School me on being a Dad

I didn't read all the posts, but I have a 16 month old, with a second on the way in 3 months.
https://takingcarababies.com/ was our bible for sleep training. It has worked awesome. My daughter is very easy to put to sleep, following the lessons.

We also signed up at the hospital for some baby training, a few months before the birth. It taught swaddling, diaper changing, what to expect, feeding, how to help the Mom during the birth process, etc. Very helpful. Everyone in the class was noobs like us. They may offer it online now. We also to a hospital course for baby first aid (choking, etc).

I’ve got a question for people for their opinions around car seats. Any life hacks to getting around the sheer depth that rear facing car seats take up? Recommendations for ones that take up less space?

We have a Nuna Pipa and it’s great for day to day, but even in the wife’s SUV my knees are touching the dash in front of it which kind of blows chunks... I’m considering what would happen in a car where space is even more constrained than her SUV.

It makes me consider if maybe a “permanent” install rear facing convertible would be more compact for occasional use, yea you can’t carry the baby around in it but it works and is still safe.

Anyway, very interested in any thoughts and elaboration.

rear facing seats are monsters and don't fit well in most vehicles. They do fit well in minivans and Ford crew cab trucks. I have no suggestions on specific seats that are smaller. Many families like to rush the kids into front-facing ASAP for convenience alone, despite the fact that rear facing is MUCH safer.

Yea I’m thinking more of an occasional works in a pinch option without being overtly unsafe for a baby.

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Originally Posted by killramos

I’ve got a question for people for their opinions around car seats. Any life hacks to getting around the sheer depth that rear facing car seats take up? Recommendations for ones that take up less space?

We have a Nuna Pipa and it’s great for day to day, but even in the wife’s SUV my knees are touching the dash in front of it which kind of blows chunks... I’m considering what would happen in a car where space is even more constrained than her SUV.

It makes me consider if maybe a “permanent” install rear facing convertible would be more compact for occasional use, yea you can’t carry the baby around in it but it works and is still safe.

Anyway, very interested in any thoughts and elaboration.

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Assuming your wife is smaller then you, put the car seat behind her or get a Trackhawk, problem solved.

Our pipa is fine for her Lexus, I can live with the fitment in there. My comment is more that it’s already tight in the SUV so how to accommodate something with less space. My though was are there any “compactish” rear facing convertibles that people have found or like.

I’m about as likely to buy a pornstar red track hawk as I am to move to Aspen. Or drive a Tesla. Or maybe a Kia.

The graco 4ever convertible was the best fit for my wifes former rogue. The diono is fucking massive when rear facing. Ironically, I'm now looking at it because it appears to fit much better forward facing.

Buy bigger SUV.

In for smaller car seat recommendations. This is one of the main reasons why we got the RDX rather then a Tacoma. Apparently these rear facing seats are just fucking massive. But we also need something that fits in the Fit.

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Originally Posted by killramos

I’ve got a question for people for their opinions around car seats. Any life hacks to getting around the sheer depth that rear facing car seats take up? Recommendations for ones that take up less space?

We have a Nuna Pipa and it’s great for day to day, but even in the wife’s SUV my knees are touching the dash in front of it which kind of blows chunks... I’m considering what would happen in a car where space is even more constrained than her SUV.

It makes me consider if maybe a “permanent” install rear facing convertible would be more compact for occasional use, yea you can’t carry the baby around in it but it works and is still safe.

Anyway, very interested in any thoughts and elaboration.

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What SUV? We have our kid right behind us in our Audi Q5 and I have quite a bit of room (6'0 tall for reference)

We had a Lexus IS250 which we sold as we never drove i can imagine my knees would be to my chin in that car.

We have an NX which is the usual baby hauler. I imagine similar to IS but maybe a bit bigger?

I’m not that tall and I definitely couldn’t open the glove compartment but it’s “fine”.

We have two Clek Fllo car seats, one in my wife's 2015 RDX and one in my F150. In the rear facing position you'd never notice it in the truck but in the RDX you definitely have to have the front seat quite a bit forward especially when its in the infant recline position. When you are able to adjust it up to the next weight class incline position it fits better in the RDX but we put it behind the passenger seat as my wife is only 5'6.

My wife says for "compact" rear facing car seats check out the Nuna Rava, Cosco Scenera-Next, Graco Forever, or Graco Extend-to-Fit. Apparently we have a friend who drives a Mazda 3 and the only one that would fit rear facing is the Nuna Rava.

Rear facing seats suck grundel but it's only for about two years.

My wife is shorter than me so I always stuck the seat behind her and I drove. Now that we have 2 kids the forward facing seat is behind me and rear facing behind her. Always take my car since its bigger for family trips but ran into the same issue when I used to drive my Beamer and had no room for a car seat at all.

