My Son’s Travel Car Seat Fits in a Backpack
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I learned about theWAYB Pico travel car seatlast spring while trying to sort out a car seat for a three-month stay in Sicily. My husband was working in Taormina for several months and our 20-month-old toddler and I were flying over to join him. After spending nearly a decade traversing the globe for my former job as a travel editor, the trip was unnerving me in a way that felt surprising. My son was born at the beginning of the pandemic, so our adventures had been limited to places we could drive.Flying long-distanceon my own with such a young child felt like entirely new territory; I wanted to make sure we had the propergear.
I’m a big researcher to begin with but tend to go the extra mile when it comes totravelorparenting, so I spent quite a few hours online trying to suss out my options. My initial takeaway: the more obvious travel-friendlycar seatswere not going to work. My son was tall and slim for his age and too long for the now-ubiquitousDoona. He didn’t weigh enough for theRideSafer vest, a conveniently compact option that lets young kids safely use a regular seat belt but has a 30-pound minimum. The widely beloved and gloriously inexpensiveCosco Scenera Nexthit the “lightweight” criteria at just under ten pounds, but it isn’t especially compact, and I worried it would be a hassle to carry. We weren’t renting a vehicle, so booking a car seat through an agency wouldn’t be an option. And I didn’t want to lug our wonderful but extremely heavyNuna Ravathrough the airport, let alone install it in the occasional taxi once we arrived. At 27 pounds, it literally weighed more than my child.
Looking for advice, I turned to women I’d met throughMysha, a platform where mothers-to-be can join “pods” with others who are delivering around the same time. A few folks in my pod swore by the WAYB. It seemed ideal: lightweight at only eight pounds, compact, fits in an overhead compartment, has a five-point harness, and most important, passes allU.S. safety standards for motor vehicles and planes. I was sold, until I saw that the WAYB is recommended for kids aged 2 years and up who weigh between 22 and 50 pounds and are between 30 and 45 inches tall. My son wasn’t big enough, so I mentally filed it away for future travels and reluctantly made plans to buy a car seat in Sicily.
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Fast-forward a few months and the WAYB was an obvious purchase as my family prepared to fly to France for a wedding. Our journey from Connecticut to Provence and back would include Ubers,airplanes, taxis, trains, and a car rental. Having a car seat that I knew was safe, comfortable for my son, and easy to carry and install was really important to me. Not only was I drawn to the sleek design and quality materials — the WAYB is made of aerospace-grade aluminum and a responsibly sourced poly-wool mesh — I didn’t want to worry about booking car services with car seats or wonder what we’d do if ourluggagegot lost along the way.
At $380, the WAYB car seat isn’t cheap, but one of the key differences between it and other travel car seats is that it folds in half, making for an extremely compact piece of equipment. The brand’s marketingphotoseven show parents toting it around on the handles of theircarry-on. With more solo mother-son trips in my not-too-distant future, I knew additional carry-on items would need to be small and light enough for me to manage on my own, so I decided to also spring for theDeluxe Pico Travel Bag. It costs an additional $80 but lets you wear the seat like abackpackand keeps it neatly tucked away from airport germs. There’s extra space inside, too — enough to fit my son’smini Fjällräven. The two items combined were an investment for sure, but we travel frequently and the price-per-use ratio would ultimately be less expensive, and provide way more peace of mind, than renting a car seat.
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New! You can now save this product for later.
New! You can now save this product for later.
Before we left, I practiced installing the WAYB in our car. I also had my son try out the seat so I could size the straps to his body. An instruction manual is helpfully placed in the back pocket, but I prefer thisinstallation videoand bookmarked it on my phone for easy access. The process was relatively easy; the most difficult part was installing the side connectors to the LATCH system in our car, but I find that to be hard with standard car seats too. Once we set out on our trip, the WAYB established itself as a game-changer. I installed it in our Uber to the airport in a matter of minutes. My son was happy and content in his new seat and I felt a sense of ease knowing that he would have a safe car seat for the duration of our trip. At the airport, the WAYB was so light that I was easily able to chase him through the hallways of JFK with it strapped on my back.
Car seats are free to carry on, so we didn’t have to pay extra to keep it with us on our flight. (We stashed it in the overhead bin, but it’s also FAA-approved for use in an airplane seat.) Once we arrived in Paris, I loved that we could take an airport taxi to the train station and didn’t need to pre-book a car service with a car seat. Both the taxi in Paris and our car rental in Provencehad the LATCH system, but should you find yourself in a vehicle that does not have this feature, the car seat can also be installedusing a lap and shoulder belt or a lap-only seat belt.
We’ve now used the WAYB several times since that first trip — while visiting my in-laws in Michigan and on another visit to Paris. It’s also become a great backup car seat to use locally: My 2-year-old niece was able to borrow it when my brother brought her to visit over the summer. This spring, we will be taking it to Thailand, where my husband is working on another months-long project. Knowing that I have a safe and reliable car seat for my now 3½-year-old son to use while we’re there feels like a full-circle moment.
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