I’ve been testing the BeSafe Stretch B Car Seat for nearly 3 months now as part of the Natural Baby Shower Parent Approved Program (which runs regularly on the Natural Baby Shower Instagram account). Parents test and review items available on the website which then means the item gets the “parent approved” badge, you can read the full reviews on the website (including mine) and feel more confident when making big purchases.
We received the BeSafe Stretch B Car Seat just before Arthur’s 2nd Birthday and up until then we’d been squeezing him in his Infant Carrier (legally of course, but he was very much on the limit). It couldn’t have come at a better time for us! I’d been looking into car seats for a while before then, I’m a huge advocate of extended rear facing and have read way too many facts on why rear facing is 5 times safer. I knew I wanted to get a rear facing car seat for Arthur but I had no idea which out of the many available.
There are a few safe extended rear facing options that rear face until 18kg, such as the Joie Tilt/Steadi and Stages, or the Graco branded seats. Your cheapest extended rear facing option is less then £80. But there are also options that rear face until 25kg such as the Axkid Minikid or the Britax Max Way and then there are a couple top of the market options that rear face for much longer than that. This includes the BeSafe Stretch B Car Seat which will safely rear face up until 36kg, which is an average 7 year old, SEVEN. I was sold.
I was initially wary of getting a seat with tethers as I thought this would make fitting more difficult, especially as we regularly move the car seat between various different cars. But I needn’t have worried, fitting takes less than 5 minutes, and even less than that if you have spare tethers or tether points in the other vehicles. We’ve even managed to get it to fit in our Campervan… and Sam’s series 3 Landrover!
The tethering is easy, you just wrap the tethers around the seat rails on the seat in front, or fix to a tether point (which you can have fitted if your car doesn’t have them). The tethers built into the car seat then clip into these. The BeSafe Stretch B Car Seat is great for cars with shorter seatbelts too as you don’t need to wrap the seatbelt around the back of the seat, just through the front. The car seat also has a support leg as well as the tethers.
I went for the Cloud Melange colour which is a dusky blue, I thought this was a bit different to the standard black or charcoal options. The BeSafe Stretch B Car Seat is around £500, which is a lot for a car seat, but you can’t put a price on safety and when you think it’ll last an average of 7 years (if not more), £70 a year really isn’t much to pay, that’s less than £6 a month.
As I said at the beginning, we’ve been using the car seat for 3 months and we’ve not had one issue, not had one vehicle it won’t fit in (and we’ve tried it in many different cars) and know this is a car seat we are going to use for years and years. The bottom bracket extends to allow more leg room as your child grows which will depend on the space you have in the car. I won’t get into the ins and ours of rear facing safety on here but I may write another post if you’re interested?
Another feature which I love is that the recline function works whilst it’s fitted in the car as it’s the only ERF car seat that does this currently on the market. This would be an ideal feature for newborns, I just wish I had the seat sooner. Also the magnets on the straps are so handy when getting Arthur in and out of the car meaning the straps don’t end up getting trapped behind him.
Have you considered the BeSafe Stretch B Car Seat? Do you have it? I’d love to hear your experiences if you do. If you have any questions about car seats/ERF I’d be happy to answer any that I can.
Until next time,
Ami x
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