Wow.
Talk about can of worms.
“Lets look at pushchairs” I said.
“It’ll be fun” I said.
Well a full month and countless hours of research, videos, and a few disappointing visits to high street stores later I’ve made my mind up.
But it was a long road.
The first obstacle is that 90% of the pushchairs in existence cater for single kids, or Baby and Toddler configurations. Finding a travel system suitable for twins is a real challenge. Oh sure there are tons of ridiculous one-application solutions like this around, for people with all the space in the WORLD!!
The second obstacle is that once you have found some online, you won’t find them in any standard baby stores near you. At least I didn’t. And you NEED to touch them, feel them, lift them and try collapsing them.
The third obstacle is entirely psychological. You can buy an entire kit for a single baby for about £400. To buy the same for two new born babies, to be used as one single travel system? You’re pretty much looking at tripling that budget. This leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, as you are not getting much more material for your money.
So how did I begin?
I resolved that am mainly concerned about 2 things with respect to Twin Logistics. Space and Efficiency.
In fact in the first paragraph of my first email to my wife on the subject (we email each other at lunchtimes about baby stuff! 🙂 ), I summed it up best:
“Don’t be scared by the prices. Buying cheap is buying twice”.
And I was right. (A rare moment of modesty from your male host)
After looking at all the cheaper options, it would appear that all of the “discounts” for a lesser brand, and all of the lower “all in” prices represent a sacrifice of some kind.
In the worst case, this might be only being able to fit one travel baby seat on instead of two. This means the tandem pushchair is conceived not for twins, but for two children, one toddler, and a new born. The difference, is the Golden Ticket to buying the right product for prospective parents of twins.
Next you might end up sacrificing poor child positioning in tandem mode, or incur a weight, or space penalty, even worse buggy stability, and sub-standard agility on different surfaces.
But, even more sinister, the hardest to spot failing of a buggy purchase – the early upgrade!
What do I mean by early upgrade? Well, as I will go into detail below, you must define your functionality – the key part of value-for-money lies in longevity. I set a 3 year plan, from one travel system/pushchair solution.
If you fail to do this, you risk buying twice.
This is not cheap.
Key “early upgrade” gotchas.
- Check the weight capabilities for the seats, estimate what age a child they will cater for. The seats may be big enough for a 3 year old, but in tandem mode, they may not take the weight of even a 30 month old child, possibly due to instability / high positioning.
- Other early upgrades might include the seating position that seems fine when you are expecting, but now you try and squeeze one or other of your two year old toddlers into a little toast rack of a tandem pushchair and hear them squeal! Staring at the back of the seat in front may well displease the young toddlers!
- Another early upgrade is assuming that you will only need pavement access everywhere – and cheap small-wheeled solutions will be fine. What happens when spring comes and you want to go for a walk down the bridleway?
So I set my functionality requirements as follows:
1) Travel System. It must accept 2 x clip-in, clip-out baby seats which can clip into the back seat of the car to an ISOFIX base. PLEASE NOTE: it must support TWO of these at once! look out for buggies that support two different clip in baby seat positions, but not at the same time.
2) Size. It must fit in the back of the car. It must be manageable to push around our local area, the shops, and through doorways. This eliminated any double width buggies immediately.
3) The buggy of course, needs to be comfortable, sturdy, strong, but most importantly manageable by mum, both when pushing and when break down/setting up.
4) Wheel sizes. I require that the buggie is capable of being used on surfaces other than glass smooth concrete, such as gravel, or a muddy path, without it turning into a nightmare. I’m not going to be doing winter cross training with my babies in tow, but we may wish to go for a woodland walk in the spring or summer.
5) The travel baby seats must be able to be positioned both pointing at mum, and not completely obscured by one another.
6) The bigger fixed seats must be flexible enough to point forward in such a way that both children can see the world. They must also feature basic functionalities like sun visor, cover, rain cover etc .etc. Flexible options in this region are a bonus.
7) Storage. The buggy must be able to handle a light shop with its own storage so no trolley is needed, while also accommodating short term baby supplies.
Thats pretty much all I was after. Aesthetics come last. This vehicle will be transporting my family, not entertaining Sheik Yerboutie of Abdul-al-Dinam.
So I narrowed it down to four main contenders which satisfied most of my requirements.
A) iCandy Pear
Compact, pretty, functional, light.
Unable to satisfy point 6 (Forward facing tandem arrangement) well.
B) iCandy Peach
Compact, pretty, functional, lighter than the Pear. This is the new version of the Pear.
Still Unable to satisfy point 6 (Forward facing tandem arrangement), but point 5 (Mum facing baby seats) delivered in grand fashion, as we learned on a trip to Mothercare one day. We were in danger of falling in love with this buggy when we looked down at two little faces in the perfect tandem configuration.
Width a little slim for the tandem configuration – might threaten stability in Tandem mode.
C) Baby Jogger City Select
Rugged wheels, flexible arrangements, great reviews. Satsified point 6 (Forward facing tandem arrangement) brilliantly for its size (best in class), point 5 (Mum facing baby seats) delivered, in slightly less perfect fashion as the iCandy Peach (B)
D) Obaby Zoom Tandem / Twin Pushchair
Bigger than the others, very flexible, ticked pretty much every box except 2 (Size), and due to this extra length, number 3 (Manageable by Mum) in jeopardy too.
The longer the buggy, the harder it is to navigate up a kerb.
Now, there are many options out there, but these were the four I ended up staying with.
Things became even easier from here:
A) is off the menu. It’s the old version of B) for a start, and did not satisfy points 5 and 6 so well.
D) is off the menu. Far too big, too much wasted space in most configurations, unnecessarily bulky.
Which left me with the following two options:
Again, the decision was easy. I couldn’t possibly imagine racking my children up in 9 months time in the two forward facing seat arrangements like cattle. One of them getting to see the world, the other seeing nothing at all. While the iCandy Peach Mum-Facing-New Born arrangement was a class winner, the forward facing toddler arrangement was a total no-no.
That coupled with this rather handy review which compared the two buggies side by side, set my mind at ease.
See here iCandy Peach Mum Facing, and World Facing arrangements.
and compare with the Baby Jogger City Select Mum Facing and World Facing arrangements
finally the icing on the cake, this rather excellent Baby to bay interaction arrangement, not available on the iCandy Peach.
Decision made!
Baby Jogger City Select Wins! (Pending actually having a play with it – as mentioned before – I haven’t actually seen one in the flesh.)
Now I just need to choose – Britax or Maxi Cosi baby seats, and what kind of car mount?
I’ll cover this next time.
This is Dad, starship commander of the Dual Baby Pulse Cannon Warp Drive engine room, signing off.
Cierzo says
We went for the Baby Jogger mini city, the closing and sturdiness won by miles of other more fancy and expensive prams. We also got the Maxi cosi pebble, they are two models, ones is cheaper than the other, because one is the newer version. The new version without the base and only attach to the seat with the belts resist an impact to more speed than the old version. Other reason to get it, it is that if you buy the base, it will last you that base for around 4 years, so you only will have to upgrade the car seats, with the Britax we were told, each on the models uses a different bases, and although a good car seat, it was more the hassle. I hope that helps. We went to check them out in John Lewis, if that helps.
Kate says
THANK YOU! Being 8 weeks pregnant with twins and already having an 18-month old toddler I had already started to panic about buggies and finding one that took maxi cosi car seats, face mum / the world (for both twins) and took a buggy pod on the side. The baby jogger looks perfect. I was dreading having to get a crazy T3 triple and the accompanying stares from everyone who passed me in the street! I can rest easy now until its actually time to go shopping.