My night out with Graco SnugRide Click Connect 40

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The Graco SnugRide Click Connect 40 car seat and base

Last week I attended a blogger event for the new Graco SnugRide Click Connect 40 car seat.  It was a “mom’s night out” of getting together with other South Jersey & Philly area bloggers and learning about a new product from Graco at the same time.  The party was at Erica’s (from Mommy’s Fabulous) house & she did an awesome job making it a fun night for us.  So thanks Erica!

Of course, we were there to check out the new infant car seat from Graco: the SnugRide Click Connect 40.  What makes this car seat so special, is that it is the only infant car seat that provides rear-facing protection for babies from birth to 2 years old.  If you’re not aware, the recommendation for keeping babies rear-facing has been changed from 1 year old (which is when I turned Rayna around) to 2 years old (so baby Marc is still rear-facing).  Why?  Because it is actually always safer for children to sit rear facing.  The American Academy of Pediatrics says that “…toddlers are more than five times safer riding rear-facing in a car seat.” 5 times!

I will admit that I have been dying to turn baby Marc around.  He was in his infant car seat until he was too tall for it, and now I have him in a convertible car seat that is rear-facing.  I only had one though, so we were kind of stuck jockeying cars.  I’m really looking forward to installing this seat and trying him in it.  What’s great about this seat is that it would have lasted him from birth ’til now, as this base adjusts with 8 recline positions.  It stinks to buy an infant car seat, use it for a year and then worry about that extra year of “what do I buy to keep my child rear facing”.

Aside from being a good value (and convenient) because it will last you for two full years, the Click Connect 40 has some other features that are note-worthy.  I mentioned the adjusting base:

As you see, there’s 8 recline positions to allow for more and more leg room as the baby grows.  There’s also a really easy to adjust harness system (called the Simply Safe Adjust) where you can raise and lower the straps on the harness system without re-threading them.  Actually all you do is lift the adjuster with one hand to raise the straps.  We were all very impressed by this!  Finally, there’s the new Click Connect attachment, which connects the car seat to the stroller so it is secured with one “click”.

While we all got familiar with the seat, a car seat technician from nearby Virtua hospital came and gave us some safety tips.  The biggest one that stood out to me is that you should not have any toys strapped to the car seat or seat back AT ALL.  I know clipping a toy onto a strap is the best way to ensure that the toy doesn’t just plop right on the floor when you close the door, but it is not safe.  The car seat tech told us that in the event of a crash, toys that are strapped to the seat become weapons as they lash forward and then whip back towards the baby’s face.  An un-tethered toy is more likely to just fly out of the car seat and not boomerang back towards the baby!

I feel like there’s always new information to learn in the kid-safety world, and my anxiety leads me to be a bit obsessive about it.  I was really paying attention during the presentation, as you can see by my super-intense expression in the pic from Erica’s post.  Ha!

The Graco SnugRide® Click Connect™ 40 – the first and only newborn to two-year infant car seat that actually grows with your baby from four pounds all the way up to 40 pounds. The car seat is designed for a parent on the go. The infant car seat can be easily removed from the base and used as a carrier when the infant is small, providing portability and convenience so you can easily move your infant in and out of the car without disturbing them.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently made the recommendation to keep all children in rear-facing car seats until the age of 2. Graco set out to make this product so parents can keep infants rear facing longer while still keeping them comfortable.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Graco. The opinions and text are all mine.