Favorite Portable High Chairs for Feeding on the Go

Katie Ferraro (1s):

We have a new au pair living with our family. She's from Brazil and like me, I'm not from Brazil, but she likes babies but she loves giving them back to their parents. At the end of the day this week, baby Ezra and his mom, who's my friend Carissa, they came over to pick up five new foods for the baby to eat and our au pair got to meet baby Ezra. So I'm making all of his 100 First Foods. He's in week nine of starting solid foods. So baby just turned eight months. He's already eaten 40 different foods. He's crawling all over the place. Oh my gosh, God bless the parents of early crawlers. He's getting into stuff. And both though parent and I were like okay, we don't miss having babies around that age. But I absolutely love watching this baby eat you guys.

Katie Ferraro (42s):

We're doing foods number 41 to 45 this week for baby Ezra and he's gonna be trying these five new foods using my five step feeding framework. So on Monday we're doing a new fruit that's Kiwi Tuesday, a new vegetable chayote squash. Wednesday we're doing a new starchy food. It's kind of a weird whole grain called Freekeh that I have. This new like Freekeh fritters recipe ready for him. Thursday is a new protein food. We're doing Turkey So, we can get prepped for Thanksgiving coming up here soon. And then Friday we're doing a new allergenic food. And because it's week nine, it's also his last new allergenic food, right? There's nine big allergenic foods, week nine, he's done 'em all. We're doing sesame this week. And If, you want to follow the same 100 First Foods daily meal plan that we're doing. It's all part of my Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro Program.

Katie Ferraro (1m 24s):

I have the exact sequence of foods to feed as well as my 100 First Foods content library so you can learn how to safely prepare all the foods on my 100 First Foods list. 'cause I want your baby to eat a hundred foods before turning one, two. And you can follow this exact meal plan. You can try all these new foods and these recipes when you sign up at babyledweaning.co/program. Again, that's babyledweaning.co/program If, you want the exact guidance on how to introduce all these solid foods. I'm here to help you and I hope to see you there. The Halloween EZPZ sale is here, you guys. It's the first year my kids don't wanna do a group costume together and I'm dying inside. But I know I'm gonna get to see all of your cute Babies dressed up so that gives me peace.

Katie Ferraro (2m 8s):

Here's the EZPZ sale details. 20% off all of their feeding gear at ezpzfun.com. Now through October 31st If, you use the affiliate discount code BLWBOO. That's right, I get to pick my own codes. I'm very proud of that one. My regular code KATIE10 usually only works for 10% off at EZPZ. So this bump up to 20% is nice. If, you need to stock up on open cups or spoons for your baby or If you have baby shower gifts to buy. The EZPZ first food set is my absolute favorite. It's also a great time to buy ahead of the holidays or if your baby's turning one anytime soon, you need to size up to the mini cup and the mini utensils. You can get all of the easy peasy gear again, 20% off when you use the code BLWBOO.

Katie Ferraro (2m 54s):

BLWBOO at easypeasyfun.com. Happy Halloween! And I love this portable highchair so much. But the thing to drawback for me is that the canvas is not removable. And sometimes I'm like, do the people who design these things, like have they actually ever fed a baby? 'cause clearly there's a cleanup situation involved and I wish I could just take the canvas off of this chair and throw it in the washing machine, but also I only pay $30 for this chair and I get that they're not gonna put like velcro or like an easily removable device in there. So I. Just use like a pig kind of like industrial scrub breast to scrub it down after meals. You can also put it in your sink and scrub it that way would be a nice feature if the canvas was removable, but for the price, it cannot be beat. 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 podcasts.

Katie Ferraro (3m 39s):

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. Do you need to buy a portable? No, you do not need to buy a portable high chair. Now If, you travel or you eat at restaurants or your current high chair is too big for your baby because most high shares are too big for babies, right when they start solid foods. A portable high share could be a wise investment and In. this episode I'm gonna share my two favorite portable high shares, both of which are priced at or around the $30 mark. So yes, it is an investment in the sense that you're spending money, but for a lot of you, the portable high chair can kind of bridge the gap or fill in a gap that you currently are missing when it comes to Feeding your baby safely.

Katie Ferraro (4m 26s):

Now let's get started with portable high chairs and why they're kind of cheap because most of them honestly aren't gonna last you forever. The two chairs that I like the most, I have had them for over seven years at this point and I still use them all the time for work. So I use 'em for all of my own babies. And I bought these portable high chairs out of the need. I'm actually recording this episode out of a need because I used to have this amazing blog all about my favorite portable high chairs and people would ask about it in DMs or email, I would just send them the link to that. Then we ported everything over to our new website, baby led weaning dot co And. we really cleaned up the blog in about five of the seven high shares that I used to recommend I no longer use anymore. So I'm like I need to redo it. And then I haven't done that blog so it's like I'll record a podcast episode.

