Maxi-Cosi - Mico 30

I highly recommend an infant car seat that clicks into your stroller! We went with the Maxi Cosi Zelia stroller system. My baby is 8 months old now and I still love this stroller! It comes with their Mico 30 infant car seat which clicks right into the stroller (it comes with adapters). And then once baby has outgrown the infant car seat, you just use the regular stroller seat! Which, BONUS, also converts seamlessly to a true lay-flat bassinet, which is amazing for when your baby is a newborn. We’re now using the stroller as a regular stroller and it’s just been so great! It folds up super easily. It looks beautiful (we’ve had lots of compliments on it), and yeah it’s just a great stroller. I also like that I can face our baby either way but I think that’s fairly common. Before buying it I did lots of research and saw a Reddit post where someone said they were having issues with the wheels? I’ve had absolutely zero issues! Just sharing in case you stumble upon the same post. But I’ve heard that their customer service is great anyway if you have any issues. We went with the Maxi Cosi Iona bassinet but it turned out our baby hated the bassinet, so it just ended up being an extra place for us to store clothes lol. I ended up co-sleeping with our baby following the Sage Sleep 7 Guidelines. It wasn’t what I thought we’d ever do (I didn’t even know there was a safe co-sleeping option), but it’s been a life saver for us. I’m also a FTM and I wish someone told me to buy the high chair before baby’s born. Especially if you can get it on sale. I did SO much research on high chairs. Like it took me weeks to finally pull the trigger on it. We went with the Stokke Tripp Trapp and I cannot recommend it enough. It really is the best / most popular for a reason. Also, it does go on sale so maybe you can find a Boxing Day deal.

If you decide to go the full crib route, definitely consider Ikea Sniglar. Very sturdy, minimalistic, excellent materials/no toxic paint and the cheapest crib you will likely find from a reputable source. Unfortunately it doesn’t have storage but you’ll save so much money you invest in something like a dresser instead possibly. We lowered the crib recently and it also converts to a toddler bed. In terms of Canadian brands, r/buycanadian has some good previous posts! Dorel is a Canadian company which owns Maxi Cosi, Safety First and Cosco. Could consider their stroller/car seat? I personally have maxi cosi Zelia and the Mico seat but I’m not super fond of the stroller - it takes some getting used to and needs two hands to collapse and is bulky.

My first 2 used the maxi cosi. It's a very long seat, so even in large sedans and SUVs, the front seat needed to be moved forward to accommodate. I've heard that if you have a smaller car, the front seat is basically unusable with the maxi cosi. What I liked about it is that our car's back seats are "sporty" and are bucket seats. We tried a bunch of other models and none could get the right angle when buckled in. For my third I bought the Clek since it was sale (and different car now), and uses the same stroller adaptors as the maxi cosi. It can also do 3 across the back seats. Haven't tried it yet but heard good things. If you have a snuggle bugs or WCK then you can try out the seats. The biggest deciding factor for us was the seat base and whether the car seat could properly level when installed.

We used the maxi Cosi infant car seat as a travel car seat and it worked great. I think there's a Cosco (not Costco) one from Walmart that's also highly rated as a travel infant car seat. They are both light and very easy to install with just a seat belt and don't require a base.

Agree with this! Our infant seat is MC and I got it for $280 during a sale a couple years ago. So price and the fact that the seat was light were big selling features. Our daughter (and our arms lol) were happier when we switched her to a convertible seat around 6 months. We went with Clek Fllo for that... liked it so much we bought another for baby#2 due in a couple months. But definitely agree that the screaming is a sign that baby is either over the infant seat and/or they are making their opinions on car rides known now that they're leaving the potato stage lol.

Our LO came home at just under 1.8kgs. We have the maxi cosi. Looking back at the pictures she was insanely small for that thing! But we got home and she grew into it 😅

We had a Maxi-Cosi infant seat and moved him to the Graco Extend2fit at about 8 months. He had started to hate the bucket seat and I got it on a good sale. He was instantly happy! He just turned 2 and still loves his seat. It can rear face until 50lbs so that was one of the reasons we went with it. We eventually got one for my husband's car (had a Cosco Scenera before)