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It seems to be a natural scene: parents going out grocery shopping, lugging their baby in a bucket seat that they set in the basket of the cart, parents lugging their baby in a bucket seat into the school to pick up their preschooler, parents lugging their baby in a bucket seat into the clinic waiting room where the baby hangs our while mom or dad fills out paperwork.

So it might seem totally weird when I tell you that we didn’t use an infant bucket seat at all, not even when Mac was a newborn. Right from the beginning, we had her in a convertible seat that had a padded insert and could tilt back for newborns. (In case you are wondering, we use the Britax Marathon G4.1 Convertible Car Seat . We have never had any problems. It fits in both of our small cars and Mac has been comfortable in it from birth until now! In fact, she is still rear facing in it at the age of 2.5.)

You are probably curious about why and how I came to this decision. So here are the list of reasons I picked to skip the bucket seat and what I did instead.