Age of infant for bike trailer?

[CyclaSutra]

Dear ladies,

It's been eons since I've posted, being preggers and swamped with work and all. But I searched the threads here and found the coolest baby trailer: The Chariot SideCarrier (http://www.rei.com/product/753239).

Only problem is, I can't find anywhere on the Web a recommendation for how old an infant should be before riding in a bike trailer. I'll keep looking, but I wanted to ask you ladies if you had experience with popping a wee one in a trailer.

Little DD is due on Christmas Day-- oooh! I forgot I hadn't announced it here! It's a girl! -- and I'd love to be cycling with her a bit, just on the paths around town, in her first summer.

P.S.-- Yellow, I'll be reading her "Duck on a Bike" to get her psyched about it!

[KnottedYet]

I started dragging SKnot in the trailer when he was a toddler. He had good strong head control at that point, and enough trunk strength ("core") that I didn't have to worry about him getting hurt when the trailer jerked or bumped.

[Eden]

No kids here so definitely confirm this...... but I've always heard that they have to be strong enough to hold their head up while wearing a baby helmet.

I found this on a helmet site
Are there helmets for infants?
Yes. Many infant-sized helmets are of the soft-shell variety. They are light, an important consideration for small children whose necks may not be strong enough to comfortably hold a hard-shell helmet. Babies younger than 1 year have relatively weak neck structure. Neither helmets nor bike traveling is recommended for them

There's a whole bunch of good info here http://www.helmets.org/little1s.htm
including the pros and cons of sidecar style trailers.

[xeney]

Be careful with helmets.org, though, because if you read enough it might convince you that you should never get on a bike yourself, much less let your kid ride on or behind one.

We have a regular Chariot trailer and we started her around six months, no helmet, trails only, and she hated it until about eight months. We did not push it until she started to like it. Actually we took a break after our first attempts and waited until she was sitting very solidly upright on her own, and I think that helped. She is very small for her age so we use the infant insert for the Chariot.

She's a year old now and we've just started using a helmet (and riding on the road as well as trails). She loves it.

We have friends who put their kids in much younger than six months, and others who waited until a year. The one thing that has been pretty universal is that nobody uses a helmet until one year ... the trailers are very safe, but a helmet, ironically, is not safe for a baby's neck until about a year.

Some people also put a carseat in the trailer, but that isn't going to work with a Chariot unless the sidecar is much bigger than the trailer. There just is not enough room.

[jobob]

Little DD is due on Christmas Day-- oooh! I forgot I hadn't announced it here! It's a girl!

That's wonderful !!! http://www.millan.net/minimations/smileys/congratualtions.gif (http://www.millan.net)

[CyclaSutra]

Eden, thanks for the helpful -- and yes, scary -- helmets.org link. And Xeney, thanks for the dose of reality to go along with it.

I'll put a few parameters on my thinking here and then eventually do what feels right to us, her pediatrician and to little DD (whom I'm calling JJ for the time being... Johanna Junior).

Where we're planning to live upon delivery (real estate wrangling aside) is about 1/4 mile along bike paths from daycare, grocery store or my gym (plus crossing two small-town streets). It's about a mile further along paths to where I work. While locking JJ up in a car seat and joining the bazillions of other car commuters is definitely a plan for her first six months, after that, it seems healthier for both of us to consider seeing how she likes a bike trailer.

For that distance, my speed wouldn't exceed 6-7 mph, roughly twice as fast as pushing her in a jogging stroller. Far as I can tel, no one suggests helmets for a baby riding in a stroller. And it only makes sense to me, a cyclist, that cycling would get us there just as smoothly and twice as fast as pushing her in a jogging stroller.

I'm not talking about mountain biking or curb-hopping or anything other than a graceful, chariot-like ride.

Of course, this is the gestating, still-biking person talking, not the over-protective OMG-I'm-a-mother person.

Bottom line: I just don't want to register for the bike trailer if there's no hope of using it until her second summer. We don't have the storage space for devices that are of no use for 18 months. I'm leaning toward the thinking that she may be able to use it by 7-10 months, at least a wee bit, but I've got more thinking to do.

Thanks, all, for your input!

[deena]

Congrats cyclasutra! Can I add my two cents? I work for a Children's Hospital as an injury prevention educator, and I would second Eden's reply and the bikehelmets.org source - we use that reference when families ask us.

