[blparent] More on Car Seats?

[Allison]

Hi Listers,

I wrote this list with questions about car seats a few months back, and got some good replies at the time. Now that we're a little closer to our due date, I have some follow up questions.

My fiancé and I are both blind and therefore don't drive. We went to several stores and found a Graco travel system that we both really liked. The car seat looked fairly easy to carry, it could be installed with or without the base, and the attached stroller could be pulled behind us while we used our canes. Then, at my shower last weekend, we were thrilled to learn that my friend bought the Graco car seat and stroller for us. All great news, right? Well, tonight, my fiancé and my dad decided to practice setting up and installing the car seat. And it was incredibly complicated! I admit I didn't try it personally, but these are two smart guys, and they couldn't figure it out. Moreover, my dad, who could see the manual, told us that the installation process for the car seat will vary depending on the type of car it was being installed in. This was news to us, and not welcome news since we will rarely ride in the same car twice. We do have a driver we hire, and we do have friends and family who will be willing to drive for us, but we don't have one or even two consistent cars that we use all the time. In fact, much of the time, we use Uber, Lyft, or cabs. Our plan was to just install the car seat temporarily in each car that we rode in and then carry with us. Inconvenient to be sure, but not impossible, right? But now that we actually have the car seat here, we are thinking maybe this plan isn't as doable as we thought. How practical is it to carry around a car seat and a manual and figure out individual installation each time with each new car that we ride in? And if that's our only option, is there anything we can try to make things go more smoothly?

Also, a few parents on her recommend the Cybex Aton 2 car seat to us. We haven't ruled that out, but it's $300, and the car seat we have now was a gift and thereby free. Moreover, one parent mentioned that the Cybex is difficult to buy an adaptor for. And we're hoping  to be able to attach the seat to a stroller at least some of the time. I'm open to buying a different car seat and stroller if we have to, but is the Cybex significantly better enough to be worth spending so much more money? If not, is there another solution for all of this that we haven't thought up yet?



Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Allison, Darrell, and baby girl pending