I got Bugaboo'd

I never thought of prams much in my life and never paid much attention to them when seeing people pushing them around the local super market. Over the past few months the word pram has been a big part of my life, I’ve lost count of the number of times we have been to check some out, the advice people have given me and the confusion I have felt just thinking about them. It wasn’t till a recent visit to a Mothercare store that it finally starting to hit me that prams come in all shapes and sizes and the cost can vary significantly. We already had some prams in mind before we went into the store but wasn’t expecting the price tags that come with some of these shall we say 'well known brands'.

Bugaboo or Stokke

My wife had been told about Bugaboo's which had been recommended by friends that had one or knew someone with one. Chances are that you will come across this brand when you starting shopping for prams. The Stokke on the other hand was one that was mentioned to me by a good friend whilst having a drink. He had a lot of positive things to say about the Stokke and was sure that it was better than the Bugaboo he had already owned for a few years, although he hadn’t owned a Stokke I could tell he would exchange his Bugaboo for one without batting an eyelid. The Main selling point for the Stokke seemed to be the unique height adjustability of the seating position, which seemed to promote interactivity between you and your baby. On paper this does look like a good pushchair however it does come with a hefty price tag of almost a thousand pounds. Surely this can’t be right, I was expecting a pushchair to cost a few hundred pounds, was I kidding myself.

The smart thing for us to do was to spend some time in a store and get a sales person to demonstrate some prams so that we could then narrow them down. I must say I expected this process to only take a few minutes, how wrong was I. We started with a Bugaboo and I must say I was impressed with the cot and the overall quality of this pram. It seemed to fold down without too much effort and came with an Aerosleep mattress which was nice. The fabrics were machine washable and the car seat adaptors made it easy to plug in and out with minimal fuss. Overall I did like the look of this and with the price tag a few hundred pounds less than the Stokke it seemed like a winner.

Next we moved onto the Stokke, my initial opinion on the design was not good, but I thought I would let the assistant go through the demo so that we could see all its features. The adjustable seating position was nice, easy to operate and made sense as you would be closer to your baby. The way the Stokke folded down and its size didn’t seem as good as the Bugaboo to me and I wasn’t keen on the design of the rounded handle to push the pram.

Overall both prams seemed nice, but I couldn’t justify the price difference, my personal opinion was that you get more value for your money with the Bugaboo. Anyway we didn’t make our decision in the store, instead we went home and slept on it. A few weeks later we went to the store again and had another look at the Bugaboo and decided we would go for it (I think my wife had her heart set on it, so who was I to say no). The next big thing to decide was the colours, OMG, who would have thought this would take so long. I liked the orange as it was the one we had seen in the store and I thought it looked funky. My wife on the other hand liked a few other colours, like black and red. The blue also looked nice but she kept saying everyone would think we had a boy (maybe we will, who knows). I couldn’t believe that choosing the right colour combination would take twice as long as choosing the pram. In the end we went with the red and almost changed our minds again when we went in to pay for it a few weeks later.

I'm not sure if we spent too much time on choosing a pram or if we have made the right decision, but like everything else with becoming a parent I’m sure we will soon find out.