As for pediatricians' advice: some are very good at keeping up to date on injury prevention (and other topics) and some are not. Car seats are a good example - the law in our state is a lot less than what is recommended nationally, but most peds still quote the law to families, so many of our kids are not riding as safe as they could be. It's not that the docs are careless or ignorant - the info just changes too quickly and there is so much to keep track of (nutrition, immunizations, fitness, diseases, etc).

It's always good to look other places for info like you're doing now and then make the decision you think is safest.

[bike4ever]

Both Burley and Chariot recommend 1 year in their products sitting. Both companies have an infant sling that fits their trailers - the slings usually work around 3 months. Check with each company's guidelines.

[singletrackmind]

I started my (now 5 year old) son when he could support the helmet. We bought it when he was 5 months, got him used to the weight a little bit at a time, started with the trailer a couple of weeks later. Ours was pretty big so I had pillows to support his head when he fell asleep...he spent a lot of time sleeping in there at first.
I flipped the trailer twice, once on a path when I didn't quite clear a barrier and once on the road when it hit a very very small pothole on a turn. He remained suspended in the seatbelt. Not very happy with me but otherwise alright. A helmet's now second nature to him and he'll yell 'helmet' at you if you forget yours!

Another note. One of our friends went to a local shop for a helmet for their year-old daughter and what they came back with was completely unacceptable. The helmet was the smallest that shop happened to carry and instead of trying to find something suitable they sold it, saying there wasn't anything smaller. While this may have been true for the line of helmets they carry it doesn't happen to be true in general. It was simply too big and actually kept sliding onto the side of the little girl's head. DON'T let anyone talk you into something that doesn't fit.

[xeney]

Depending on your child's size, you may not be able to buy a helmet to fit until after a year. I knew that extra-small helmets are very hard to come by in the US so I bought one listed on the helmets.org site -- it was a Vigor L'il Tyke, but those are since discontinued. They do have others listed there this year. It fits my kid fine but she does not have a small head.

I am in a moms-and-babies cycling club and nobody's pediatrician recommended a helmet before one year. The helmet is a danger on its own at that age, unfortunately.

That said, your route sounds fine to me, CyclaSutra. The Chariot trailer has great shocks but the baby really needs to be about 25 pounds to get any use out of them -- at a year my baby is still about 8 pounds too light, so she doesn't like bumps. She also does not like speed. My husband has found that if he goes over 15 miles an hour, she is pretty likely to cry. But she is getting more tolerant of both speeds and bumps as she's gotten bigger.

When your baby is a little bigger, I highly recommend this MP3 player (http://www.amazon.com/Sandisk-Shaker-Player-SDMX9N-1024R-A18-Package/dp/B0018SBN9K/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1219927941&sr=8-2) as the best trailer toy ever. It has a little mono speaker so you don't use the headphones, obviously, and the baby can have his or her own music back there! We usually barely even hear it (we hear her "singing" instead) but it has really helped to keep her happy in the trailer. We introduced it at the same time that we introduced the helmet and it was a completely smooth transition, no fussing at all.

Congratulations.

[xeney]

Oh, one issue I just thought of that you should check: the infant sling (3 months or so) and the infant insert (up to about 18 months) might not work in the sidecar. Definitely check that before you decide. Those items are pretty necessary to make the trailer, at least, safe and comfortable for a small infant, but they are really meant to be used with the non-cycling conversion kits, like the jogger attachment, because they are not compatible with a helmet. Since the sidecar is only for cycling, they may not have made it compatible with those infant adapters.

We still use the infant insert but we have to remove the head support in order to accommodate the helmet. I definitely would not want to put a small baby in the trailer without those supports. The Chariot is really meant for bigger kids to sit upright, awake. It is not reclined, there is not a lot of head support, and without the extra infant support, it's just not suitable for tiny little babies, even those that can sit up.

Okay, I looked it up -- the baby supporter is compatible, the infant sling is not. You can't use the head support with a helmet, however.

[singletrackmind]

When I told my son's pediatrician of my plan 'helmet' was the first thing out of her mouth, as if I'd have done anything different anyway. My son's head is small but I got lucky at a good LBS, helmet-wise. It was a Bell Boomerang, orange and yellow with construction trucks. I left the visor off.
I can see how a year would be better for the trailer, stronger muscles and all that. Unfortunately for my kid I couldn't stand the wait as it was so when I got the ok we were off! Lucky me (and him), turned out after a few 'hated it' rides he decided he loved it.....singing and playing when he wasn't busy sleeping.
Be careful if/when you do use a helmet when putting it on, even with a 'pinch-guard' buckle it is possible to pinch.

[singletrackmind]

And I just realized I didn't say...

Congratulations!