Good point – but absolutely do not get a used car seat from someone you don’t know. A seat that’s been in a collision must be replaced, even if there’s no visible damage. Also, after some time after manufacture (6 years for ours, although that might not be standard) the plastic degrades sufficiently that it’s no longer safe. Some people are in dire straits financially. But if you afford it, it’s a damn good idea to buy your carseat new.
–Cliffy
We had both. I definitely preferred the infant carrier when they were really young because I thought it would have been a major pain to have to wrangle the kidlet into an already-belted-in convertible seat. Yes, it is only used for 6ish months (or whenever baby outgrows it) but it really was a lot easier. What I wished I’d done, however, was get one of those stroller/carseat combinations: you get a stroller frame along with the carseat and base, and snap the seat into the stroller frame.
Also, if you’re grocery shopping, an infant carseat/carrier is more convenient - you just set that in the cart (some have latches to attach to secure it, but the time I tried it, the damn thing was a HUGE pain to undo). So mostly I either put the carrier in the kid seat area without latching (and watched it carefully), or put the carrier + kid IN the cart and just piled groceries around the baby. Made checking out interesting :D.
Infant car seat 100% all the way. You do not want to wake sleeping baby by taking him/her out of the convertible car seat each time.
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But now that my kiddo is five months old, I will say that the infant carrier was definitely the way to go, at least so far. The only problem is that he’s a very big baby - at five months old he’s 19 or 20 pounds, so it’s a lot to carry. He also hates his car seat these days and is strong enough to start pulling himself out of it as you’re trying to put him in. It’s probably about time to switch to the convertible seat (which we already have - it was installed in my husband’s car for a while but we never used it so now it’s in the nursery closet).
As he’s gotten bigger (probably the last two months), he’s really developed into a baby that likes to be Up! and Looking at Things! and Participating!, so we do tend to either carry him or put him in the Baby Bjorn for anything longer than popping into Walgreens for a second.