We dithered for weeks over which pushchair to buy before Angel arrived. I knew I might not use it very much at first (I have several devoted babywearing friends who'd told me "I didn't use the pram for the first 6 weeks/3 months/6 months," and I was lucky enough to be lent a Moby stretchy wrap (and shown how to tie it...very important skill) which was invaluable for the first months). However, I was convinced we should have a pushchair/pram available to us for a range of reasons - for outings where it was necessary to have somewhere we could safely put the baby down, and because I'd been told pushing the baby along is a great way to help the baby sleep, among others. Once I started my research, though, I very quickly got confused - there's so many to choose from, there were so many different requirements to consider, and a lot of the prices are just through the roof (especially if you do your research in John Lewis).
We live in a 2nd floor flat with no lift, so it was essential that we have something light(ish) that I could carry up to the flat on my own. (We started negotiating to buy this flat when I was about 6 weeks pregnant, so you could say we should have known better, but we were buying through Shared Ownership which means choice was relatively limited, and everything else about our flat is perfect...if anyone is interested in shared ownership we highly recommend it and you can look at flats here https://www.sharetobuy.com/). We don't have a car so we DIDN'T need a "travel system" with car seat fitting etc. We take a lot of public transport, so we needed something manouvre-ble and easy to fold. We wanted something suitable from birth that would also last a long time (into toddler years). And then, I would really like something I could run with. That was the confounding factor as special running buggies tend to have big air-filled tyres, take up a lot of space and not fold up small, thus conflicting with our other requirements.
Oh, and yet another thing - as a tall woman I was keen to find a buggy with extendable handles so I don't have to hunch over. Not that I was being fussy or anything...
So what with all of these conflicting requirements, we ended up delaying choosing a buggy until I was about 38 weeks pregnant and it started to feel more urgent (although admittedly, we did and still do use the slings so much that actually we didn't need a pram until a good few weeks in). When I started looking with more intent, I was quite quickly directed to the Maclaren Techno XLR due to my extendable-handles requirement. Additionally, I was predisposed to want a Maclaren because friends with toddlers had told me it was a good pushchair for older babies...plus it was LIGHT: 7.5 kilos, when we already knew that it was difficult to find anything under 10. It was also substantially cheaper than a lot of other prams. We got the carrycot add-on to ensure it was comfortable for a new born baby, although technically you can take a newborn in it without one...but they'd be outward, "world" facing which I think we'd have felt edgy about. We used the carrycot until about 4.5 months, and she loves being outward facing and sitting up a bit more now.
So that was how we CHOSE the Maclaren, but how did we start RUNNING with it? The discovery came about, like most great discoveries, through exigency...I was hotfooting it to a buggy fitness class sometime in March, when I realised I was going to be really late. I broke into a run and swiftly realised that it really wasn't as uncomfortable as I'd have assumed. From there it was a small step to venturing out for an official run with the buggy...and a feeling of freedom! It's hard enough to motivate yourself to get out running at the best of times, and when you have to co-ordinate with your partner to get home to take the baby and ensure that she's not going to get hungry while you're out...it raises additional barriers. Instead, if you can just take off with the buggy, a run becomes a lovely way to break up a maternity leave day.
Given that my pace is fairly slow (7-8 km/hour as measured by the Runkeeper app) and that the paths are fairly smooth (this is urban running, but then South London councils are not always known for their excellent road maintenance) running with the Maclaren works absolutely fine. Additionally, it has a couple of the features that my sister-in-law (who knows a huge amount about everything to do with babies) told me are required in a running buggy: not the big, air-filled tyres, but it has a wrist strap for safety (so pram and baby can't entirely escape from me on a downhill) and you can lock the front wheels so they don't steer all over the place. The main problem so far is that one's arms get rather cramped due to having to keep them in one position on the handle...so we tend to do quite a lot of one-armed pushing to give the other one a bit of a break.
I'm now very comfortable running with my buggy, and Angel is very comfortable dozing in it while I do so. The main challenge is getting it, along with a 7+ kilo baby, up and down the stairs before and after.
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