[This post contains images and information about our iCandy Peach. We were gifted an iCandy Peach in exchange for an interview on the IC Life Blog (yet to be released) however we have not been paid to write about the brand, and we were not asked to feature our iCandy Peach on Meet the Wildes.]
Slowly, slowly, we are beginning to find our feet as a family of seven.
She came home from the hospital in a stretchy wrap, cuddled tight against her mother’s beating heart. And I – shaken and stunned, stitched-up, heart full to bursting with shock and with love – shuffled along beside them with wide eyes and trickles of blood snaking down my legs. And I took the bus home like that. Two buses, actually. And then a little walk from the bus stop to our home where I stood – wobbled, really – because I couldn’t sit down, and introduced my mother to grandchild number five.
And then I went to bed, and didn’t leave the house again for a full two weeks, not because I wasn’t craving fresh air but because after those intravenous painkillers wore off, I could barely move.
My boss telephoned, to check how we were. And tried (bless him) to discreetly suss out the damage, quite possibly for fear that I might never make it back to the office. “But you’re not paralysed, are you..? You can still move your legs?” I could still move my legs. But the trouble was, I really didn’t want to. Everything hurt. And for a little while, there was this dark shadow of fear in my mind that I would never be quite the same again.
It took me a while to find confidence in my body again; to feel that I inhabited it rather than that it inhabited me. But one day I stepped out onto my front doorstep and where there was golden light before my confinement instead the world was a velvety grey, the russet leaves were nowhere to be found and instead the trees stood bare and stark. And I felt so grateful, and so free. I have laughed again and danced silly dances with the children again and played that ridiculous game where I am a horse for them to ride, something wild for them to tame, and they shriek with delight and hang off of my ears as I try to shake myself loose. And I have stood and rocked my baby, and sung her to sleep. And sometimes at weekends we go out altogether as a family, with the children holding hands like a paperchain and baby Vita dreaming sweet dreams in the pram.
My dreams have come to fruition. I couldn’t be happier that we decided to add this darling baby to our family.
I wanted to share these images, as they were from our first proper little ‘adventure’ as a family of seven. They were taken for an interview that we did for the IC Life Blog and feature the pram that was kindly gifted to us in exchange for an interview on their blog. A feature on my own blog was not part of the agreement, but I wanted to share the pictures nonetheless because they are so typically us, and I wanted to keep them on the blog for posterity. We have reached this glorious point with the ‘big’ four now where the boys can keep up on foot easily for a whole day and the girls can mostly manage to come out with us without needing a rest in the pram, though they do get a little tired and often end up requesting (and then demanding) cuddles. For that reason, if we’re not taking the pram with the intention of popping the girlies in it then we try to limit our adventures to destinations with superb public transport where we can easily hail a taxi when their little legs start to tire.
It transpires that it is harder than one might think to track down a taxi on the late morning of New Year’s Day.
And, much to the disappointment of the children who had been promised cake and the parents who were desperately trying to find a bakery, almost nowhere is open.
But we had an awful lot of fun exploring Shoreditch and Brick Lane with our fantastic five and the children were generous enough to let me document our adventure with only one epic meltdown from little Embla (Olympia accidentally bumped into her whilst being tickled by Balthazar!).
Our Review of the iCandy Peach
As previously mentioned, we were kindly gifted an iCandy Peach Double in exchange for an interview on the IC Life Blog and some social shares on instagram. We were not asked to review the iCandy Peach on our blog; I’m sharing a review in case anyone is on the fence about purchasing this pram and because I wanted an excuse to show off our photos..! We were sent the Double, though you can see it in ‘single’ mode here as the girls came into London with us on foot.
How much does it cost: To buy the iCandy Peach in single mode, expect to pay £999. The Double costs £1,245.
What’s in the box: In single mode, when you purchase the iCandy Peach you can expect to receive the Chassis, seat unit, carrycot fabric, bumper bar, car seat adaptors, elevators and rain cover. When you purchase the iCandy Peach Double, you purchase the chassis, two seat units, carrycot fabric, apron, mattress, bumpers bars, converter base, car seat adaptors, elevators and two rain covers.
What we thought: Between my partner, Kirsty’s, obsession with trialling every double pram on the market and writing the Mumsnet Double Buggies Reviews, I think it’s safe to say that we have tested almost every double perambulator on the market. We already knew that we loved the iCandy Peach as we had named it Mumsnet’s best double buggy overall for 2018, so when iCandy emailed us to offer one of our very own we couldn’t say Yes! quickly enough. It arrived a few months before Baby Vita did, and although I was desperately eager to open the box and examine the contents, Kirsty had some sort of weird superstition and forbade me from doing so until we had an actual baby to put in the pram. She assured me that it wouldn’t be long until October and then we could play with it to our heart’s content.
Naturally, the baby was then two weeks late, and then her delivery rendered me unable to walk for weeks and then I was back at work, so in actual fact it was closer to the end of December when we finally managed to give this beautiful piece of equipment our full attention.
When we last tried the iCandy Peach Double it was from the perspective of parents to twins who were on the cusp of toddlerhood and you can read that review over on Mumsnet. At the moment, we are mostly using our iCandy Peach as a single pram, and I will focus in this review on our perception of this pram as a method of transportation for the one baby.
The iCandy Peach is suitable from birth when the infant rides in the carrycot provided. This carrycot is suitable from newborn up to about six months old and is approved for overnight sleeping, meaning that we feel confident in allowing her to ride in it for so long as she is comfortable. Vita is not an enormous fan of sleeping anywhere but in a pair of arms or in the sling, so when she did doze off in her carrycot whilst out and about it was really useful not to have to clock watch and to feel confident in leaving her there to rest. As we typically have four preschoolers in tow whenever we leave the house, our attention is rarely completely focused on the baby (most of our focus, if I am entirely honest, usually centres around maintaining a death-grip on Olympia’s hand to prevent her from getting squashed beneath a car!), so it’s useful from a parent-to-multiple-children perspective to be able to pop the baby down in her carrycot and not have to think too hard about her!
There are so many convenient little features on the iCandy Peach that really demonstrate the attention to detail devoted to this pram’s design, such as the way that this pram evolves with a family from first newborn baby (carrycot mode) all the way up to the addition of a new child to the family with the simple purchase of the conversion kit. The team behind iCandy clearly expect this pram to last, and they expect parents to want to hang on to it – and no wonder. It would genuinely be hard to improve upon this pram. We were impressed that the seat can be turned in order to allow for baby to ride parent-facing or looking out at the world, and in the Double mode there is an impressive number of different configurations for the seating of multiple children. And as there is quite a height difference between Kirsty and I, we were impressed by how easily the handle can be adjusted (there are four different options) to ensure maximum comfort when pushing the children out and about. It really is such a light and maneuverable pram and I think that is what sets it apart in the biggest way from the budget options – there are lots of lovely little nice-to-haves in this pram, but to be able to easily push the children out and about all day without tiring, to be able to turn quickly and easily in the tightest of spaces, that really is worth paying for as you’ll benefit from that flexibility so often.
Downsides? It doesn’t fold up as one unit (the seats have to be removed) and, of course, it really is an expensive piece of kit. But if you can afford the purchase, and particularly if you plan to use the pram for a couple of years and hope for it to grow with your family, absolutely worth the investment. If you can’t justify the cost of the iCandy Peach, consider the Britax B-Ready.
