Ok ladies, I need your help to feel better!

[jdchic3]

I am relatively new to this site. I actually found it by accident while googling pics of the MA in Mariposa that my DD had told me she wanted to replace her broken DC with. (I let her choose between that and the Ashlee Floral, she said she wanted the 'butterfly car seat'). I mostly just had wanted to see some real life pics, but then I came across this site. Anyway, I didn't really start reading anything until after I had spoken with Britax and requested the MA as a replacement seat. Now, four weeks or so later, I am really wishing I had asked for the BV. I didn't think it was very pretty (the Shannon) until I saw it in someone's car a few weeks ago, and had heard something from a stupid BRU employee about it being uncomfortable like the AOE. SO not even a valid comparison! Anyway, now that I've been here for a while, I'm really wishing I'd gotten the BV because DDs seat is installed outboard (we have DS on the other side) and I'm just paranoid about her not having the extra side impact protection. Please help me feel better everybody! I know the MA is a good seat and I should be thrilled that DD is now RF (because of you guys) and has a super-tight install and is tethered and braced and everything.....

[joolsplus3]

It's ok, I promise :). I'm absolutely *obsessed* with my kids always riding as safely as possible, and even I was totally happy with a Marathon, even though I spare no expense when it comes to redundant baby gear (I had SIX infant seats for my third baby!)
Here's my dd in her Marathon, for years... http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/RFAlbum/SarahMA.aspx
http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/FFAlbum/Sarah.aspx

Side impact protection really is not so important with a 5 pt harness seat with EPS foam, but it gets more important when kids are in boosters and lose the upper body protection of the 5 pt harness and move to the relatively less safe 3 point seatbelt...so go ahead and obsess over boosters when the time comes, so you don't get the wrong one then :) (if you can look closely at my pictures there, you can see the Britax Bodyguard and Britax Parkway which were what my older ds was riding in at the time...definitely good side impact seats for their time!)

:)