Travel High Chairs and Why We Don’t Use One

Relaxing after dinner in her UppaBaby GLite which is doing its usual double duty as a travel highchair.

You love to travel with your baby and you’re looking for a travel high chair.  That’s where we were and that’s how we chose the "My Little Seat".  It’s tiny, it’s light weight, it’s cheap and it’s washable.  The concept is FABULOUS.  It folds up into it’s own pocket, it takes up almost no room and can easily fit into your diaper bag so it goes everywhere with you, and is always ready when you need it.  Sounds great, right?  Sold?  We were.  Sadly, we hate it. 

We’ve found it works on a very limited number of chairs, which means we can never count on it.  Much worse is that we’ve attached it to chairs and thought it was secure only to find our daughter suddenly lurching sideways and the whole back slipped right off the chair!  Thankfully we were right there and she didn’t fall, but that was the end of that experiment! 

In restaurants we have frequently just left her in the stroller, and at people’s homes we’ve just had her sit on our laps.  It’s not ideal, but trying to get a "MeToo" or a similar clamp-on high chair set up frankly scares us.  We know that they clearly must be safe since other people have no problems using them, but we still can’t help but worry. 

Plus, we feel that many people are uncomfortable about having them attached to their tables for fear of damaging them.  (Quite frankly, we wouldn’t want to see what happens when you clamp one on to our dining room table and then have a little one squirm around in it).  Since the stroller usually works in a restaurant, and it’s mostly in someone’s home we’d be using one to begin with, that doesn’t leave it seeming very useful. 

Ok, so if she’s just on our laps or in an umbrella stroller, then there’s no tray and we’re stuck feeding her, right?  To solve the self feeding problem we’ve just stuck the food in the pocket of our daughter’s bib!  This also works great as a snack tray since neither our UppaBaby Vista nor our light weight travel stroller the UppaBaby GLite have one. 

That all said, we have considered getting a Phil & Ted’s Wriggle Wrapper now that baby #2 will be joining us any day now.  We will definitely update this review if we do get one and let you know how it goes.  How about you?  Do you have a favorite travel high chair?  Do you have baby/toddler feeding tricks that help you travel with your little one?  Please share!