baby furniture

[avanthi]

Hi, can anyone suggest a shop i can get all my baby furniture from. I'm new to australia so i dont really know any shops other than toys r us.

And what is preferable for bubs a spring mattress or a foam one?

Anyone using a Beema Q elite Stroller? Would u recommend it?

Whats the best Car seat u can recommend? I've seen the Safe-n-sound Royale. Just dont know if it is the safest.

Appreciate any help i can get.
Thanks

Avanthi.

[Mummahol]

Hi, you can try Bubs Baby Shop which is at Strathpine and Fortitude Valley. There is also Babies Galore. Both stores have a wide range of beautiful nursery furniture. You will just have to google both stores for other locations. I bought my furniture from 'Bubs' and the quality is exceptional. My first born had an innerspring in his cot as that was what was recommended by the sales girl, so I guess its up to you what you buy. I used a bugaboo frog bassinette and stroller with my first born. It was a fanatastic pram that I would recommend to anyone but have not personally heard much about the beema.
Hope that helps, Good Luck

[Mummahol]

I have a Safe and Sound Royale and have not had a problem with itxx

[MummyTummy]

Avanthi - what state are you in? Each state has different baby stores suitable for buying everything.

I live in VIC and we have Baby Bunting, or there is BabyCo but I prefer Baby Bunting.

I was in the store on the weekend and they recommended the Safe-N-Sound Meridian car seat. It has won design awards and meets the AusStandards. But it really is a personal choice, but Safe-N-Sound has a good reputation that spans all the way back to when I was a kid myself.

I don't know about the pram you are looking at, but I have bought a Phil & Ted's pram which is a very popular 3-wheeler, again with good design features. Do you want a 3-wheeler or 4-wheeler? Again personal choice and the best thing is to go to one of the big stores and 'test drive' everything you are interested in and also speak to the sales people. And don't be afraid to ask whether they get lots of returns or faults on a particular product. That is always a good indicator of it's quality IMO.

HTH!

[avanthi]

Thanks for the replies. I'm in Melbourne, VIC. (sorry i forgot to mention that)

[Kristin27]

Hi Avanthi,

Baby Co are in Melbourne and are the only ones who stock the Beema Q pram. I bought the Phil and Ted pram because I think it was better quality, but it's personal choice and depends how much you want to spend - it can get very expensive! I also prefer Baby Bunting for better quality furniture and more choice. I bought the Bertini Cot and change table and I'm very happy with it. Maybe google search both to find out which are closest to you...

Baby Gallery is also good, it's at 2167 - 2181 Princes Hwy, Clayton.

I can't advise you on a car seat because I haven't bought one yet.

Happy shopping!!

[Ayapi]

Hi Avanthi,

Welcome to Melbourne

I would recommend you going to Baby Buntings as it's one of the biggest stores. I bought my baby furniture from a shop called Cradle Road at Water Gardens. We bought Boori cot and mattress, Change table too. We bought a Valco Ultra light tri-mode pram only because it was one of the lightest prams weighing 9.8kg. The car seat we bought is Safe-n-Sound Meridian which is highly recommended. I would suggest that you go and check out Baby Buntings cause it really is a personal choice and style.

Good luck sweet.

[PinkPalace]

HI there - we were living rural when we were looking at things and ended up buying every thing ONLINE at baby zone direct .com .au (not sure if i am allowed to post it... sorry mods if not)

It is in woolloongong in NSw (has an actually store too) and we got everything posted to our door - and saved $100's rather than buying at our local store - if you are lucky they often have 15% off storewide sales every now and then in store and online and if you contact them with a bulk buy ask them about discount for bulk purchase and they will help out....

We even ot free gifts for buying (ie monitors etc).

worth a try!

[Becci]

DBF and I are going car seat researching tomorrow. We plan on going to BabyCo and YCN (I'm in SA), researching what styles we want and then shopping around for the best price. I am leaning towards the S&S Meridian. We are going to try and hold out til the June sales (I'm due in August) so we can save some money.

We plan on buying a cot bed so are going to buy a good inner spring mattress seeing as he will be in the cot for a number of years.

