meehaja jnr is due in august, went out looking at push chairs today, two thoughts, how expensive and how badly made? These things are shocking! Double front wheels to make turning hard, round profile tyres, presumably for leaning into the bends whilst doing 90mph? “suspension”, plastic at where structural integrity matters? £600!!!

So anyway, what do people recommend? Our budget it probably about £300 tops and we’d like to go second hand I think. Wife likes one hand folding and something she can get into the back of a citroen C3.

We’ve got a Micralite Fastfold. It’s been excellent in every way. It was a WHICH best buy, beating all the bugaboos etc, which is why we bought it. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people that have come up to us in the street and asked us about it.

We bought a chicco liteway from kiddicare.com in the end. Simple, lightweight, easy to fold up and so on, goes almost flat for newborn. Cost us £80 🙂 Looked on ebay and at car boots for S/H stuff but didn’t think we’d save an enormous amount so went with that. It is just a buggy though, it doesn’t transform into a fire engine or a 911 or any of that other cool stuff 🙁

baby jogger city mini here been very good

manouverable, light takes maxi cosi car seat

and very easy to fold..

Babyjogger city mini
Just bought after falling out with previous two buggies
Very compact, so simple one handed fold and very well made
Pretty funny actually as my wife also drives a C3 and wanted it because of how eAsy it is too fold
£199 in babies r us, about £225 elsewhere
Basic in that you don’t get cupholders etc ( available seperately) but the sun/rain hood is huge and has been really good this last week at keeping little one sheltered from sun
Oh and you can get brackets to mount various car seats onto the body so for the first few months it is like a mini travel system

Firstly, everyone’s experience and requirements are so different most advice is pointless so don’t listen to any of it. That said, being so disappointed with our “travel system” for Jr1, we simply didn’t bother for Jr2. When they are small a sling is easier to use and both of ours have preferred it. Properly fitted you really don’t notice the weight so you can go about your business. By the time they are getting too heavy to carry, your choice of buggies opens up and should be considerably cheaper.
It’s perfectly sensible to weigh up the options now, but please consider putting your £300 in an envelope and buying it only when your sure you really need it. That money would go some way to buying a Croozer or Chariot later on which will likely see much more use and still be worth something when it’s outgrown.

Before you bring them home you need baby grows, nappies and a bath sponge. Everything else is optional.

I got a Quinny Freestyle XL system from Ebay for £80 – looked as new. Very pleased with it and it’s great offroad. A bit heavy if that matters and others fold up more neatly if you need that. Ours is a different colour but basically this is what we got:

Before you bring them home you need baby grows, nappies and a bath sponge. Everything else is optional.

Technically you’ll need a car seat unless you’re walking from the hospital I think? Bang on advice about what you’re actually doing not being the same as everyone else though. We’re giving home birth a crack so might not even need that. Oh, and I don’t even own a car 🙂 Am borrowing car from a mate for a bit just in case. Picked up a very nice britax car seat this evening. Cost = £0 from Freecycle, half our stuff has come from there really.

Bang on advice about what you’re actually doing not necessarily being the same as everyone else though. What sling do you have petrieboy? Have a proper carrier off ebay for later on, but stupidly declined the £5 sling she offered me at the same time.

you shouldnt buy a second hand car seat as you don’t know its history, it could be damaged, could have been involved in an accident.

Do yourself and your kid a favour and get a baby sling first. The cosy fabric wrap kind. Then when you’ve got the hang of it and know the kinds of things you do with your kid you’ll have a better idea of what you actually want from a pushchair.

Then get a Quinny Buzz. The baby can face you which is important at first, and it’s inexpensive, folds up small and works well.

I’d avoid a travel system as they’re crappy plasticky monstrosities and when you get a sleeping baby out of a car seat and put them in a sling they just snuggle up to you and go back to sleep anyway.

Also the carry cot things that fit to a pushchair frame to make a pram are useless if you have hills because the baby slides down one end or other in a heap.

My fave sling is from Close Parent.

By the time they are getting too heavy to carry, your choice of buggies opens up and should be considerably cheaper

Yep. Once they are old enough not to need to be facing you, you can get a Quinny Zapp which is only about £120 which sits on the wallet a lot better than a £600 buga-bloody-boo.

Best advice I have is to go minimal. Parents are encouraged to buy tons and tons of junk and then a big car to cart it all around – almost all of it is not necesary. Just get the absolute minimum and then get more if you really feel you need it. Most people over-shop at first then leave the stuff gathering dust in the garage.

Oh and pushchairs take a beating so second hand ones are often trashed.

Although.. Chariot bike trailers are also the best pushchair I’ve ever used…

you shouldnt buy a second hand car seat as you don’t know its history, it could be damaged, could have been involved in an accident.

