Rear Facing Car Seats: Then and Now!

In this family, we're fans of extended rear facing. P. sat backward in her Britax Marathon Classic in our Kia until she turned four - at which point she was still just shy of the rear facing weight limit, but we thought it would be nice if she could talk to her rear facing brother. I never actually imagined we'd rear face her for four years, but it's safer. It really is. Not that I'm going to call anyone out for being an early turner - you do what you have to do - but statistically, it is safer. End of story.

Back when I was born in 1979, car seats will still optional but my parents went out and bought what was apparently, at the time, a pretty high tech car seat. Check me out at a few weeks old, with my stache-sportin' dad:


Compare that to P. at a few weeks - or maybe months, hard to tell with preemies - sitting in her Chicco KeyFit 30 (which we bought because at the time it was the only non-specialty seat we could easily get that accommodated babies under 5 lbs.):


And then take a look at the set up we have going as of this past winter, with Bo in the KeyFit and P. finally forward facing:


What's interesting is that my own infant seat seems a lot more like the Marathon in terms of design than it is like the KeyFit - there's the metal bars, for one thing. I wish it was still in a garage somewhere so I could take a look!

As for whether Bo will make it to four in a rear facing car seat, who knows. But considering he's gaining weight while dropping percentiles, I have to wonder if he'll end up being tiny like P. How tiny? Considering our state's fairly strict car seat guidelines, I figure she'll probably be sitting in a booster, once she outgrows her Britax that is, until she leaves for college.

How long did you keep your babies rear facing? When you were a baby, did you ride around on your parents' laps or in a car seat?