DIY High Chair Hacks for Safer Baby-Led Weaning

Katie Ferraro (42s):

So you don't have to go buy an expensive High Chair. You can actually make some of these adjustments by yourself at home, especially for the flat foot rest. I've seen some amazing examples of how parents get their baby's feet to rest flat, even on a really cheap, not so safe high Chair. Hey there I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian college nutrition professor and mom 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 confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using Baby-Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (1m 23s):

Hey guys, welcome back. Doing a quick little training today on some D I Y High Chair hacks that you can do to make it safer for your baby to eat in their High Chair, a gal on our team was like, what's DIY. I was like, do it yourself. I'm literally not a DIY person at all, but I realized with the High Chair, we do have a couple of hacks that we picked up over the years after feeding so many babies that can make high chairs a little bit safer. So what am I talking about when I say "High chair safety?" Maybe you've heard that it's ideal for your baby's feet to be resting flat on a solid foot plate when you're eating foods. Now you can buy a High Chair that has an adjustable foot plate. The two high chairs that I like and use and recommend both designed by Peter Opsvik. The first one is called the Nomi High Chair, which is a newer one.

Katie Ferraro (2m 5s):

And then the Stokke Tripp Trapp High Chair, but Stokke just bought Nomi. So they're all going to, everything's changing in the High Chair world, but doesn't matter. Those are the two best, safest highchairs because they're incredibly well-designed, they're incredibly durable, they're safe and they have adjustable foot plates. I've done a lot of content on high chairs on the podcast, and a lot about with Nomi in particular, I am an affiliate for them. I do have a special way for you to get that High Chair. If you've been shopping in and it's a little pricey, just send me an email that says Nomi, N O M I, and I'll send you the details on that. Other podcast episodes that are about the High Chair safety stuff, I'll just link in the show notes. There's probably too many to name at this point, but some parents are like, I'm not going to buy an expensive High Chair. I already have High Chair, but it doesn't have foot rest or the foot rest doesn't work.

Katie Ferraro (2m 47s):

So what are some ways that we can make the foot rest safer? All right, look at your High Chair. Is there a foot rest on it? Okay. If there is it's probably, if it's not a Nomi or a Tripp Trapp, there's a couple of newer ones and there's always new high chairs coming out. And I don't try all of them because I already have 15 high chairs in my house. But if you have one that works with the portable foot rest that you like, let me know about it. I love to hear your guys' stories, send me pictures, but I love the pictures that parents send me about their foot rest hacks. Okay. So if the foot rest is lower and your baby's feet don't reach it. Okay. Your baby's knees need to be at a 90 degree angle, right? Their ankles need to be at a 90 degree angle and their waist needs to be at a 90 degree angle. So the foot rest, you can put things on the existing foot rest to bring it up closer to where your baby's feet actually land. So one of my favorite ones that we saw was a mom who did, or dad, I don't know, a yoga block, afixed with bungee courts.

Katie Ferraro (3m 32s):

Okay. That's pretty solid. That was awesome. One dad who was really into trucker knot, a trucker knot. I don't even know what that is, but the mom sent me like, there's like a piece of plywood. And then he like afixed this, like he made this cool DIY High Chair, foot rest with rope and knots and wood. That's cool. like Amazon boxes also work. Okay. Any sort of boxes you got around your house and duct tape, which is how I do most of my DIY with duct tape. At my mom's house, she has the crappiest high chairs. We call it. It's like, literally, I'm the oldest of six kids. I have seven kids. One of my sister's has six. There's basically 20 grandkids. Like we give her our crappy old baby gear and she's ended up like the worst High Chair. Like I want to throw these out and like, don't throw them out because I use them for work, to like show people how to make crappy High Chairs, safe we have phone books.

Katie Ferraro (4m 15s):

You can take an adult chair and turn it around. If you have like a, if you have a High Chair, that's dangling legs. One time a brand sent us, cause they knew I had seven kids they sent seven high chairs. I don't even know how they got my address and the high chairs didn't have foot rests. And I was like, I don't wanna throw these out. So we like worked on all these different ways to make it so the baby's feet could reach. I didn't have seven babies at one time, but I did have quadruplets. And when they were babies and they were all in the High Chair, I was like, I hate this High Chair. Cause it was dangling feet and their feet aren't resting flat. You can take an adult chair and you can turn it around and push it. And then underneath the baby's feet and let the baby's feet rest there, put a little stool on it. We put phone books on it at my mom's house. Cause she saves phone books. I don't even know where you get those anymore from, but the point is you can elevate the existing foot rest. You can use another solid flat panel in order to get your baby's feet resting flat, or you can make your own.

Katie Ferraro (4m 57s):

The other thing you can do is, some parents are just like, I only have a portable High Chair. They're cheaper. It's what I have. It was a hand me down. That's fine. A lot of the portable highchairs, if there's the safe ones, which don't come with foot rests, but the reason why they're safe is because they have straps on the back and straps underneath and you afix the portable High Chair. Like sometimes they look like a little camping chair and there's one from summer infant called the pop and sit booster. I don't love it for early eaters because it doesn't have a foot rest, but you can push your baby's bottom forward. So their knees hit a 90 degree angle and then you can have them on the adult chair. And then you adjust the height of that little portable chair and you strap the chair onto the adult chair. And in that way, the baby's feet are resting flat on the adult chair or the Barstool. And that's perfectly safe as well.

