Hellobee Boards

i have an 03 honda civic, it is a 4 door, but tiny. plus, there are no side airbags so i want the car seat in the middle...it is squished. we are looking at getting a new/newer car.

... and we dealt with it by trading in my Sentra for a Sonata. If you do eventually get a new car but don't want an SUV/minivan, I highly recommend it as a great babymobile

@mediagirl: I was also very unsure about the uncoolness of the minivan.... but it's soooooo worth it. We're a 4 person family (well 3 and a dog who comes everywhere with us) so we needed more room. I understand about the car payments though. Luckily I was still driving my first car that my parents bought me, so we were just able to trade in DH's car, he drives mine, and we still have the same payment.

We traded in my car (a mitsubichi eclipse) for a VW passat wagon.

I think the trick usually is to do a search for your car and infant seats, I found this link that might be helpful:
http://www.car-seat.org/showthread.php?t=28724

Certain seats install better in different cars so definitely try a few out if you can and look it up. It looks like once you are ready to switch to a convertible it should make a big difference in your car.

I'm having the same problem! We have so far solved it by not getting a car seat yet O_o (not due u til August)

We've got a Honda insight, and all the seats we've tried have had to have the front seat so far forward that DH wouldn't be able to sit in it. Sigh.

Look for European makers of car seats, like Maxi Cosi. They're made for smaller European cars and they have models available in the US.

We have a compact 4-door. It only fits in the back of the passenger seat. I'll be a pain when it's time to upgrade into a larger car seat, but I figure we'll worry about that in a few months. Because of this, we didn't buy one of those convertible/upgrade-able seats.

I agree...thecarseat lady is a super informative website for car seat info! We are looking at getting a new/newer car for baby...and I never even thought to bring a tape measure to measure back seats as we look at cars.

We just switched to the bigger convertible carseat in our teensy Honda Fit. It's definitely a little challenging to get our LO into it, and she's still really small. But we are 6 months away from being paid off, so I think we are just going to suck it up!