Why Your Baby’s High Chair Needs a Footrest

Katie Ferraro (0s):

And all of these moms who were like, oh, but I just got this high chair go to for my baby shower. I know it was super expensive. It doesn't have a foot rest. You're telling me I can't use it. No hang tight. There are some DIY highchair hacks you can do, but your baby's highchair does need to have a foot rest in order for you to safely start solid foods or do baby led weaning. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian, college nutrition professor, and mama of seven specializing in Baby-Led Weaning. Here on the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using Baby-Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (50s):

Hey guys, welcome back to the Baby-Led Weaning made easy podcast. Today is one of my favorite topics. It's a contentious one. Why your baby's high chair needs a foot rest? I don't know what it is about foot rests, but they get people fired up. I think a lot of it has to do with many of us get a high chair maybe for our baby shower or a hand-me-down. And then we learn that the safest way to feed our babies is when their feet are resting flat on a foot rest except said, high chair either doesn't have a foot rest or the baby can't reach it or that legs are sticking out or you can't adjust it. I'm going to help you get through that. I'm going to talk to you today about the importance of having a foot rest, and then once that's, you know, kind of beaten into your head, but you probably already know it if you've been learning about Baby-Led Weaning or how to get a safe start to solid foods.

Katie Ferraro (1m 40s):

But for many of you, maybe the, this concept is new and you're like, what? Why does it matter where my baby's feet are if I'm feeding my baby in their mouth, but it's actually all connected. So we're going to talk about how to find a safe seat for your baby to eat. I'll share with you guys. Some of my favorite chairs that I use both in every day, some ideas for portable use, and then what you can do. If your high chair doesn't have a foot rest, cause it's a problem with some high chairs that are out there. My goal here as always is to make it easy for you to figure out how to raise a self feeding baby using Baby-Led Weaning. But our focus is always on safety. So again, today we're covering why your baby's highchair does need a foot rest.

Katie Ferraro (2m 25s):

As always. I like to start each episode with a tip of the day. You're at least leaving with a piece of information today's tip of the day is do not feed your baby if you see dangling feet, all right, your baby's feet need to be flat on the foot. Rest a solid surface. We like to see your baby sitting up relatively straight, right? Being able to sit relatively unassisted is one of the signs of readiness to feed. They're not going to be ramrod straight at a 90 degree angle, but it's ideal that their back is that a 90 degree angle with the top of the legs. It's nice to see the knees at a 90 degree angle and then the ankles at a 90 degree angle as angle, rather ankles at an angle while your baby's feet are resting flat on that foot rest.

Katie Ferraro (3m 12s):

And I know a lot of you guys have got those high chairs out there that, that don't fit the bill, right? Not touching the foot rest or there's no foot rest or the legs are sticking straight out. Or if you've got those dangling legs and hang tight because I have some DIY highchair hacks for you, and we're gonna walk through some adjustments that you can make to almost any existing high chair to make it safer. And I'll tell you how to do that. Now, first, I want to tell you guys about a little story. This is a personal story. I try to talk about your babies as much as possible, but sometimes I talk about my own. I have seven children. My second baby was really babies quadruplets. And so when we went to start solid foods, I knew nothing about Baby-Led Weaning, other than I wanted to try it because I had had such a terrible time spoon feeding my older daughter.

Katie Ferraro (3m 58s):

So with the quadruplets, I looked into different options. And for the space that we had, I decided to go with a feeding table. So if you guys have ever seen like a feeding table that they might use at daycare, it's like a flat table. In my case, it had four buckets in it. It literally had bucket seats in it and you plop the babies in it. It had a strap which we didn't use early on cause they couldn't climb out. And we fed the babies on the table. I made all sorts of mistakes when I started with Baby-Led Weaning, which I now know considering it's my full-time job, teaching other families how to do it, but it's, there was a steep learning curve and I'm not ashamed to admit I made mistakes early on. And I love to share the mistakes that I made because we're all learning.

Katie Ferraro (4m 38s):

It helps to learn from each other's mistakes. But looking back at the photos of feeding the quads in the quad table, I cringe because I know underneath that cute table, which people love. They're like, oh my God, that table is so cute. They loved pictures of it because it's a cool visual of four babies feeding themselves. But I knew underneath that table, their legs were dangling. And then ultimately that's not the safest way to feed the babies and that using a table like that is not the safest setup. And there were some things I could have done to make adjustments, to give them a flat space for their feet to rest. People always ask me, have any of your babies ever choked? I've never had a choking incident with my babies.

Katie Ferraro (5m 18s):

I've never had to do CPR on my babies. I do routinely take CPR courses in order to stay up to speed with that skillset. But I feel like I got lucky because as cute as those dangling feet are, they're also dangerous. So let's talk a little bit about why a baby needs to have a flat foot rest. And then I'll tell you what I would have done differently to make my situation for feeding those babies a little safer. And then when I had, I had twins after my quadruplets and people were always like, why didn't you just get a twin feeding table and actually had one. I just didn't use it anymore. Because by that point I'd been working in Baby-Led Weaning for a number of years and realized, oh my gosh, the dangling feet are no go zone.

