Bucket Seats for Baby: Infant Carrier Reviews

05. Mar, 2010 0 Comments

I am not qualified to judge the best car seat for your baby, and I encourage all parents to consult with an authority on testing and safety in making this selection for your own family. However, as a mom with more than a bit of experience with infant carriers, or the bucket seat, as we called it, I’m certainly able to offer some insight into how useful and realistic these seats are for parents.

The Bucket Seat
The infant carrier looks like a bucket, hence its name around here – the bucket seat. It has a handle that folds down to allow you full access to the baby and it pulls up to let you haul that huge carrier around where ever you’d like to go. The bucket seat holds baby in the proper cupped position secure in a five point harness. The bucket seat has the additional property of being able to “snap” into the base of the car seat inside the car and inside a stroller as well if you purchased a full travel system.

The Best Things about Buckets
I love the idea of the bucket seat. The seats are touted as a means to transfer and carry your baby comfortably without disturbing him, especially if he falls asleep in the car and needs to be transferred into the house. Simply lift him up, carry him in and let him keep sleeping without interruption. And to some degree this works.

Bucket Bummers
The problem is that the bucket seats weigh almost twenty or thirty pounds once you have a baby in there and carrying around a large plastic seat that weighs thirty pounds is no easy feat, especially if you have a toddler and a diaper bag with you. I never found carrying an infant seat easy or convenient, and I’m a strong 5’9”. No child of mind kept sleeping once I’d carefully moved the seat from one place to the next. I’d be tiptoeing away and feel that awful moment of silence when air is being drawn into the tiny lungs ready to be expelled dramatically in a cry of outrage. Every time. It might have been just my kids, but it’s happened more than a few times to friends as well.

While awesome in the store, there are mixed reviews on the strollers that these bucket seats come with as well. The strollers are often huge and while wonderful in certain settings are more problematic in others. How useful the seat is in that setting depends on how comfortable you are with the large stroller.

Realistic Bucket Benefits
As the mother of very big babies, I had an additional problem with bucket seats. My children outgrew them at an astonishing rate. But because of this, I learned a lot about what we truly convenient. At first carrying an infant seat into the grocery store to put in a car seems convenient. But in reality, it’s far easier to simply put the baby into a front carrier or sling to shop. The bucket seat is great for letting baby sit and look around, and it can make a very nice make-shift bed when you’re out an about. If you’re going short distances, such as up the stairs following the toddler, it can be nicely transported as well.

When it comes to buying an infant seat, the best solution would be to buy the safest, most reliable version out there for your peace of mind, but don’t feel compelled to haul it everywhere or love it with every fiber of your maternal being. It’s a car seat. Love its safety in the car, but stay open – very open – to other ways to simplify your life in regards to carrying your baby from one place to another.

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