Nuna Infant Car Seat and City Mini GT

First, congratulations!

If you know the ownership history of the carseat, know that it's never been in an accident and the seat isn't expired, no reason not to use it! Take the savings now and use it while you can. Most infant seats are rated to 35 lbs so no reason not to use it until your child exceeds that weight limit. 

With the adapter, the city mini should be fine for your child until they're big enough to sit in the stroller plainly. The beauty of having an adapter on the city mini or any stroller is that you can transfer baby from car to wherever you're headed on foot. And in the case of a sleeping baby, that's very important! And they can face in toward you so they know you're still there.

Also, if I'm remembering the City Mini correctly, it lays back to almost flat which should make it fine for your baby sooner than you'd think. You just want the baby to have good neck control before you place them in a stroller sitting up. That depends largely on your own baby's development but thankfully that usually coincides with around when they get a little too heavy to be lugged about in the bucket seat ;-)

Congratulations! 

I can't answer question 3, but I can speak to #1 and #2. 

1) All car seats have a weight/size limit. Google your infant car seat manufacturer to find out the limit to your infant car seat. Our daughter was in her Keyfit 30 carseat until she was 1.5. Your infant car seat is good until the child outgrows it OR

2) Carseats also come with expiration dates. Yours should be listed either on it, or on their website. As long as the carseat is not expired AND hasn't been in any car accidents there is no reason you can't use a used carseat! 

The expiration date being a reason to not use a carseat might be up for debate as well! I only  know we followed those guidelines when it came to ours. Our second carseat is a convertible and should last for a while. 

Hi JB! Congrats on your baby! My son is almost exactly 2 years older than your child, so reading your post brought me back to winter 2017 and all that preparation :) We used a hand-me-down car seat (Uppa Mesa) with a City Mini GT and it was great. We used the adapter for the infant seat for the first 5-6ish months, before taking the adapters off and just using the City Mini. We probably could have kept him in the infant seat for longer, but he was sitting up just fine in the City Mini, so we stopped.

Also, the City Mini is awesome--we still use it daily, it is our only stroller, and it has logged hundreds (thousands?) of miles, all over the city, in parks, everywhere. It travels so well and is still in great shape.

Again, best wishes to you and your wife as you prepare for your baby!

Hi JB, I love our city mini GT and have been using it since infancy but so answer some Qs

1. Most of the convertible car seats start at 20 lbs. Before that, it’s the infant car seat unless you have one that has a whole infant insert etc.  The median weight of a 1 yr old is 22 lbs so depending on the size of your little one you might be able to stretch the infant seat to the first year. I have a large and long son and we moved him out of the infant seat at 6 months.

2. If you know the history of your car seat and it’s within the expiry date, I would use a hand me down. Our infant seat was a hand me down .

3. City mini GT is great but not as good during the middle phase (we’re not using the infant car seat now and he’s a little bit loose in there at 6 mo.) We still love it though.

hope that helps.

Hi, and congratulations on your first child!

In response to your questions:

1) Every car seat/ infant is different.  Check the manual for your model of carseat (if you don't have a physical copy of the manual, you can often find them on the manufacturer's website). The manual will generally have a height and weight limit for the carseat.  You can use that seat up until your child reaches one of those limits.  However, keep in mind that a lot of children will move onto a convertible or other rear-facing seat before hitting one of those milestones. For example, our Chicco keyfit had a 30lb/30 inch limit, but our daughter hated being confined to the infant seat, so we transitioned to a convertible carseat at 6 months (15lbs). The main pro of the infant carseat is that you can remove the seat without taking out/disturbing your baby... but once they get upwards of 15lbs, they just start being too heavy to carry in and out of the car with the infant seat, and it is easier to just leave the seat in the car (in our experience).

2) This depends on a few factors. Our infant carseat was a hand-me-down from my sister, and it was great!  But, you should definitely know the whole history of the car seat.  You can absolutely not use the carseat if it was been involved in an accident of any kind. Also, you should check the manufacture date/expiration date, usually labeled on the back or bottom of the carseat. The general rule of thumb is that a carseat "expires" 6 years from the manufacture date. So if the carseat is a very old hand-me-down, you should buy a new one.  Better safe than sorry for your precious cargo!

3) We did not have a Nuna seat, but do have the City Mini GT.  We bought an adapter for our chicco keyfit carseat, and it worked great!  It may not be the most compact solution though.  We did not start using the actual stroller without the carseat adapter until she was about 5 months old, and had good neck control. Even though you are technically able to use the stroller from birth, we found that as a newborn up through 5 months it was just easiest to use the carseat and adapter, and she seemed more comfortable. Then one day near 6 months old when she was more mobile, she just started hating the carseat bucket and we knew it was time to move on, but she still loves the stroller (now 9 mo.).  I think that so long as your Nuna fits well with the adapter and seems sturdy, then you should be happy. 

We have a CitiMini GT and love it. We used it for our first kid, who is now almost three, from birth with a Britax car seat (which I assume is basically the same situation as Nuna + CitiMini, we used adapters for Britax). A few thoughts to your questions ...

1. We switched her to sitting forward facing in the stroller (without the car seat) around six months or so; she was a big kid and lasted in the infant car seat (in the car) until close to a year, at which point we switched to a convertible car seat (Lucie's List has a good article on this with product recos if you're interested). We made it to about 2.5 years rear-facing and just adjusted that car seat to forward-facing.

2. I'd personally be hesitant to use a hand-me-down car seat unless you were 1000% sure that it hasn't really been used / definitely hasn't been in an accident. I also think that car seats have expiration dates printed on them, so you could double check it's still "current."

3. I loved the car seat / Citi Mini combination and am doing the same thing with our second kid, who's a newborn now.

1) each infant car seat will have different height/weight maximums. I think most are around 30lbs or 30” whichever comes first. How long you can use it will depend on the size of your kid! Our daughter is super tall so we outgrew it around 10 months maybe but we know other kids her age (20 months) who still fit theirs. 

2) as long as the city mini gt is compatible with your infant seat and the infant seat isn’t expired or been in an accident (6 years from purchase date usually, there should be a date stamp somewhere on the seat) then use it!

3) city mini gt is the stroller we have and it seems like it will work until our kid is at least 4 or 5. She is 36” now and her feet are so not just touching the foot rest     It’s a great stroller!

congrats on the new addition

To add on to my last comment. Infant seats on the city mini gt are a little cumbersome and we had to remove the adapter each time we collapsed it which was a tad annoying but totally doable. If you can find a cheap/used or borrowed infant car seat stroller frame they are super handy but not so handy that i would shell out $100 for a new one. 

Congratulations! 

We used the same combination, and it worked great. The adapter works well, and the Citi Mini GT is a great stroller in terms of handling the bumpy ride on Oakland's not-so-even sidewalks. At around 7 months (basically when he learned to sit), I stopped attaching the infant car seat to the stroller, and just put him in the regular way. Good luck!