How to choose a pushchair?

This blog post has been created in partnership with iCandy.

Something you have zero concept of before you get pregnant is that choosing a pushchair is a minefield! With so many options on the market, it can be tricky to know where to start.

What should you consider when picking a pram?

Use this checklist to narrow down your options, so you don’t end up making a costly mistake!

The iCandy Peach that’s served us through 2 kids over 8 years from birth to preschool!

1. Will it fit in my car? Or on public transport?

This is where we started when choosing our pushchair. When my eldest was born, I drove a Fiat 500 car (it has a TINY boot) and narrowing down our options significantly made the whole process less overwhelming.

If you’re not going to be putting it in a car often, will it get on and off a bus/tube/train easily? Can you carry it up train steps if there are no lifts? Can you fold it easily for the bus if needed?

2. How / where are we going to be spending our time?

Do you need something nippy for pavements? Or all terrain for dog walks and countryside rambles? We’re pretty ‘outdoorsy’ but did live in a town, so we needed something middle-groundy, that would roll in mud, but not feel out of place up and down the high street.

3. Where are you going to keep it?

Do you have a large porch or a garage? Or a narrow Victorian hallway? Do you have to take it up 3 flights of stairs to your flat? Are you likely to want to wheel it straight out of your front door (or straight IN with a sleeping baby inside?). Basically, will it do those things easily?

We live in an upstairs maisonette, and by the way, I wish someone had given me a list like this telling us NOT TO BUY before having a baby. There’s no hallway, just stairs. Fortunately, the carry cot was removable so we could bring that in if our babies were asleep. The buggy now lives in my car!

4. How long do you want it to last?

I try hard to be a ‘buy well, buy once’ kind of a shopper! So finding a quality pram that would last until toddlerhood was important. So many friends got past the baby bit and then found they were shopping again for another pushchair because their initial one was too small for their growing toddler or too enormous to bother using very often.

We also had always planned on having more than one child, and we didn’t want to make the investment twice! Choosing something with a long guarantee helped reassure me that what we were getting was going to last. (Important to me both for the bank balance, and the environmental impact).

Our iCandy Peach has been used daily for over seven years, and aside from being utterly filthy, is still going strong! (And believe me, I’ve dragged it down station steps, up mountains, in aeroplane holds and through mud most days!)

For newborn babies you’ll also want an option for it to ‘lie flat’. This can be with a carrycot attachment, or with a lie-flat seat unit option. Our iCandy Peach came with a carrycot in the bundle which looked super comfy and was bigger than some others on the market, so it lasted us from newborn up to 8 months! It was also suitable for permanent overnight sleeping, so we didn’t need a travel cot if we went away for the first few months either.

5. What’s my budget?

The price of pushchairs can be…surprising, to say the least. And having a budget in mind is important (the list of baby stuff soon adds up). But a pram, for the majority, is one of the essentials. (You can probably hold off things like breast pumps, milk making machines or bouncers until you know whether or not you actually need them!).

Some of the big baby shops will enable you to spread the cost of your pushchair over several months, which can soften the blow (if the monthly payments are still affordable for you). You can also often pick up great condition pushchairs second hand, if you want the quality, but the cost is out of reach.

6. Will it fit your car seat?

If you drive, being able to connect your infant car seat to your pushchair can be a godsend! Babies shouldn’t be left in car seats for an extended period of time, but I can’t tell you how many tears we’ve saved by popping the car seat onto the pushchair for the school run or a quick pop into the supermarket.

Not all car seats attach with all pushchairs... And you may need to purchase additional car seat adaptors. So be sure to build these things into the overall cost of the pushchair, it might be cheaper to opt for a ‘travel system’ such as the iCandy Peach, which bundles the whole lot together.

7. What kind of tyres does it have?

A less common consideration and not one I’d explored myself but after our Disneyland Paris fiasco, one I’d recommend thinking about! We borrowed a second hand double pushchair for our trip, to carry tired children and all of our belongings and it had inflatable tyres (common in some of the running/off road models). All well and good, until we had a puncture on day two, two miles away from our hotel, with no repair kit!! Dragging this un-wheelable pushchair to an airport and back with two children and four suitcases was anything but practical.

Our usual iCandy pushchair didn’t have rubber tyres, so we’d never thought about it before... If you opt for something with rubber tyres, always carry a puncture repair kit! (Or just pick something without inflatable wheels!)

8. Does it work as a double?

If you’re hoping to have another child within the next three years, then having the option of a double can be handy! My boys are almost five years apart, so we didn’t end up needing it. But the plan had been to have them closer together, so it was a definite ‘must have’ on our initial shopping list!

(Told you we’d put it to the test! Here’s a 4 year old riding his chariot over the cobbles of London. *Not the advised used of the newborn basinet, but my kids don’t like advice)

All those things considered, the pushchair for us was the iCandy Peach and honestly? It’s served us SO well as an outdoorsy, active family of 4. As my youngest turns 3, it’s almost time for us to pass it along to another family. I think I’m going to miss being a Buggy Mum! (Mainly because.. Who’s going to hold all the coats now?)

Visit iCandy to shop my favourite pushchairs!

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