Browsing Category: Sponsored

#CarseatFullstop – How to keep your kid safe in any car accident

I am a careful driver. I don’t have any history of accidents, whether from my own doing or anyone else’s. But I also don’t have any illusions – almost every other day I have some kind of close call situation. There are always people who don’t look before driving, or who change lanes without checking their blind spots, or who reverse out of a parking spot without checking. Sometimes, I’m even guilty of those things and only remain accident-free thanks to good luck and quick reflexes. With Harley along for the ride, I’m even more aware of the risks, and the importance of car seats, particularly rear-facing car seats.

When I was getting ready to start work on this campaign, I was chatting with Mandy-Lee Miller, the awesome lady of Pregnant in Cape Town and mastermind of the #CarseatFullstop campaign. We were talking about moving her adorable little girl into a rear-facing car seat and how it had made her even more worried about getting rear-ended. I hadn’t even thought of that! Would Harley be more at risk in a rear-collision? Or what if we were hit from the side? Actually, no, and it all comes down to science. Continue Reading

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Volvo Britax Max-Way car seat review and GIVEAWAY [Giveaway now closed]

I have already told you how important it is for kids under four to face backwards. It’s one of the big things I learned since joining the #CarseatFullstop campaign. Carseats were always important to me – it was a no brainer that Harley had to be in a car seat from the moment we brought her home from the hospital. But as she has gotten older, I’ve wondered which seat would be best when she outgrew her awesome chair. Once I learned that she needed to keep facing the back of the car, I wondered which model would be best. Well, I didn’t need to wonder much longer – Volvo were kind enough to send me one of their toddler seats for review.

They weren’t just kind to me, though. One lucky reader will be able to win a Volvo seat of their own. And it doesn’t have to be a toddler seat, either. Read my review, enter to win at the end and you could win a car seat for your infant, toddler (up to 25kgs) or a booster seat for your not-quite-adult-sized kid. But why should you be excited? Well, this is a top-of-the-range seat! Continue Reading

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123 Comments Giveaway, Products, Sponsored

#CarseatFullstop – Moving forward facing backward

Why use a rear-facing car seat

I didn’t grow up in car culture. I grew up in New York City, where public transportation and taxis and walking are the norm. As a result, I didn’t grow up around cars and car seats, instead learning about them once I moved to car-centered cities as an adult.

This is actually a good thing, though – the information about child restraints has evolved a lot in the past 20-30 years, and research continues to show the importance of rear-facing seats. Harley’s infant seat was obviously rear facing, as is the norm for all infants, but she will probably grow out of it in the coming months, which means we’ll need to buy her a new one. But she will continue to face the back of the car, and here’s why. Continue Reading

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4 Comments Health, Parenting, Sponsored

How this mommy and baby class saved me and Harley

Toptots

With Harley now seven months old, I have enough distance from those early weeks and months to look back with some perspective. I’ve written about how traumatic her birth experience was, but even then I didn’t realize how traumatic it was and how hard it was going to make things with her. I was sick, she was so very premature, and we had quite a road ahead of us. I struggled to bond with her, I felt like everything was just so hard, and I was even resenting her. It was NOT good.

Luckily, while still pregnant, I had already decided that I wanted to try and find a nice mommy and baby class to attend once she was born. There are so many out there, so I wasn’t quite sure which one I’d go for. But I chatted to Geoff, my editor at Lazygamer, and his wife used to own a TOPTOTS franchise, so I decided to give them a whirl. It turns out, that was one of the best decisions I’ve made in the first six months of Harley’s life. Continue Reading

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4 Comments Child Development, Parenting, South Africa, Sponsored