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Originally Posted by killramos

I’ve got a question for people for their opinions around car seats. Any life hacks to getting around the sheer depth that rear facing car seats take up? Recommendations for ones that take up less space?

We have a Nuna Pipa and it’s great for day to day, but even in the wife’s SUV my knees are touching the dash in front of it which kind of blows chunks... I’m considering what would happen in a car where space is even more constrained than her SUV.

It makes me consider if maybe a “permanent” install rear facing convertible would be more compact for occasional use, yea you can’t carry the baby around in it but it works and is still safe.

Anyway, very interested in any thoughts and elaboration.

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We have a diono and if you use the angle adjuster for rear facing makes a difference of couple inches of space for seats. In my wife’s Kia and for one I have in my bmw allows for seat not to be right to the front. Other trick if vehicle allows is to put in middle and buckets from front fits between perfectly. https://www.westcoastkids.ca/radian-...ngle-adjuster#

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Originally Posted by haggis88

I guess we got lucky, ours has been sleeping through the night since he was about 5 weeks

We must be bad parents by not waking him exactly every 3 hours to feed him and only feeding him when he's hungry :thumbsup:

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Maybe lucky, or maybe just way overfeeding with formula before bedtime? A lot of parents do the overfeeding on purpose to make the kid sleep. But a bottle makes it very easy to overfeed accidentally since they flow so fast. Everyone does what they have to for their sanity. I've learned to live with completely broken sleep the last 8 months, if he goes a 5 hour stretch it's heaven.

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Originally Posted by TurboMedic

Agree with sleep training! For us, sleep training happened at 4 months and it went amazing. We did it from a book called "the happy sleeper", and it took all of 1 night and he's been great since then. Routine was huge, weaning a soother was huge, and empowering him to self soothe helped him sleep through the night with nearly no issues. I never understand why people don't sleep train, I have friends that don't and I'm all feeling rested over here

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Because of the studies surrounding it. I don't judge, everyone should raise their kids how they see fit. For us personally we decided that with the overwhelming evidence on the subject, that we were not going to sleep train. "Self Soothe" is the term people always use, but they don't really soothe per se. They just learn that if they cry, nobody comes. It's a good way to break a trust bond with the child right away, which is something that can be beneficial to have later in life when they need questions answered about sex, drugs, relationships, religion, etc. But it's not like sleep trained babies are growing up to be serial killers, so I'm sure it's not the end of the world, or maybe no big deal at all.

It's a conversation I don't like having with people, because they tend to take it personally if they sleep trained. As a sleep deprived parent, I completely understand why someone would sleep train, and certainly have no judgement or malice towards them about what they chose to do.

And Canada is weird. They are very against co-sleeping for reasons of potentially rolling on your baby and killing it or something? Meanwhile SIDS is WAY more common in babies that crib sleep. Japan exclusively co-sleeps and has the lowest SIDS in the world last I read.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by killramos

I’ve got a question for people for their opinions around car seats. Any life hacks to getting around the sheer depth that rear facing car seats take up? Recommendations for ones that take up less space?

We have a Nuna Pipa and it’s great for day to day, but even in the wife’s SUV my knees are touching the dash in front of it which kind of blows chunks... I’m considering what would happen in a car where space is even more constrained than her SUV.

It makes me consider if maybe a “permanent” install rear facing convertible would be more compact for occasional use, yea you can’t carry the baby around in it but it works and is still safe.

Anyway, very interested in any thoughts and elaboration.

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It would be a pain in the ass, but you could always ditch the base and just buckle the seat itself in. Some are rated to do that. I don't know what other option there is if leg space is a super premium? Buy a Yukon XL maybe? Ours is a pain in the ass too. We did just switch to a convertible awhile ago, and it is better at least.

Biggest mistake we made was trying to be super prepared and buy everything in advance. You find out that half the stuff you bought the kid doesn't like or doesn't have any value. We got the Halo Basinet, kid ended up being a contact sleeper. Got the fancy Owlet baby camera monitor system, but a camera was no use to us when we realized we were going to be doing co-sleeping. Got the Momaroo swing because of it's great reviews, turns out it is an epic piece of junk that the kid hated and seems to be the same thing we hear from lots of other parents.

