Need to find a restraint for a SN child...

hi everyone,

Someone passed me onto this site in hopes that you guys could help me.....

I live in Australia and I have a 3 year old who is about 110cm (she is as tall as her 5 year old brother), and is growing out of her SnS meridian very quickly.....she probably has a year max left in it, so we are trying to look into other alternatives now because we dont want to get there and realise we have nothing.

Lauren suffers from a disease called Leukodystrophy, which is a degenerative neurological disorder so she will get worse. This disease has left her with rather bad hypotonia (she can sit for about 5 minutes then flops or needs to lie down) and she often has seizures. She also has a feeding tube in her tummy.

I have tried the SnS maxirider but it does not recline enough for her even on full recline, nor do any of the other convertible boosterseats (e.g. eXceed, senator etc). Basically she needs the recline of a Meridian on the utmost forward facing recline, but the height of a SnS maxirider....

I spoke with her paediatrician who has recommended we look into "special needs carseats" but I dont like the ones that I have seen, and we have the added problem of needing to fit 3 across the back of a 2007 Kluger. the paediatrician said if we were interested in importing he would write a letter stating that Lauren is in need of the carseat, especially since she will always need a harness for riding due to the low muscle tone (he also said he thinks Australia needs to change the standards to allow harnessing till 36kg because he feels its unsafe to have them unharnessed so quickly).

Does anyone know of a good seat that would cater to a child with hypotonia and need for a decent recline, but also not extremely wide (i liked the Traveller Plus until I saw how wide it was) so we can still fit 3 across. Pictures would also be great of it in recline if anyone has any....


**The Leukodystrophy Association has recommended the Medifab Carrot so if anyone has heard of that or had experience it would be great to know a bit more about it, but I would really prefer a seat that looks a little less medical and more "normal" for Lauren**


thanks everyone

Are you familiar with a Sunshine Kids Radian? I'm wondering if one would suit your needs...:question:

They have passed NZ safety testing & will be available for sale in New Zealand very soon (as in hopefully arrive here in the next month or two) & being able to get one shipped over from NZ may work out cheaper & easier than trying to get something else in from another country.

I'm just taking a guess off the top of my head because it works well in a 3 across most of the time & my 114cm tall, 18.8kg 5.8yr old can still sit in the Radian XTSL rearfacing & has a huge amount of room forward facing. Being able to rearface your daughter in a seat may just give you the extra recline that you aren't able to find in a forward facing seat. Rearfacing will also increase her safety & comfort due to her hypotonia.

The Radian can be used to 20.4kgs rearfacing & 36kgs forward facing with a taller shell height & the harness height is about 3-4cm taller than the SnS Maxi II. There are also a couple of Swedish rearfacing seats that might suit her that have reasonably tall height limits.

I hope this information helps - I'm sorry I'm not familiar enough with the special needs seats such as the Carrot to compare them to any other seats or exactly what is involved in your process in Australia to get a seat certified for use over there as your child restraint laws are stricter than ours again. Hopefully someone with better knowledge of special needs seats will have better answers for you soon.

Hmmm, difficult.

I know the Carrot, it is a very good (european) SN seat because you can add a lot of pelottes for any need. But it has a very "medical" touch.

http://www.rehatec.ch/fileadmin/doc...Unterwegs/DOK_Thomashilfen_Recaro-Monza_D.pdf
Is a standard hbb with an additional positioning harness and recline position.

Thanks to both of you.

Someone that owned a Radian said in Forward Facing mode there isnt much in the way of a recline, and I doubt Lauren would "permit" to be rear facing after 18 months of being forward faced I know its safer, but she is prone to melt downs and change in routine will cause that. Plus we do a lot of long distance travelling in which the only way to keep her quiet is using a portable DVD player, so i dont know how I would hook that up and keep enough battery if she were to rear face......I love the look of the Radian though!!!

joyride I like the seat in that link but are there any English translations? I cant understand the weight limit, or the specifications as my german is very rusty (i think its german anyway). I am trying to figure out how much it reclines, how it tethers and what the weight limits are.

The other idea my husband thought of was using her Maxirider AHR (An Australian seat from Britax) and putting a wedge underneath it to recline it more? but i dont know if that would be overly safe....