Work at Home Success By Jill Hart
Mom Laughs By Cheryl Moeller
Simplifying Motherhood By Trish Berg
Ask A Twin Mommy By Cheryl Lage
Mothering By Heart By Cheri Fuller
Jelly Mom By Lisa Barker
Family Check-up By Sheila Wray Gregoire
Parent to Parent By Jodie Lynn
Moments for Mom By Elisabeth Corcoran
Making the Most of Marriage By Paula Friedrichsen
Transporting Twins?
May, 2005
By Cheryl Lage
Cheryl,
I am 9 weeks pregnant with twins and my auto lease is up in a few months. My husband has a small SUV (Honda CR-V) and I have a Passat sedan. I was originally planning to replace my car with another sedan. I'm wondering if you could tell me which is better for transporting twins - a sedan or SUV? Does it matter? What should I be looking for (besides safety) when purchasing a new vehicle? Is it okay to have one sedan and one small SUV?
Thanks for your input!
Laurie
ANSWER:
Hi Laurie, and congrats on your twin pregnancy!
Kudos for early in your pregnancy giving thought to issues that will change your household (and means of travel!) once the twins arrive. You are right; vehicular needs/arrangements should be assessed and addressed.
In truth, if the twins are your only children, whichever style/type of vehicle you feel more comfortable with safety-wise and size-wise is "better" for you. (When I say "size" as a consideration, I don't necessarily mean bigger is better either!)
Taste in vehicles is largely subjective, and two carseats (and even the next step up of booster seats) can easily be accommodated by a sedan. For the first 17 months of our twins' lives, we travelled with them in a '93 Mercury Sable. The double in-line stroller fit in the trunk, and four doors made it easy for me to get them in and out singlehandedly. The backseat was large/high enough for me to place the rear-view mirror baby monitoring mirrors on it so I could watch their faces (since they have to be rear-facing for the first year) as needed while out on trips in the car.
We decided to stay with the sedan, knowing we did not plan to have any more kids (we always hoped for two, we just never knew they'd arrive virtually simultaneously!). My husband and I aren't big vehicle (SUV/truck/minivan) fans; BUT if you are, and certainly if you anticipate adding more children, a larger vehicle is certainly something to think about, and maybe go ahead and invest in, now.
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If you do stay the sedan course, we did discover some sedan strategic carseat arrangements shortly after the twins births. Namely, rather than placing a carseat base closest to each of the rear doors with a large space in the middle between them, place them almost side-by-side next to the passenger rear door...allowing an adult to sit in the backseat with them in those luxurious instances where you have two adults travelling with the twins. You do need to lift one carseat carrier over the base of the other when snapping the twins in and when taking them out, but in those early lightweight baby days, the back strain is minimal. As they get bigger, and have far greater head and neck control, not to mention weight, then you can place them alongside each rear door to prevent back breaking contortions to get the babies in place.
To answer your question directly, as long as your vehicle is safe, and your carseat bases installed correctly, I do not think it matters whether or not you have an SUV or a sedan. Personally, I'd be reticent to learn how to handle an entirely new style of vehicle while I was acclimating to traveling with newborn twins, but I am sure some folks would have no problem getting a new ride, and would relish the great rationale to go ahead and do so!
If you want to stay the course and have one SUV and one sedan, again, so long as they both have a good safety rating that would be aces. Initially, we anticipated putting a set of carseat bases in both my husband's Nissan Stanza (at the time) and my Sable. We never got around to getting the second set, and fared just fine.
I WOULD heartily recommend getting a set of the mirrors so you can see the babies faces (Target and BabiesRUs I know sell them) when no other adult is traveling with you.
And if you aren't a cell phone user, now is the time to suck it up and get one to travel with for safety's sake.
Again, I think you are showing superlative Twin Mommy-to-Be forethought by thinking of these issues now. Thanks for a great (and rarely asked) question.
Abundant good wishes for the remainder of your pregnancy. Stay well, relax when you can (and even when you feel you can't) and please keep in touch. Feel free to contact me anytime...I'd be happy to hear from you.
All the best-
Cheryl
www.Twinsights.com
Feel free to contact me with your experiences in twin potty-training, or with any twin parenting dilemnas you may have at http://www.twinsights.com. I hope to hear from you!
© Cheryl Lage, 2004-
Author of "Twinspiration: Real-Life Advice From Pregnancy Through the First Year" from Taylor Trade Publishing (2006), Cheryl is a fully-mobile, full-time mom to four-year-old fraternal twins, Darren and Sarah. Cheryl's unabashed honesty, vigilantly supportive style, and willingness to share "what works" have made her a requested speaker on a broad range of topics, twin-related, and otherwise. Check out her website @ twinsights.com.