We will be traveling soon for a whole month in Japan with our five and a half months old daughter and we are considering buying an umbrella stroller for the trip. We have a Bugaboo Buffalo at home and we are still considering if it's best to just travel with it instead, but taking into account its bulkiness, weight and the whole lot of horrible stories of airlines destroying strollers, I am more and more doubtful.
There are a bunch of questions that still plague me about using an umbrella stroller (albeit a mid/high range price one):
• The best strollers I am seeing do not recline completely horizontal (though they recline a bit) therefore in the specifications they say minimum age is 6 months. Do you think is OK to use them with a 5 1/2 months old? Anyone have a similar experience? Or could it be problematic for the muscle development of the child?
• We will be traveling for a whole month, so is expected that our daughter will spend a fair amount of time on the umbrella stroller, even combining it with a carrier (at least she will use it for couple of hours every day). Is this type of stroller OK for this amount of use? I wouldn't do it with a cheap umbrella stroller, but hopefully a better one would be almost as comfortable and good for the baby as our regular day to day stroller.
Thanks in advance!