acidfast7

Hi!

Daughter was born last week.

Looking for infant front bike seat recommendations.

Any suggestions/experience?

Something like this from Decathlon, perhaps? I see a lot of rear seats (Römer Jockey as an example) floating around on FB marketplace for £5-10.

https://www.decathlon.co.uk/guppy-mi...MaAmU6EALw_wcB

acidfast7

It does conform to EN 14344 which is good.

https://www.bike-eu.com/laws-regulat...351.1555396440

and seemed to make this top list here:

https://www.cyclesprog.co.uk/carrying...ke-seats-kids/

just want some actually recommendations based on BF member usage.

Barchettaman

acidfast7

Hi! Long time. I miss living in Sachsenhausen near Schweizer Platz (Launitzstraße).

But at that price, I'll probably just go with the Decathlon one.

Gotta run. Taking her for a walk to the seaside in the Bugaboo right now for a seaside fry up!

There's quite a few on FB marketplace right now sold under the Britax label for the Jockey but not for the Sulky. OH well

Barchettaman

alias5000

Congrats on your daughter!

You have a lovely small company in the UK, making the Circe Morpeus. There's a configuration where a child's car seat carrier can be mounted to the front using the cargo deck.
Certainly a fancy option, but suspended and kid didn't have to be able to sit upright, yet.
Bike grows as kid grows and there are many configuration options.

https://www.circecycles.com/family-day-out/

https://www.circecycles.com/products/solutions/child-carrying/

Edit: no actual experience to contribute myself, no kid yet. But we own one of these bikes since last weekend. Friends of mine use a Chariot cx1, which with an infant sling might also be worth a consideration? They're kid is 6 months and can ride with a head support and without infant sling. As long as head isn't stable and kid cannot sit by herself, the front seat will be tricky. Also, falling asleep on it won't work, so it'll depend what you want to do with it.
Looking forward to hearing more experiences.

2manybikes

A new born baby is too young to ride in a bike seat. They need to be old enough to hold their head up.

alias5000

This seems a good read to me:
https://travellingtwo.com/resources/baby-bike-tour-age

Note the infant sling & cycling discussion.
At any rate, large volume tires at low pressure (and a little extra weight potentially) are probably very helpful to reduce shocks. The chariots seem to have a very good suspension (from my own observation).
The circe comes with suspension fork and the bobike adapter is said to be sprung, too. Still, I have only experience with picking and riding along the kids trailer of our friends.

acidfast7

I agree. I just surveying around to keep my eyes open for any good secondhand stuff should I bump into it. There's a huge secondhand market for kids stuff in the London/SE England area.

noglider 

Congratulations on your bundle of joy.

Darth Lefty 

Congratulations! Photos are customary at this point.

The only one I tried was the Thule Ride-Along Mini, and it was a dud. My thread about it here. Thule since then bought Yepp which I see as an acknowledgement their product wasn't good.

Darth Lefty 

Look at Mom in the ad photo you posted. She's not short. Her arms are nevertheless straight out when she is riding and she is bolt upright. Her knee is splayed so it won't hit the seat. (Kiddo will put his fingers right there, too.) Her seat is lowered several inches so she can flat foot the bike, because there is no room for her to stand in front of the seat. Look at kid, too - he could shrug out of those straps, no problem.

I much preferred rear seats. Both Blackburn (Copilot) and Topeak make versions that come with a matching standard rack and latch onto it. I can recommend the Blackburn version because I have it and it works great. But the Topeak version uses their MTX latching system so you can use it with their matching bags and etc, so that's cool too. I'd still use them, but 2nd and 3rd kid arrived together, so they go in a double trailer.

acidfast7

Rear seats aren't so good for communicating with children. Front seats are much better. One should be able to converse with the passengers when riding.

A box bike is ideal but storage in my city is essentially zero making that a non-starter. Just dump the dog, wife and two kiddos in the front. It worked in CPH really well, but alas not here.

Front seats allow a nice conversation while cycling and most families recommend them over trailers/rear seats.