Katie Ferraro (5m 38s):

So the portable high chairs will work DIYing your own foot rest. The goal is to get the feet resting flat. Another thing that's important, as I mentioned, the 90 degree angle at the waist, right? But a lot of highchairs, they're so big that baby's kind of swimming and falling all over the place. So what I normally end up doing with almost all babies, cause right, when you start at six months or six months plus one or two or three weeks, whenever your baby's sitting up on their own. If they're leaning back in their High Chair, that's the exact angle that could potentially choke a baby. And when they're eating, learning how to eat food, so we want them sitting upright. Okay. So we never, there's actually a very expensive High Chair. And I bought it for my oldest, that reclines its design feature was that it lays back. That's so silly. Okay. Having a high chair that reclines, we'd never want a baby eating food in a reclined position;

Katie Ferraro (6m 20s):

that's why you never feed your baby in the stroller, you never feed your baby in the car seat. Okay? Because those are the positions at such an angle. You could literally choke a baby. We want your baby sitting with their back flat. So what I end up doing is just rolling up a dish towel or rolling up a receiving blanket. Or I have these like dryer mats. Like I have so many dishes at my house that like one extra large drain board's not enough. I've always got like other mats for the dishes to go on. And the other day I was like, Hey, this makes a perfect rolled up soft back support for the babies who come over to eat. So we want the babies back to be at a 90 degree angle. You might have to prop them up a little bit in your existing High Chair. That's totally fine to do that. They should be sitting on their own. Okay. But if in the High Chair, they're starting to lean back, do whatever you got to do, roll up, whatever you gotta roll up, to stick it behind the baby's back.

Katie Ferraro (7m 4s):

I get a lot of questions about High Chair cushions and are they developmentally appropriate? And they're not developmentally inappropriate. They're just silly. A lot of High Chair cushions are super expensive. They're just an add on and upsell for the High Chair company. And they already took all your money for the High Chair. And now they want more for the cushion. It's one more thing to get dirty. It's one more thing they have to wash. The Nomi company, gifted me a cushion just so we could try it out with this last baby I was working with and when, I've never bought their cushion before, but they sent me one. It was really thin. It looks cute. So if you're into the aesthetic, it looks good. I mean, I like the Nomi cause it's the best looking High Chair too, but the cushion didn't do anything. It didn't help the baby. It didn't provide very much support. Just one more thing to get dirty. I still use the roll up dish towel and that's a nice cheap DIY hack. Some other High Chair hacks: splash mat underneath the High Chair, obvi.

Katie Ferraro (7m 48s):

Like every time I see a baby that I actually know eating without a splash mat, I immediately go online and buy the mom a splash mat. A splash mat is a clean piece of fabric that you put underneath your baby's High Chair so that when the food drops as it will inevitably on the floor, you can pick it up off of the clean splash mat and recycle it back up onto the baby's mat or the bowl. The splash mats that I like from a company called Bapron baby. They also make the baby-led weaning bibs that I like. Bapron is a cross between a it's like a Pinafore style bib, a cross between an apron and a bib, they're fabulous for baby-Led Weaning. The founder, Chelsea's been on the podcast. I've mentioned Bapron a million times on the podcast, but if you're new, I love the Bapron baby brand. Their splash mats are the best because they pack it down really super small.

Katie Ferraro (8m 28s):

I have tried every splash Mat under the sun and every DIY thing and the Bapron baby splash mat, I probably washed it hundreds of times. It looks as good and performs as good as it did the day it was new. So they're like around $30. So they're definitely on the pricier side, but I think it's totally worth it because it really helps to minimize the mess. Especially when you start traveling with your baby, it really helps. You can just like fold it up, put it right back in your diaper bag. It folds down really small. I have an affiliate discount code for Bapron: code is KATIE10 for 10% off. They always have these really cool surprise sales. You can get the splash mats in any color or any print. They just kind of surprise you with it. But I think those are good to have on hand as well. And then culturally, I just want to mention that some families don't eat out of a High Chair. Some families eat on the floor and people always asking questions about taking the baby as a chair and feeding her on the lap and is that safe or not safe?

Katie Ferraro (9m 14s):

And if your family eats on the floor and your baby's going to sit on your lap, the only thing that I ask is make sure that your baby's position so that you can observe them, right? We never baby to be facing out or away from us where we can't see if the baby chokes, cause if a baby chokes, it's going to be silent, right? And so we want to be able to observe the baby, but in most families, they eat around a table in a chair and a high chair is the safest situation for your baby. So get those backs flat, get those feet flat on the footrest, get your splash mat under there. And if you're looking for portable highchairs I actually have a whole article that I wrote about my favorite portable highchairs, I reviewed like as many of them of them as I could find. Cause it's a lot cheaper to buy affordable highchairs than to buy all the other high chairs to review. But there's some really good ones out there.

Katie Ferraro (9m 55s):

And I'll share that link in the show notes page for this episode, if you go to BLWpodcast.com/261, I'll link up some of my favorite highchairs, my article to my favorite portable high chairs. And don't forget, you can send me an email, if you want, with the word NOMI. If you want me to send you that tip on how you can get into that High Chair at a price I think you're really gonna like. All right guys, see you next time. Take care. Bye now.