Katie Ferraro (5m 60s):

And we switched to a safer highchair and I'm going to share my, the two hikers that I use routinely with you guys today as well. So that the bottom line for the foot rest, which I know the bottom part of the baby. And you're not always thinking about it when you're starting solids. We're so fixated on what goes in the mouth, but please keep in mind that your baby having a flat foot rest helps stabilize the babies core which in turn can facilitate a safe swallow. Okay. So there are chairs out there that do have a foot rest. And if you haven't purchased your chair yet, I do suggest looking at chairs that have an adjustable foot rest. Now some of you are doing a lot of research and you'll say, what about this chair?

Katie Ferraro (6m 40s):

And that chair I've worked with lots and lots of chairs, but I just mentioned the two chairs that I personally have used with my own seven children and that I continue to use in my baby feeding practice. So the two high chairs that I recommend because of this adjustable foot rest, as well as a number of other factors, which I'll mention briefly are the Stokke Tripp Trapp chair and the Nomi highchair. They're both designed by the same individual. The Stokke is much older. It was designed in 1972. It's a very iconic highchair, beautiful, beautiful Scandinavian design, incredibly durable. I mean, we beat the heck out of these chairs, seven of them around the table every day and they still stand up.

Katie Ferraro (7m 24s):

So they don't take up a lot of room, which I love. And I like a nice looking chair cause I spend a lot of time in my kitchen. So I kind of want the chairs to look nice. And I don't want huge contraptions that take up so much room because they have so many kids at once feeding them at once. That is, I didn't have them all at once it's home, but when it comes to the highchair, one of the things I like about both the Stokke Tripp Trapp and the Nomi high chair is that they have an adjustable footrest. Now some differences, the Stokke the foot rest does require tools. So it's a little bit of an undertaking when you go to adjust the baby's foot rest. Obviously you're not doing that every day, but the Nomi has a knob on it that you can actually adjust the foot rest up and down without tools.

Katie Ferraro (8m 4s):

And I think that that's definitely an advantage from a price point. Both of these chairs are definitely on the pricier side. I completely admit and acknowledge that. However, I do think it is an important investment considering that you're going to be feeding your baby out of this chair minimum three times a day in a few short months for years on end. So the good thing about this, both of these chairs is that they can hold your baby safely from six months of age, but they grow with your baby. So these chairs convert actually, once you remove the baby contraptions to be a toddler chair and then a child chair and the child can even sit in it up until adolescence. So you're not going to have to be buying different chairs.

Katie Ferraro (8m 45s):

So even though yes, it's an expensive cost upfront. I would also argue that for many of you guys, the chairs actually cheaper than some of those fancy strollers that you all got, that you don't even use times a day anymore. So I would consider the chair and a safe space for your baby to eat definitely an investment. But I think it's something worth investing in because it's about nourishing your baby safely from their first bites. Both of those chairs have like a plastic guard that kind of goes around the baby's waist to hold them in. And we actually do that early on just that they can be supported and not fall out of the chair. So what if your chair doesn't have a foot rest?

Katie Ferraro (9m 25s):

Okay, I get lots of questions. Like the parents are like literally angry that they got a chair. Wait, I got this chair and it was really expensive. They would say it was really expensive and it's not safe. Why is it allowed to be sold? A lot of the states safety testing regarding highchairs is about making sure that they don't tip over. So parents will say, do you have a highchair recommendation for a bar height or counter height table that I have in my house? And I say, no, because high chairs aren't approved for those Heights because of the potential for the baby to tip over. So again, a lot of the safety testing is with regard to tipping. We'd certainly don't want your baby to tip over, but we'd like for there to be a foot rest, although many of them out there don't have that. So if you already have a high chair, many of you let's take, for example, the Ikea antelope chair, incredibly affordable chair, that lots of families have.

Katie Ferraro (10m 12s):

It's like all things ikea ubiquitous, but that chair is notoriously unsafe for a number of reasons. One of them, the most obvious being that it doesn't have a foot rest. So there's actually a really innovative company out there. It's a husband and wife team who created kind of like an aftermarket footrest for the antelope highchair. The company is called yeah baby goods you guys are on Instagram. They're at yeah baby goods. I done a number of collaborations with them. I think they're incredibly dedicated to improving the safety as well as the aesthetic of that high chair. Kind of a cute way to spruce up the high chair and to make it safer using the yeah baby goods foot rest. So that's one thing you can do, but there's a lot of other DIY hacks that you can do.

