My wife and I went to Toys R Us yesterday (the yokkaichi one -good call Mike), and after some consultation with their rather well trained staff, we discovered that our *insert expletive* car is not compatible with ANY baby seat that can rotate. Why not? Because some bright spark designer at Toyota thought itd be a good idea to put a small compartment in the floor in front of the rear passenger seats. This means that if one buys a baby seat with a supporting leg (i.e. a turny one) in the event of a crash the first thing that leg is going to do is go straight through the floor into the lower compartment. Yes, you could probably improvise and put a bit of wood or something over it, but then ya gotta worry about slippage and so on, and generally I'm not best pleased with Toyota and their supposed "family car"
Anyway, we ended up getting a seat that, while not turny, does roll forwards and backwards so the baby can be lying down or in various degrees of sitting up. If I want to turn the seat around (and I will, once the baby stops being a backwards-facing size) I just have to take the whole contraption out and re-attach it to the car. The one one we got is also certified OK by the EU standard, which is good. So, although its not a bells and whistles one, I'm confident it'll do the business in the event of a bump.
As for prams and buggies, I was so brain-melted after teh whole car-seat expedition I've decided to leave it for a bit. We were bequeathed a buggy and a baby-bjorn type of thing from a co-worker, and since they have 2 fine kids I'm assuming these bits of equipment will be fine.
I'll maybe end up going shopping again for a prammy type thing once the baby arrive, but I'm going to wait and see. My mum and dad are coming over on march 2nd, so hopefully they can give some wise words in that area.
So, thanks all. Mission accomplished, for now
