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Nurseries and Baby Gear
overtonhayes
member
Cheaper alternatives to Uppababy Vista
overtonhayes
member
I'm still having trouble deciding what I need/want for baby, especially when it comes to the transportation gear. We want a bassinet for the home; a car seat (obviously); a frame to turn that car seat into a stroller; and a bassinet stroller/pram. The Uppababy Vista was recommended to me, but it's way too expensive: I found the 2011 model for $450, which is fine, but it's all the extras that make it too expensive. To use the bassinet indoors you need the bassinet stand (+$100), it doesn't come with a car seat (+$140 for the snugride), and then you need a car seat adapter on top of that ($40). Suddenly, that $450 has become $730!
We haven't really got our budget set in stone yet, but to put it into perspective: if we were buying all these things separately, we would be getting the Graco snugride car seat ($140), the Safety1st Nodaway bassinet ($80), and the frame for the Graco car seat ($74.99; total for all $295).
Or, as an alternative, would it be worth just getting all of the above, and a separate pram?
Edit: Also, does anyone know where I can find independent stroller 'safety ratings'? I'm looking at the Hauck Malibu but all the reviews talk about the great features, nothing about safety. And DH refuses to even listen to any stroller recommendations unless they're from some independent safety-checker-thing or a doctor (yes, he wants to ask a DOCTOR which stroller is best... Ugh).
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Re: Cheaper alternatives to Uppababy Vista
Good luck with finding a doctor safety rating for the stroller. Maybe look at the Baby Bargains book for stroller recs. Consumer Reports are not great. You'll do well on the car seat front for proper recommendations then, either car-seat.org or thecarseatlady.com (she's a pedi, and a qualified car seat tech).
I will shoot the Hauck Malibu down for you, the fabric is awful, cheap and not water resistant. It's just cotton, and it will fade quickly.
How about your lower cost selection for now, and then get the stroller that works for you later on? You'll be spending $$ either way. And you'll be looking at convertible car seats around the same time.
And for safety ratings, strollers are regulated too, so they have to meet minimums. What kind of safety issues is your DH concerned about? One thing to keep in mind is almost all strollers now (if not most, all) have a five point harness. Also, some are recommended for use from birth and up if they fully recline, or if they don't, from about 4-6 months, depending on the model.
Have you thought about Britax?
I have the Britax B Ready stroller and it is awesome. It comes with a lot of great features including a a carseat adapter for britax infant car seats. The B Ready is on sale on Amazon right now for $374.99. The B safe carseat is $139.99. They also have a bassinet for $137.67. It also turns into a double stroller with a 2nd seat kit if you have more children later on.
https://www.britaxusa.com/strollers/b-ready
Ugh, you tell me! I know that our baby's safety is the most important thing in the world, and I guess I can't fault him for being so worried about it. But this is how a typical stroller-related conversation goes:
Me: "Ok, so I found this one. It has everything we're looking for, it's above our budget, but it has really great reviews"
DH: "Reviews from where?"
Me: "The Bump and other places."
DH: "So it's just random people saying it's good? No. That's not good enough. Show me statistics."
It's getting pretty tiring!
I'm going to go on a limb and say there's not really any "because of stroller" casualties happening around the world, therefore there's no way that there would ever be any statistics. Heck, there aren't even car seat statistics of that kind so there definitely aren't going to be stroller stats! If a stroller was deemed unsafe in any way it would be immediately pulled from the market and by Googling it you'd see that. If it was pulled for a recall and is still around, it means that the problem was fixed. Don't drive yourself crazy.
Yup - this is my DH too. The only way to find "bad" or recalled strollers is the CPSC. And even some of those aren't bad, per se, just had a part that had an issue. They have some stats on any "accidents", but I can tell you for a fact that most people don't report this to any agency. There aren't safety stats for him to see. And pedis won't have this info. Heck some of them are clueless about the APAs new recommendation to rf to 2 (even though the info has been out more than 15 years).
Here's what I did, I picked out half a dozen strollers that I liked in store, then got him to see what he liked and let him play with it. He quickly eliminated a few because he figured out how quickly he could break it or make in stop functioning properly. LOL, I can tell you right now that the Maxi Cosi Foray would be a giant fail in under 30 seconds according to him. It has more sway than a suspension bridge.
I tried one of his tests in store at BRU with the Urbo, and scared the hell out of the sales staff. I stood on the basket, leaned on the seat portion, folded it, then picked it up and dropped in from about waist height. Not a scratch, dent or anything that made it not work the same as before. Make him do the same thing, if he can't find "proper safety info", put him in charge of putting the stroller through his paces.
Oh, and to follow up with the pp's suggestion of the B-ready, it's on my like list. It's similar to the UBV, and she's right, the bundling could work out well. And the car seat is good. I will say this, tell your dh that mine has attended accident scenes as a ff and there's a darn good reason that we have Britax and Diono car seats, installed correctly.
I am really wanting the uppa baby vista too, and I will probably suck it up and pay full price for the new model one, because I like the improvements they have made to it...
as for the basinette needing a stand... is there any reason it cannot go on the floor? I don't really get why it needs to be elevated, but maybe there is something I am not getting. In any case, I like it too because of the basinette.
My sister found a stroller yesterday that has many of the features of the vista, but has a little bit more weight and doesn't fold down as small-- it is the queen bee, by bumbleride. They have it available on their website in red right now for 399, so that is a pretty good deal. You would still need the infant seat adapter purchased separately, though.
https://www.bumbleride.com/strollers/queen-b-home.php#lifeJump
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Most stores would have security escort you out for that
I ended up going with this.... https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-First-Years-Wave-Stroller-Urban-Life-Black/13352099
Its t first years wave stroller
If you go with this option, you can only use the stroller frame until your LO outgrows their infant bucket seat. For my kid, that was around 9 months. With that inmond, it is cheaper to get a regular stroller with the carseat adpater than buy the seperate frame for the infant seat. Also, my kid was sick of sitting in the infant seat before then, so a stroller with good support that let him sit independently was a big plus.
IIRC, there is another (cheaper) frame that works with the UBV bassinet. I really enjoyed Baby Bargains when I picked out my gear. They rate things such as safety and constantly update their blog with information changes. FWIW, we have BJ City Mini. It folds easy and turns on a dime. We had the car seat adapter for it.
Nope. I asked if I could. You really think I'd wreck store property?