One thing I'm a huge advocate for, is identifying tongue tie!! Our kid was checked in the hospital by the Pede, and told no tongue tie. Wifes nipples were getting tore to shit, and we saw 4 different Lactation Consultants in the hospital while we were locked there. Not a single one of them ever considered there was an issue with the kid, they just kept telling the wife she was breastfeeding wrong. By week 6 when the kids weight was dropping percentiles on the chart, he would feed for half hour on each tit, would not sleep longer than 2 hour stretches maximum, could not be put down ever. We decided we were done dealing with public healthcare. Got a private LC that we paid for, she immediately diagnosed the tongue tie, we booked in to get it lasered, and never had a problem since. His weight jumped back up to where it should be, he drains a tit in like 5 minutes now, he can sleep without laying directly on my chest, and the wife isn't losing her mind with how hard breastfeeding is.

I think most people(myself included) think that a tongue tie is when the front of the tongue is tied down. But a tongue tie can be just 50% length of the tongue underneath, and cause massive issues. Not just with feeding either. They're starting to find out that this can cause sleep apnea later in life, wisdom teeth issues, and a host of other problems. The hospitals don't seem to care enough to pick up on this, because if the baby doesn't gain weight, they can just tell you to switch to bottle feeding and problem is solved.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by killramos

I’ve got a question for people for their opinions around car seats. Any life hacks to getting around the sheer depth that rear facing car seats take up? Recommendations for ones that take up less space?

We have a Nuna Pipa and it’s great for day to day, but even in the wife’s SUV my knees are touching the dash in front of it which kind of blows chunks... I’m considering what would happen in a car where space is even more constrained than her SUV.

It makes me consider if maybe a “permanent” install rear facing convertible would be more compact for occasional use, yea you can’t carry the baby around in it but it works and is still safe.

Anyway, very interested in any thoughts and elaboration.

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We used the angle adjuster on our Diono with rear facing and it definitely helped a bit, but even then it was still always relatively uncomfortable sitting in the front passenger seat (Q5). Ultimately we just lived with it and at about 11 months switched it to front facing. I know the recommendation is to leave it rear facing first two years and 'mandatory' for 1st year but our kids were pretty big around 11 months so we just did it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by killramos

I’ve got a question for people for their opinions around car seats. Any life hacks to getting around the sheer depth that rear facing car seats take up? Recommendations for ones that take up less space?

We have a Nuna Pipa and it’s great for day to day, but even in the wife’s SUV my knees are touching the dash in front of it which kind of blows chunks... I’m considering what would happen in a car where space is even more constrained than her SUV.

It makes me consider if maybe a “permanent” install rear facing convertible would be more compact for occasional use, yea you can’t carry the baby around in it but it works and is still safe.

Anyway, very interested in any thoughts and elaboration.

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We have Diono convertible seats, and they are indeed humungous when rear-facing. We put the angle adjuster in for the extra couple inches room, but front seat still only comfortable for my 5'3" wife (which is fine, because I'm always the driver when we're both in the car). The Diono is great when front facing, but it is a pain in the dick to switch between cars and as mentioned is pretty heavy.

Here's a tidbit that I got from our resident baby gear expert when I asked what would be a good fit in RDX (on the small side for rear seat room). Only reason I didn't go with his recommendations and still went with the Diono is because it was on sale, we liked it front facing, and wife still fits when it was installed rear facing.

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Originally Posted by cycosis

Id recommend you look at either the Britax Essentials (Allegiance or Emblem) carseat or the Peg Perego 5-65 convertible. For the Britax, I prefer the Emblem model, as it has the reinforced side impact head support and is very similar to the Perego (side impact head support).

Both seats will accommodate up to 65 lbs or 49" forward facing. Both have steel reinforcement in the chassis. Both have similar widths. Both install either with UAS or seatbelt. The Britax is slightly less deep though rear facing, which will give you slightly more leg room up front. However, the Peg Perego does have many more colours to choose from, including some leatherettes which are much nicer to look at vs the Britax which is pretty blatantly "fun kid design". Personal choice, I like stuff that doesnt stick out. Aside from nicer upholstery quality on the perego, the build quality for both is very similar and should hold up to 4-5 years or wear and tear if you maintain it somewhat regularly, ie. take it apart and wash it according to manufacturer instructions a couple times a year or if theres puke/major spill.

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I can basically confirm that a Yukon XL fixes the issue haha, but seems like a ridiculous solution to the problem. The removing the base and trying only with the seatbelt sounds intriguing to me, fortunately my pipa supports that.

Might be something I will try over the lunch hour to see the relative difference to installing with the base.

I am trying to avoid basically doing what Sabad suggested, but its not out of the consideration for the use case I am contemplating. If I have to pickup a convertible a bit earlier than we originally contemplated that doesn't really bother me. Unfortunately our daughter is really quite small ( 15th percentile for weight but 50th for length ) so pushing her into the next level of seat seems like an unrealistic plan.