When to turn forward?

boolos2B05

When did you turn you LO forward facing in the carseat? We have the convertible seats, but haven't used yet. DD still fits in her carrier, easier for us right now.(2 door car) But we are changing soon.
DD is 18lbs and will be a year old in 2wks.

Bippy798

Recommended is now backwards until 2 years old.

ssg73

They reccomend keeping babies rear facing as long as possible and to keep them rear facing until the max weight and height for the seat.  We are getting the britax boulevard which can rear face up to 35 lbs.

lstaylor73

I would keep her rear facing as long as physically possible.  The new recommendation is 2years. 

jehprb

RFing for as long as possible and a 5pt harness for as long as possible after that.  DS got too tall for RFing in his BLVD at 3.5 so that's when we turned him...he'll be in a FF 5pt harness until he's too tall (he'll likely never be too heavy - lol) for one.

And when it comes to height remember that it's torso height and not overall body height - my son was over 40" and still RFing but he was all legs so it worked :-)

Jennyjenz

lstaylor73:

I would keep her rear facing as long as physically possible.  The new recommendation is 2years. 

ditto!

SBMBride406

I am fairly conservative as far as safety goes (I think) but we switched Marino forward facing when he was 13 months old (20 lbs). We bought convertible car seats and they didn't seem secure rear facing, so we moved them forward facing.

goblue

DS (21 months) is still rear facing in a Britax Advocate.  We want to keep him rear facing as long as possible, but I think we are going to have to turn him around by 2. 

I really think the carseat manufacturers and/or automobile manufacturers need to work to make it easier to get kids in and out when they are rearfacing.  The problem we have is not so much with DS once he's in the seat, but getting him through the door and into his seat.  It's a fairly small space between the doorframe and the back of his carseat (if that makes sense).  In any event, it is a tight fit and as DS gets bigger, it only gets worse.  I suppose the other option would be to load him from the other side of the car and have him crawl into his seat.  The Advocate is a really big seat, so that may be part of the problem.

Anyway, keep your LO rearfacing as long as you can.  From everything I have read, it is by far the safest way for them to be.

MrsJRT

We turned Robinson around at 17 months...he was getting too tall to be rear facing and he was not at all comfortable in the convertible car seat rear facing...it was pulling teeth for those 5 months to get him in there.  Now he's happy as a clam ff...we wanted to wait until 2 years, but our pedi agreed that he was just getting too big to be comfortable.  He was 25 pounds and over 33 inches tall, though.

TriciaJoy

Robbie is still rear facing at 21 months and I intend to keep him that way as long as possible.