Nursing On The Go: How I Breastfed My Baby At Walt Disney World

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While packing for our recent trip to Walt Disney World, I decided not to bring a breast pump, bottles, storage bags, cleaning supplies, or a cooler. I fully committed to nursing our 5-month-old, Parks, on the go for our entire trip.

Reasons Why

1. It saved us a lot of space in our luggage and in our daypack.
2. It saved us a lot of time! In my experience, pumping takes longer because not only would I have to do that every time we fed him at the park, we’d have to heat up his milk, clean the bottles, etc. 
3. We didn’t want feeding Parks to have to be a team effort. If I had to pump several times each day, Clark would probably end up feeding him at the same time. It just didn’t make sense for us.

For those reasons and more that I won’t get into, I decided to set any and all insecurities aside and nurse Parks on the go. That means that we got built-in breaks every few hours. Win. It also meant that we never really knew where we’d be or if there would be a private place for us to sit. Sometimes there was, and sometimes there wasn’t. If there wasn’t, we didn’t have to go far to find one.

Truly, I never felt uncomfortable nursing at Disney World. Nobody seemed to notice and if they did, they didn’t care. I didn’t notice any strange looks or feel like I should be somewhere more private. If you are self conscious, there are a lot of places at each park to duck into for some privacy.

Nursing On The Go

For nursing on the go, I have three options:

• Muscle him up (he’s 20+ pounds) and hope my arms don’t give out. 
• Use my Boppy Anywhere Nursing Pillow.
• Use my TushBaby “hip carrier”

For this trip, I decided to bring our TushBaby because it’s more versatile and easy to strap to his stroller when I’m not using it. 

I was very happy with how easy it was to hold P into position, resting him on the TushBaby for support. It did take some practice to find the perfect position for his size. In picture 1 above, we were still working it out. By the time picture 2 was taken, I felt like a pro. In addition to nursing, we found that this fanny pack/boppy pillow combo came in very handy while strolling around each park.

Pros:

• I like that the TushBaby folds down pretty small, so it was easy to pack and didn’t take up a lot of space. 
• If I changed my mind about packing it, it would’ve been useful in the airport as another way to carry Parks around.
• It definitely saved my arms and back while nursing. 
• It’s versatile. I carried him facing inward and outward. It was nice to have when we wanted to keep him awake and keep him out of his stroller where he always falls asleep. He also sat on it while we were on a few rides (i.e. Jungle Cruise), which was nice because it meant that I didn’t have to take it on and off.
• Storage! This thing has several pockets, five to be exact. One of the pockets was the perfect fit for my cell phone, and was easy to access even when I was holding Parks. 
• When holding him facing outward, he was able to check out his surroundings and fold forward to grab his feet, which is his favorite thing to do these days. It was also nice that he could face me when I wanted to hold him close.
• It was easy to strap onto the stroller when we weren’t using it and it never got in the way. 

Cons: 

• Parks is a big baby. He was 20 lbs at his 4-month checkup one month ago. While this definitely saved my arms and back while I was nursing him, it took some practice to find the perfect position for him since the “seat” of the TushBaby is small compared to this growing boy.
• It was hard to access the biggest pocket while Parks was sitting on the seat because the large pocket is built into it. It’s not impossible, just challenging. I ended up not needing to use that pocket because the smaller pocket fit my cell phone and I.D., which were the only things I needed to carry around on me anyway. I stored everything else in our stroller bags. My I.D. has fallen out once while removing my phone though, so I need to be careful when using that pocket for both.
• Cost. It is quite expensive when compared to boppy pillows or my “anywhere nursing pillow.” A friend of ours gave us our first TushBaby and I’ve used it so much that I went ahead and bought myself another one in a new color. Now I have two to alternate depending on my outfit. 😉 I found it easy to justify the cost because of how much we already use the first one we received.

In all honesty, I plan on bringing the TushBaby with me every time we travel. In addition to nursing, it’s nice when we want to keep him out of the stroller a bit and he seems to enjoy being able to sit upright, be at our level, and look around while we walk. 

I’d like to close by making sure you know this is an honest review. I was not paid or asked to write this post, and I paid full price for my second TushBaby. As I mentioned earlier, I received our first as a baby shower gift from a friend. That being said, I love it so much that I requested a coupon code from TushBaby so I could give our readers a discount should you decide to buy one. Use the coupon code AdventureBabyP to receive 15% off your very own TushBaby.