The Thinking Moms

Stroller Shopping

By admin, September 4, 2009 11:36 am

I’m a smart shopper – I know how to do research online, purchase a home, purchase a car, plan a wedding, but somehow when faced with stroller choices, I become frozen.

My husband and I are starting from scratch for our little one. I thought that picking out baby products would be easy and fun. And registering – how much fun is it to shoot that scanner bar at all the cool baby items and add them to your list! Well, if you know what you want, what you need, it would be a lot more fun. Some items are easy, yet the more important items, like strollers, become perplexing at the very least.

I suppose it is a good thing that there are so many stroller choices out there. And it also helps that the stroller is one of those items that my husband is most interested in helping to select. But if you are new to this, and you walk into a baby store with no help and no advice, you run the risk of selecting an item that you may soon learn that you hate.

The long and Winding Road to a Stroller Decision.
First, the woman at the registry suggested I get a stroller/travel system, and that seemed to make sense. A car seat, a matching stroller, the knowledge that the car seat works with the stroller, and an affordable price tag. Great – Done!

But then I started doing my own research online and polling friends and discovered that many moms don’t use the travel system stroller. I heard many complaints abound that it is too big, too heavy and bulky and all around unappealing. Drat!

Now I realize I should probably buy everything separately. Should be fun. But wait. Not all car seats work with all strollers. OK, more research. I thought I was confident in my decision to purchase the Chicco Infant car seat, as it has such high ratings. And then I’d get a snap and go style stroller base and worry about the fancy stroller after our baby outgrows the car seat. Hold the phone. You mean there is no official match for this type of stroller with Chicco? I spent hours (literally) searching this on line, and plenty of moms say it works with this one or that, but none of the stroller bases say out loud “we work with the Chicco car seat.” I just didn’t want to risk that. I also learned that the Chicco infant seat is a bit heavy and with a bad back, I’m thinking that may not be ideal.

So I guess I move to the Graco car seat and its own car seat frame stroller. Phew. But now guess what – my husband doesn’t like that idea. He says it is just a temporary solution. So he asks me to consider another option since even though 50-70 bucks isn’t a lot compared to other strollers, it is something that will not be using for more than the first months until the baby outgrows the infant seat and then we have to start over.

Back to the baby store! This time we drive an hour to visit Buy Buy Baby. Lo and behold, they have a huge stroller section and at least four staff members trolling about to help stroller-challenged parents like us. We ask about light weight strollers. He walks us buy all the ones I have read about and stops in front of the Baby Jogger City Mini. It is soooo light and when he demonstrates how it folds up, we are sold. And it works with a Graco infant seat. Ding! But is it full-time, forever, stroller quality?

As we ponder this, my husband’s eyes drift across the aisle to the Bugaboo Chameleon. Trancelike, he walks over and the store clerk and I follow. We get a demo; we learn that the Frog is just as cool, just less money. We fall in love. We realize we have just jumped many levels in price, but it starts to make more sense. Frame that fits a Graco (with additional custom part), Bassinette, Stroller, Style and Quality. But it is the “it” stroller – and we’re not sure we’re that kind of people.

We also look at the Uppa Baby Vista, which after more online research seems to be easier to deal with as you don’t have to remove the seat to fold it up. The easier, the better for me. It also may not have the same yuppie-parent association as the Bugaboo. Just a few dollars more, same features – another nice choice. Perfectly groovy for strolling our small downtown. We took a deep breath and purchased it online and eagerly waited for its arrival.

Well, it is here. It is the stroller of all strollers. My husband is happy, as am I – but still in disbelief that strollers are so complex and so expensive. Now we just need a baby to put in it!

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