I bought a Bebe Confort one off Ebay for £1 incredibly which I collected, took the cover off and could see the polystyrene was all intact. Mate bought one which was posted and found the polystyrene had been cellotaped back together(!) so posted it back for a refund only to see it reappear on Ebay. Is this evil?

Quinny Zapp which is only about £120

Got one of them from Ebay too, pretty good for carrying in a small car and light enough for my weedy wife but the Freestyle is what we need for offroad – disagree with molgrips on this as it really is brilliant.

You have to think about how often you go off road though. Which is difficult before hand because you often think you’ll do something which you never end up doing. We also bought a Maxi Cosi Mura because it was half price. It’s much better for longer walks to the shop and so on, but we really don’t take it to the woods. We’ve got a backpack for that, which makes far more sense really. For me at least. Mrs Grips won’t carry it but then she doesn’t take the kid out for long walks 🙂

I wanted one of these two…

But I ended up with this…

Check this out.

Mothercare Xtreme

Down from £400 to £180. Includes car seat, cosy toes and rain cover. You can get a carry cot for it too.

Ours has done 2 kids and 4 years service. Haven’t found anything that it can’t cope with. Can’t kill it. Can’t fault it.

You have to think about how often you go off road though

Yes and I don’t suppose I’d have paid the £500 RRP for it but we live 100 metres from woodland so use it a lot offroad. My wife also prefers it over the Zapp when walking into the village but the Zapp is really good, manoeverable and you can fit a carseat to that too.

A 3 wheeler with 10″ pneumatic tires handles kerbs and uneven pavements better too.

Yeah we use the Zapp for shopping etc, it wasn’t as good as the Mura for longer walks even on pavements.

Second for getting a sling, our 3 week old loves it, I usually end up going for a walk in the evening with him if he’s upset and it’s not time for a feed. Around us it’s great to be able to walk in the countryside proper and be able to do stiles and gates etc. So far he’s fallen asleep in it every time but one, and that time he spend it murmuring to himself, so was quite a nice walk!

We bought a silver cross sleepover pram as it was what my wife had always wanted but now we’ve got it we probably won’t use it for long, mainly cos it’s a right pain to get in the car! We’ve got a laguna estate and it barely fits! One bit of advice, make sure you take the opportunity to try the carseat in teh car before you buy, some are easier than others, and ISOFIX is great but it does mean you are stuck putting the seat in that side of the car which isn’t great if you park on raods often as you will end up getting them in/out on the road side at some point which is pretty scary!

Above all, enjoy the experience of shopping without the baby, trust me!

if you park on raods often as you will end up getting them in/out on the road side at some point which is pretty scary!

You can put a child in a car seat from the other side, with a bit of practise. As your kid gets bigger you should get stronger. I can do it with our 18kg 2 year old, although Mrs Grips can’t. So just as well Meg’s learned to do it herself now.

I dunno why you think isofix causes this issue tho…

We got a Mothercare 4 wheel thingy – much more stable than the 3 wheelers and just as goos around town. We have a proper Babyjogger as well because Mrs TT wanted to get back to running and that has been brilliant – nothing like it for off road either.

I’d recommend a cheap second hand one. In six months you’ll be pushing them around in a buggy! Cheap pushchair, expensive buggy. My sisters have used Phil and Ted, but normally have two kids in the pushchair, and two more in tow!

Buy the most expensive Maclaren buggy you can afford.

Pushchair and buggy are syonymous, surely?

Well technically, buggy is a subset of pushchair. Much lighter, smaller, easier folding, invented by Maclaren, copied by everyone else (once the patent expired). Updated by Quinny.

Modern pushchairs try and do everything, e.g., take a pram bed, hold a car seat, be light, be easy to fold, go off road, etc… Buggies do one thing well; transport small children in an urban environment (they aren’t great off road).

And we learned this the expensive way 😳 . The posh pushchair stayed in the garage for years.

Zapps are way better than those McLaren style things I reckon.

Never tried one as our boys are now much older, but can you fold them with one hand with the baby in the other whilst getting on the bus? Do they have that spitfire heritage? 8) Ours fitted lengthways in the boot of the car, which made travel very easy. In fact that became the selection criteria for our cars. Place buggy in boot end on, shut door, if it closed the car made the list.

Mrs Q and I went shopping for pushchairs with my mum months ago.

We eventually bought a Graco Symbian from Toys R Us, chair, car seat, adapter, pram bit came to about 450 or so, maybe 550 can’t really remember.

I was set on getting a Quinny Buzz, but after working out that it would be 300 pounds more and it didn’t seem to have anything that the Graco didn’t ofer bar resale, I went with that.

It appear so far to be ok. It does what we want.

