Health

Consider your child’s body type. A small baby is more suited to a rear-facing infant seat with lower harness slots and easy angle adjustments; infant/child (2-in-1) seats and infant/ child and booster (3-in-1) seats tend to fit big babies better. Shelley Bauer, president of Kids in Safe Seats, a volunteer group in St. John’s, suggests measuring prospective models from the seat bottom to the first harness slot (see diagram below). On an infant seat, this distance is usually about seven inches, whereas on most convertibles it’s 10 inches. If your newborn is just seven or eight pounds, use a small seat for the first three months.

If you and your partner are tall, chances are you will have a tall child, so when it comes to forward-facing seats, choose a larger model. “Look for a seat with an internal harness that accommodates a child up to 45 inches tall,” says Lacey Hoyland, a car seat instructor/technician in Edmonton. The label will tell you; many are limited to just 40 inches.

In all cases — both for forward-facing child seats and boosters — if the middle of your child’s ear reaches the top of the seat, you’ll need a larger one.

Finding a fit
Two websites can help you get a better idea of how a car seat will fit in your car: tsf-bcaa.com

The Traffic Safety Foundation of the British Columbia Automobile Association takes a detailed look at several popular new vehicles, showing which passenger spots are safest for infant, child and booster seats.

carseatdata.org This site includes an extensive database on how various seat models fit in specific vehicles, along with tips and detailed data on seats. Caveat: Much of the info is provided by parents rather than experts, and the models are mostly US. Still, it’s a useful starting point.

Metric equivalents
For simplicity, we’ve used pounds in this story; this chart will help you convert:

pounds	kilograms
20	9
30	13.6
40	18.1
50	22.7
80	36.3

 

Originally published in Today's Parent, May 2007