Our baby is about 6 months and we have tried 4 different baby carriers, so I guess it's time to review them. In the shopping spree, before our baby was born, we'd picked the Baby-Bag of Premaxx of the shelves. We had the choice between that and the traditional baby sling cloth. Since the traditional way of carrying the baby looked harder to learn, we opted for the Baby-Bag.

But we soon found out that the Baby-Bag wasn't that easy either. The first time we put her in the bag was relative successful (well, after the second try), but after that we just couldn't get our baby in a good lying position in the bag. And our little girl didn't give us the time to experiment a bit. Even try-outs with a doll weren't that successful. The doll as well as the baby were almost locked up in the bag. You almost could not see her and that was different from that what we had seen on the pictures. Furthermore: our baby was rolled up like a hedgehog. One time I decided to walk with the Baby-Bag although the position of the baby wasn't perfect. I ended up still holding the baby to make her back more straight. If I didn't do that, I could hear her breathing, which indicated that she wasn't in a good position to breathe freely.

Maybe we are just ignorant consumers, but we just could not handle the Baby-Bag. So that's when our search for other alternatives started. But now that our baby is 6 months we may try to use the Baby-Bag again. After about 5 months you can do the sitting position (by the way: that's not me on that picture).

What we didn't know at the time, but what we learned fast was that babies in general don't like to be put in a carrier. But when everything is put in place, you have to WALK. Walking makes the baby quiet and many times eventually makes her go to sleep.

Labels: baby carriers, premaxx, product reviews

Since we had to buy a lot of stuff for our baby, it's only obvious that I have to write reviews about the products we bought. I start my small review series with the most costly purchase of them all: the Gecko-pram made by Bugaboo.

The Gecko made us both happy. My wife wanted a stable pram that could be steered easily and had wheels that run smoothly. Call me a stereotypical man, but I wanted a simple, efficient ergonomic design. We went to a very large shopping center where they only sell baby stuff. We could choose between ±50 different prams. I don't remember the names of all the prams we tried, but I can remember 2 of the 3 different models we had to choose from at the end of our elimination.

The choice was between the Gecko Bugaboo and the Xplory of Stokke. We already knew Stokke as the maker of ergonomic, upscale furniture. We have one rocking chair in our living room. My wife needs ergonomic furniture, so we bought one rocking chair, although they are very pricy. As you may have guessed, the Stokke was the more expensive of the 2. Another drawback was the fact that you couldn't put a Maxi-Cosi in a Xplory. That's not handy when travelling with a car. You have to travel as light-weight as possible. Light-weight travelling should be a rule of thumb for every product anyway.

But the Stokke had some advantages over the Gecko:

• It looks better (design)
• The sitting area in the Xplory is high. That way the baby doesn't see everything on heel level. Because of that, you could also sit on a table, without having to transfer the baby from the Xplory to a baby chair. You just park it in front of the table.
• It had a small, but very easily accessible bag.

But these advantages of the Xplory didn't outweigh the disadvantages, so we chose for the (relatively) cheaper Gecko Bugaboo. And we didn't regretted it. And of course: over time you see more and more Bugaboo's. But that's not just because we have one. Bugaboo is a popular brand in the Netherlands. That shouldn't be much of a suprise, since the company is based in Rotterdam.

Can we say something negative about the Bugaboo? Of course. Nothing is perfect:

• The two buttons to change the position of the handle are not cooperative. that's the only thing that's just not good at all.
• My wife wanted to have a matching bag that could be hung on the Gecko. A girlfriend of us could buy one of those, but apparantly gets misused a lot of time, making the pram tilt and fall. Because of that you cannot buy bags anymore.
• You can hang a bag under the bed between the wheels, but it's hard to reach. if want to put a lot of stuff in it, you have to take the bed of first, before you can reach the bag in an efficient way.

...and in the wild


The Xplory of Stokke

Labels: bugaboo, pram, product reviews