Katie Ferraro (10m 53s):

And if you start kind of studying Baby-Led Weaning or following people who are doing this approach, some of them are very innovative about how they will adjust their highchair. So a couple of things you can do, first of all, depending upon what chair you have, you might be able to pull another like dining room chair. So we have wooden dining room chairs. If I take the cushion off it as a flat hard surface, that is about the right length or height, rather for the baby's feet to rest on. If I pull it underneath the chairs, sometimes you can adjust the chair to be higher up, meaning the legs are more narrow. If you have like a, an X shape in some of the older high chairs, you can make the X more narrow, put the baby, you're basically raising them up, but then it's the exact right height where their feet can rest on the adult chair that you've pulled facing them the other way.

Katie Ferraro (11m 43s):

Then you can also, if you're playing with the height, you can add things onto the chair or even onto the existing foot rest, depending upon what the design is. So you see sometimes people doing with like Amazon boxes, my moms house, we do phone books and it's like the only good use of phone books I can think of at this point. But you can make some adjustments also for some babies when their legs are sticking straight out, you can kind of scoot their little bottom forward and you might have to prop them with rolled up dish towels or receiving blankets, but you can kind of maneuver them a little bit, especially early on when your baby is so small. Yes, they should be sitting relatively unassisted, but they may might need a little assistance. Cause some of them are like swimming in these bigger chairs. So you can make adjustments as you see fit to ensure that your baby is having a flat hard surface where their feet are resting.

Katie Ferraro (12m 32s):

Even from their very first bites, we never want to recline the baby. It's why we never feed the baby in a car seat or in a stroller because of that reclining angle is ripe for choking a baby, not to mention, you've got the dangling feet going all over the place and it's not a stable eating environment. So quick win for you guys. Before we head out, you can put your baby in a high chair, even before you start solid foods. It's a good idea to get your baby in. The chairs are starting to set up on their own, get them comfortable sitting at the table with you. You might have to start, you know, maybe you're starting to adjust your schedule a little bit, adjusting milk and nap schedules. So your baby can use get used rather to sitting at the table with your family during meal times.

Katie Ferraro (13m 13s):

So don't get mad. If the chair that you have is not ideal, you can make adjustments, you can get your baby ready ahead of time. If you want to offer your baby, you know, you want them to participate in meal time, do something like offering your baby just an empty baby spoon to gnaw on or play with. Or if you're going to be doing open cup training in an attempt to kind of bypass the sippy cup stage, which we'll talk about more on this podcast as well. You can give your baby an open cup. You can do things ahead of time to get your baby comfortable sitting in the chair and sitting at the table. But it is important that when you start solid foods, whatever feeding chair, you're sitting your baby in that, that chair, you want to make sure that it does have a foot rest so that your baby's feet can rest flat.

Katie Ferraro (14m 2s):

And I'm going to go ahead and link up the two chairs that I talked about, the Stokke Tripp Trapp and the Nomi highchair, we've always say, well, what would you pick if you were starting over again? I like both of those chairs for different reasons, but if cost is a consideration, I certainly recommend the Stoker trip trap because the chair has been around since 1972. There's a lot of them in circulation. You can almost always find it on a used good or an upcycle site, or to be honest, I got most of mine on Craigslist for 80 or $90, which is a significant price reduction compared to what they are new. Having said that you want to make sure that you do purchase the baby guard. The Stokke Tripp Trapp now comes standard with a baby guard if you're buying the highchair.

Katie Ferraro (14m 44s):

But if you're buying an older one, you might have to buy that little plastic contraption and the Nomi high chair, it's newer. So there's not as many in circulation. So you're not as likely to get a used one, which is kind of a bummer, but it has a totally different kind of more modern aesthetic. And I use that chair as well for I've used it for my last two babies when they were doing Baby led weaning, but I also use it because it's so lightweight. It travels really well. So I take it with me when I go to other houses so quick to adjust, which I love as well. So I'll link up those two chairs in the show notes, as well as the yeah baby goods foot rest to fix the antelope high chair from Ikea. And I'll also share with you guys a couple of portable highchairs that I liked that I'm going to put us put links to in the show notes.

Katie Ferraro (15m 30s):

So if you go to BLWpodcast.com/7, that's where you'll find all of the links from this particular episode. So if you're enjoying the Baby-Led Weaning tips, please go ahead and subscribe to my podcast. And if you have a moment, I would love. If you could send me a review, tell me what you're liking about it. Ideas for different episodes. I'm really excited about this new platform to offer you guys all of this information. And if you haven't taken my online workshop, I teach weekly online workshops called Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners. This is all about how you can get your baby to try 100 foods before turning one without you having to spoon feed purees or buy pouches.

Katie Ferraro (16m 12s):

So if you're interested in the idea of starting solids, but you're like, hang on, I need more info about getting over my fear of gagging or introducing the allergenic foods or what was she saying about the foot rest on the high chair again, come check out my workshop, Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners. I also give everyone on that workshop, a copy of my 100 First Foods list. So after he gets your foot rest things sorted out, you'll know what foods to feed your baby. You can sign up for that workshop on the show notes page for this episode, that's BLWpodcast.com/7. Thanks for listening. Bye!