a new car, replacing my beloved CR-V. Sigh. Even with narrow car seats, you can't fit an adult sized teenager between them so we can't do three across. We have to have AWD or 4WD so I am praying I can find a used AWD Sienna minivan in our price range. Otherwise I am looking for SUV's with third rows and at least acceptable gas mileage. DD sits in the front except when DH and I are both in the car, then she'll be in the very back. Yay for no car seat for her, LOL. The two littles will be in the middle seats and when I babysit my 1 yo niece she'll be in the very back with DD. At least DH's car is super gas efficient so we may sometimes be able to switch cars.