Katie Ferraro (5m 7s):

So I could send you the link to that If, you ask me this question. But also I think like the portable highchair that have stood the test of time are the ones that are worth getting. Now when you have a baby and you may have more babies or other people will come over to your house with babies and you don't have your big highchair anymore, having the Portable one is super helpful. Now what were the highchair that used to be on the blog? I don't even remember them and I don't wanna say the names of most of them. A couple of them went outta business. One is just ridiculously expensive. So I didn't feel in good faith that I could recommend that. I also tried out a ton of other new ones in the last couple of years, mostly from Amazon, mostly created in China, mostly unsafe and totally not worth buying because some of them were on the more expensive side and weren't even safe.

Katie Ferraro (5m 49s):

There's a brand out there that was trying to make a portable highchair with a a footrest. It doesn't really work because the nature of the portable high chair is that it needs to be compact. So I'm gonna cut to the chase and tell you my two favorite portable high chairs. This is not sponsored. These are chairs that I bought myself and the reason why I bought them, I remember this plain as day Thanksgiving when my quadruplets were babies. They had, they were January babies but they were six weeks premature So. we didn't really start solid foods until they were like in August or November. And then we went on this big road trip to Texas. We do this every Thanksgiving time. My husband's a freak and likes to drive long distances and I just sit in the front and work on my computer and occasionally have a glass of wine to keep him company. But long story short, we make it to Texas.

Katie Ferraro (6m 30s):

The quadruplets are eating food and I get to my mother-in-law's house and she's one of those cool mother-in-laws. It's not, you're not like scared to have babies eat at your house, at her house. Like I know some of you guys like I cannot have the baby-led weaning situation at my mother-in-law's house. Like she's a clean freak. That's not my mother-in-Law. But I had four Babies that were kind of crawling by that point. And like the first meal I got there was like, what was I thinking? I don't have a a high chair. Like I tried to sit them in like a regular chair and they were falling and then I tried to put them on the floor but like it was just a disaster. It's like I need portable high chairs, stat. So I went online to Target and I bought every Portable height chair that they had. Well they only had four at that time and nine quadruple something. I'll try out all four of these. And these are the only two that I kept. The first one is this Summer Infant Pop N' Sit Portable Booster.

Katie Ferraro (7m 12s):

I've been singing the praises of this puppy for at least seven years at this point. It's like a mini camp chair that you fold down. First of all, it's adorable. I used to take the quads to like parades St. Patrick's Day parade in our town. They'd be all dressed up like leprechauns, put them in the camp chairs. They got on the front page of the paper one year. It's so adorable. Just a baby in a tiny camping chair is adorable to begin with. I love the Summer Infant Pop N' Sit Portable Booster because it folds down really small. It comes with its own carrying bag. The tray is super small, it doesn't even fit the EZPZ tiny bowl. I love EZPZ. And they say that the tiny bowl fits all chairs, including portable high chairs. I don't have one portable high chair that the tiny bowl fits on, but that's the trade-off. You're talking about a tiny high chair. It's gonna have a tiny tray. Not all the stuff is gonna fit on it, but if you're using it temporarily, it works.

Katie Ferraro (7m 55s):

Pros about the (Summer Infant) Pop N' Sit Portable Booster: Portable. Like folds down very small because some of these portable high chairs are a joke and I would have like four of each of them. And then my twins were born. So then I had six in highchair in which we were carrying on road trips and this is the one that I would buy six times over and then some. So this Summer Infant one, I do not like the summer infant. Bitter eye Chairs by the way they're, they don't have a lot of the safety features. They do not have adjustable foot rests. I think the portable one is good because the way it works is you affix it, it has straps, you put it on your adult chair. Now you can put it on the floor if your baby's feet are, are reaching flat onto the floor and at a certain height age they will. But then I always back it up against the wall 'cause you don't want your child tipping this little chair over backwards, right?

Katie Ferraro (8m 36s):

So backs go against the wall or affix the chair to an adult chair or bar stool. So. I. Take this one to restaurants all the time with babies, it has straps on the back, straps on the bottom, they fold down very small as well. And then you can take the tray off and you actually just pull the baby right up to the chair. It's like this little booster chair that fits for babies and then their feet are resting flat on the adult chair. This is kind of done, I do this all the time on YouTube to show it to you. It's taking me a lot longer to explain it in a podcast, but you get the gist cons about this highchair, the new version of it has this bubble in the tray that is not necessary. I don't know why they added it, the old version of it. And you can still find it on Amazon and on target. The old version does not have a bubble in the tray. And I prefer that one more because it takes up way less space.

Katie Ferraro (9m 16s):

The bubble in the tray goes underneath the tray and it goes between your baby's legs. And I'm sure it's some sort of a safety feature, but it's just like a perceived safety feature. It's just unnecessary extra material is the way I see it. There is already a three point harness on that chair, so there is a strap on it to keep your baby in and then there's straps up. Fix it to the adult chair.