I looked into second hand prams but found that some of the more expensive ones aren’t worth buying because of the repair costs on common faults with them, which made them uneconomical. I think one of the Bugaboo common faults was with the brakes, and it was close to 100 to fix.

I never tried folding it with one hand, but I reckon you’d easily get it on a bus (round our way) whole with the kid still in it.

In the car is where the Zapp shines though since it’s about half the length of a McLaren and not really any wider. Very small.

Re systems, we were set on a car seat which you can’t remove from the car, so the travel system made no sense to us.

LMNH jnr goes everywhere in a sling, we dont have a pushchair. We have a fabric sling about 2ft wide by 10ft long, loads of different holds and she loves it. 😀

RichPenny – we have one of these
I had a “how much???” moment when she ordered it (considering it’s just a length of fabric) but it was used daily for several months on jr1 and is once again seeing daily (almost constant) service for jr2. Probably the best baby related thing we’ve bought

Molgrips, et al., ISOFIX causes the issue as the base stays in the car so is on one side of the car or the other, and in my experience is pretty heavy and a pain to move regularly, partly due to them being so secure, which is a good thing! but unless you buy two bases you are stuck putting the carseat into that side of the car.

I guess you can put them in from the otehr side and lean across but that pretty much defeats the point of an easy to use ISOFIX system really?!?

Each to their own though, find what suits you/your missus/car/lifestyle is the idea really, go try lots, sales people are usually very helpful and keen to seel you extortionately prices plastic! I though MTB bits were expensive before I found the joys of baby stuff!

Silver Cross are worth a look, we paid under £200 for a pram/pushchair thing and it’s been fine.

Then get a McLaren buggy when they’re old enough.

Sod paying £600 for some “travel system”, listen to the guy up there who realised that’s a mug’s game.

or the one we use 😀

ISOFIX causes the issue as the base stays in the car so is on one side of the car or the other

That’s not a feature specifically of ISOFIX. If you use a seatbelt thing are you moving it from side to side also?

Our choice of car seat was limited because we wanted an Aprica with the flat bed option. And luckily we got one for 250 quid rather than the 800 they are new 😯

In comparing MTBs to pushchairs there is no contest. Pushchairs are expensive but also crap. At least if you drop 600 quid on a bike you get some decent engineering not a load of wobbly plastic crap, as is often the case with pushchairs!

I bought a Bebe Confort one off Ebay for £1 incredibly which I collected, took the cover off and could see the polystyrene was all intact. Mate bought one which was posted and found the polystyrene had been cellotaped back together(!) so posted it back for a refund only to see it reappear on Ebay. Is this evil?

Yep, I’d say that’s pretty evil. Our free one is fine 🙂

Haha, I know what you mean Molgrips, our silvercross is pretty well built compared to some but still quite flimsy! As an engineer I look at some design and wonder if they are designed to fail as soon as they get pushed into a curb!

You’re right about ISOFIX though, any carseat with a base withh have the same issue, our silver cross one gets strapped in everytime, which is a pain and if I was loaded I’d get one which works with a base and get a base for both sides! sadly I’m not 🙁

Having either owned, or tried those of friends, most of the big names at various times; I still reckon the Phil & Ted Sport Double was the best. Exceptionally well made steel frame, strong joints & decent tough fabrics. We paid £450 for ours with all the add-ons. Just sold it on Ebay for £220 so didnt lose much. Ours took a fair old hammering for the last 3 1/2 years, but it came up like new & the joints, pivots & mechanisms all worked as new. Ok, its not light, but it folds pretty small. It could be steered & manouvered with a single hand. I’m sure someone will pop up & ridicule the use of the cocoon, but for the few months they fit them they work very well. Dont let the double bit put you off, its a single underneath.
And this having them face you business is all very cuddly & modern, but doesnt really make much difference.

+4 for a sling.

We used a baby bjorn and best thing ever. Really. Better than bikes even!

We also have a Phil and ted. Great bits of kit but we rarely used it as the baby bjorn was so good and now they are older (1 and 2.5 yrs) they both walk everywhere and it never gets used. If I had my time again I wouldn’t get a buggy at all. Having said that mine walked at 10 and 12 months so a bit easier I guess.

But if you do Phil and ted 🙂

And this having them face you business is all very cuddly & modern, but doesnt really make much difference

No? Did you ask your kid?

I think it makes a difference in the early months!

I think it makes a difference in the early months!

Did you ask your kid? 😉

Yes, in a manner of speaking 🙂

But better to assume that it does make a positive difference with the chance of you wasting your time than assume it doesn’t when it actually does and your kid is that little bit less happy…

EDIT: I just asked her. She said ‘no’ but I think she’s a bit tired.