RoadKill

I'm currently facing this same dilemma. Our son is now almost 5 months so it won't be too many more months before we are looking to take him out on the bikes. I have the concern that Darth_Lefty pointed out above, being tall I'm always having to contort my body to make things work, I don't really want to have to splay out my knees for a front mount seat because then I will never take him out, but I also feel that interaction with him up front is much better and necessary to keep him more interested. Are there seats that mount to the font but are in front of the bars? Maybe mounted on a front rack?

Darth Lefty 

I didn't mean to run down all front seats. But that one definitely exhibits the same problems I had with the Thule, maybe even more so.

RoadKill

Just about all the pictures of people on bikes with front mount seats I've seen appear to have the same issue, that's why I haven't settled on a solution yet. The seats for bigger kids that aren't much more than a pad on the top tube are probably better but that's some time before my kid could use it.
Really I think the seat would have to be on top of the handlebars or in front of them to not be in the way.

acidfast7

I think the front seat it the best early-term solution (pre-24 months size-dependent) solution or until they're understood by others in German and English.

I do understand the issues posed by the seat but nearly all the rides will be under 1km to the beach and for the work commute (2.5k), I just quite release it out. I want the active communication more than anything else with the ability to point/speak/etc...

I do see the hindrances and was curious how much of a hassle they'd be and it sounds like it's about correct. With kid on bike, bow-legged knee-bent peddling, which is OK.

acidfast7

Thanks for the congrats by the way. Busy day and missed it, out travelling all day (car/pram are fine for her, which is nice).

Started with 5 days in the neonatal ICU and a severe infection and tube feeding :/ All better now, tough as nails. Very aware and very relaxed probably due to her first few days being very stessful. Had to refresh breast-feeding as it was somewhat lost by tube feeding for days 2-5 (any feeding by bottle/teat was lost). Other than that it's been excellent so far! BF like a champ again about every 90 mins or so around the clock, which is great.

Sorry, but no photos to non-IRL people only because she can't really consent yet. We did do 1 FB notification with one photo, but it will be up to her to decide what can be posted. No offence intended. If she gets into the seat, I post one one here but we're quite aways away and I just looking through second-hand child bits at sales and such.

Darth Lefty 

Oh at least say congrats to the new dad before you tear each other to rhetorical ribbons again

rhm

Congratulations!

You have a many months before you need to attach anything to the bike. We really liked the "snuggli" front pack when the kids were really small. A back pack carrier was more comfortable for me, but I never knew whether the kid was happy. When kid was unhappy that was obvious enough, though. We got a Burley trailer at some point, and that was good when the kid (s) were bigger, but honestly there was only a very short window of time when ANY of this stuff was useful. They grow fast, and it's hard to tell how much they're aware of at the time. For sure, my kids don't remember any of the gear discussed so far.

My advice is, get it if it will make YOUR life easier, but don't expect the kid to enjoy or appreciate, or even notice it.

ggoytia1

I have used this. It is awesome. Baby loves it and she would fall asleep on the little pedestal. Full drool, and full snore.

Wee Ride Front Safe Child Bike / Bicycle Seat Carrier For Baby Child Kids 1-4 Yrs

I-Like-To-Bike

acidfast7

Tiny world actually.

Yeah, I can imagine just tooling over to Gerbermühle or Hafen 2 on a sunny day next to the Main would be great!

acidfast7

Nice rig. I have to bring the bring the bikes through the house (typical British terraced house problem), so it's probably a non-starter. But, man, they look very, very nice. I usually you the kiddos passed out in the front seats in Germany, which looks quite relaxing.

2manybikes

With a child seat on the bike there are two main things to worry about.
First, the child may be very wiggelly when being put into the seat. No fun when the bike is balanced on a kickstand. You pretty much have to keep at least one hand on the bike all the time . You can not leave the bike alone for a second. It was worse than I thought it would be. Also even with a helmet on, if you fall sideways the kids head will hit the seat side very hard. Maybe these are obvious, but try it a friend's bike if you can.

A child trailer will not fall over if you do. I think it's safer. But they are lower than a car, be sure to use a good safety flag.
Keep the weight in the trailer over or in front of the axle to keep the trailer from lifting the bike in the air when you are not on it. This may never be a problem, it showed up when I turned a trailer into a dog trailer, loading from behind. The dog started to put weight in as he got in and the bike went up in the air.