Katie Ferraro (9m 35s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

Katie Ferraro (10m 31s):

Another con about this chair, the canvas is not removable. I used to get annoyed like who do the people who make these chairs even actually have babies? Because like after you have a spaghetti dinner, like don't you just wanna take the canvas off and throw it in the washing machine? I do. But then I realized like, hey, for a $30 chair, they're not adding Velcro to it or an easy way for you to remove the canvas. So what I do is I just take like a heavy duty cleaning brush and I just use the, I just brush it down or just put it in your sink and just use your scrubby to brush the sauce and stuff off. I mean after a number of years they do get a little gnarly, but I would just take 'em outside and scrub 'em down all at once and you can get them clean. I do prefer the darker colored ones 'cause I've had some staining with the lighter colored ones. But you know, you kind of get what you pay for and I think for 30 bucks this is a great option.

Katie Ferraro (11m 15s):

The other chair that I recommend and love but lesser so than the Summer Infant Pop N' Sit and it is the Chicco Pocket Snack Booster Seat. Chicco, Chicco, however you wanna pronounce it. And I lied to you earlier because I said it was $30 and they've definitely upped the price to $40. I mean I think it's worth it. This one is more plastic-y. The last one was canvas-y. This one is plastic-y. I don't have a ton of plastic stuff in like a feeding environment, but there's not a lot of great portable chairs out there and I don't have a problem with the plastic high chair. I like the plastic 'cause you can hose it down more easily. I don't love that the straps are all white on these 'cause they got stained really easily. But the way this chair works is it kind of folds down. So like the back of the chair folds onto the seat of the chair and then has this little x in the legs and you can pop it to two different levels.

Katie Ferraro (11m 57s):

So as your baby gets a little bit bigger, you can make it a little bit higher. If your baby's smaller, shorter, you can make it one level lower. It has the same kind of design feature as the summer one that I was just mentioning, where it has the straps that go behind the back of the adult chair and underneath the adult chair so you can affix it to your adult chair or your bar stool. This one is a little bit heavier, it's still pretty lightweight. This one has a huge bubble in the tray in between the legs where the baby sits kinda like bumping up on their crotch. It just takes up extra room when you're trying to pack it down. So this one definitely takes a little bit more room and it's a little bit heavier. It's not as ideal to like just throw in your suitcase if you're going on an airplane. But we use these for road trips all the time. I just kind of would stack them.

Katie Ferraro (12m 39s):

If, you had multiple ones. Again, love that you can hose them down. Don't love that they're a little bit on the heavier side and now they're a little bit more on the expensive side. So short and sweet. Those are my two favorite boosters. The Chicco Pocket Snack Booster Seat and the Summer Infant Pop N' Sit Portable Booster. I will put links to both of them in the Shownotes or the description somewhere. I think you can buy them both on Target. You can buy them both on Amazon. I love that they're all color coded. I think my kids are all like assigned to different color So I had to buy like one of every color So. we knew whose was whose. So I like that. Both of these come in a variety of color options and if you're getting ready to travel with your baby, good luck baby-led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (13m 19s):

You're gonna be so happy when you do it when you're traveling 'cause you'll be like, this is why I did it. So that we can travel and go places and go to restaurants and our baby can eat the same foods that we do. I'll put some other in my favorite travel episodes linked in the description as well. 'cause if you're listening to this episode, maybe you're getting ready for a trip and good for you. Don't be scared to feed your baby on the road. And I hope one of those two portable boosters will help you out. The Shownotes will be at blwpodcast.com/379. A special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If, you guys like podcasts that feature food and science. And using your brain, check out some of the options from AirWave Media. We're online at blwpodcast.com. Thank you so much for listening. Happy travels if you're hitting the road and happy feeding.

Katie Ferraro (14m 7s):

Bye. Now If you're interested in doing baby led weaning, but you're not exactly sure, like what does that mean? What does it look like? Where do I start? My online program called Baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro has everything you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods and get them to eat over a hundred foods before they turn one, whether you're terrified of choking or maybe you've started but you feel like you're Feeding your baby the same foods over and over 'cause you don't know what to feed next. Or you're looking for guidance on how to prepare foods safely for your baby's age and stage. My program has exactly what you need. There's five hours of concise self-paced video training. You can knock this thing out during nap time this week. You also get access to my hundred first foods content library so you can see and learn exactly how to prep all of the hundred foods as well as my original a hundred days meal plan.

Katie Ferraro (14m 51s):

I've been refining this program for the last seven years. Just today, a mom wrote to me and told me that the a hundred days meal plan has been a quote game changer for her busy lifestyle. When you join the program, you also get access to over a hundred phase two combination food recipes. So you're gonna try out the trickier textures, push your baby's palate. And what's cool about these recipes is your whole family will enjoy them. So everything you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods is inside of the program. It's created by me, a Registered dietitian who specializes in infant feeding. If you're tired of hunting and pecking around the internet trying to piece this stuff together on your own, I put it all in one convenient place for you. I invite you to check out the baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro program that's at babyledweaning.co. Again, that website is babyledweaning.co and click on program to learn more.