I have bought a Emmaljunga pram second hand in almost perfect knick (complete with bassinette and toddler seat) for $100. Very happy with that bargain. We will use this as a basinette too.
Good luck. Shopping for baby can be very daunting. I have one child but he is 12 so things have change a lot in that time. But other things haven't.

[avanthi]

Thank you for all the replies.. will check them out this week..
Take care
Avanthi.

[Cally]

Avanthi - we have the Beema Q Elite and I am really happy with it. It is only available at Babyco though. We also got our cot at Babyco, I really couldn't see much of a difference between the different ones available at all the stores and so we just went with one that had an easy side lowering mechanism and one that I liked the look of.

We got a free rocker because we got the two big items at the same time from Babyco.

We got an innerspring mattress rather than foam as I've heard that the foam mattresses can be quite warm and I didn't want DD getting too hot over summer.

Re car seat, we just hired a capsule. I really recommend this as you can put bubs in it inside before heading out to the car. Also for little trips (ie going to the doctors) I just leave DD in it rather than worrying about the pram. Means she stays asleep if she falls asleep in the car on the way there.

[bigbubbabelly]

I went to Mali Furniture -in South Brisbane. They do some the cots for David Jones and Myer for cut price. They are really sturdy cots and change tables.
I brought a steelcraft Strider Pram- we brought it because My hubby and I are quite tall and that was only pram that I didn't have to stoop really low.

[Becci]

We went to BabyCo yesterday and I really like one of the cots there. I can't remember the name right now (it's on a brochure in my bag though). It came in white and antique.
What I really liked about it was that it came with the smaller end, so that when you convert it into a toddler be both ends aren't as high as they are in the cot. The head end stays the same but the foot is smaller. Looks much better that way.
Ours is include in the cost all the others were about $150 extra.
We are also going for the innerspring,mainly because we plan to convert to the toddler bed so with the extra weight of a toddler I think an innerspring is better. Ours was about $120 from BabyCo.

[Curly]

Welcome to Melbourne!

An innerspring mattress is definitely better than a foam mattress. We also got a cot that converts to a toddler bed but one it converts it takes a full size single bed mattress. You may want to check that so you don't get caught by surprise. We are about to convert DS' cot to a toddler bed and bought his single mattress last week from Snooze, cost $220.

We got our cot and change table from Baby Bunting (but chest of drawers etc we got from a cheap furniture place). If you spend over $500 in one purchase at Baby Bunting you get a 5% discount card. Baby Bunting is just up the road from us so very convenient and has made a lot of money out of us, lol.

Our carseat is a Safe and Sound Meridian. I have a friend who works in the baby equipment business and she says that all car seats must comply with Australian Safety Standards so the difference in price is down to the upholstery on the seats and some come with speakers and flash stuff like that.

Try the Choice (Australian consumer information) website for pram reviews. I believe they do review the Beema Q and from what I remember reading on posts here at BB it is a popular pram but does not have a toddler seat. This is something you may want to bear in mind if you think you will still need a pram for baby number 1 when you plan for baby number 2 to arrive. Otherwise you will wind up needing to invest in a whole new pram.

[Phteven]

I don't know if they have babies galore in Victoria but if they do avoid it. Every time I need to buy something and I do cost comparisons they are the most expensive. Usually by about 10%.
BabyCo are often well priced.
If you have time wait until June/July because most baby shops have stocktake sales around then and you'll save a bit.

[Becci]

I was very surprise with BabyCo's prices too. I was expecting to pay lots more there.

The cot that we plan on buying (at this stage anyway) that converts to a toddler bed, does use the cot mattress. Luckily we thought to ask though.
They also had the other toddler beds that have the lovely wooden side rails biult in ( I think they can be removed though). They were reasonably priced too at about $179 I think. Not sure on the mattress size, might be a bigger mattress. But thought they were a great idea if you didn't have a convertable cot but didn't want to put your toddler into a 'big' bed.

I think we are going for the SnS Royale. It had everything that we wanted. I was hoping for a Meridian but they didn't have any instock for us to look at. Was hoping to look at the Platinum one too but they didn't have those either.
We will be very happy with the Royale.