Travel essential: the inflatable booster seat

Hurrah, I thought, as Minnie ditched her nappies for the potty – so much less paraphernalia to carry around in our suitcase. I’m starting to suspect that’s far from true.

As well as a travel potty, some pull-ups for travel plus ordinary nappies for night, I’ve realised we need to start rethinking meal times. Or more precisely, seating at meal times.

contains affiliate links*

As Minnie’s relatively petite and still only 28 months, she’ll normally fit into a highchair and is fairly content to stay put there. But after going out for lunch with a friend, where the only highchairs had (perfectly reasonably) got younger babies in, she could barely see her plate. Time for a booster seat.

Cushions would be wriggled off in minutes, and the fabulous compact Totseat which we’ve used so many times while travelling doesn’t help raise her up to table level.

But while there are quite a few ‘travel’ booster seats out there, a closer look found that most are only expected to make occasional trips to grandparents’ houses, are a lot heavier than I’d like to lug around, or turn out to be car seats in disguise.

Until I stumbled across an inflatable booster seat from The 1st Years which seems perfect. It folds up into its own carry bag, has an self-inflating cushion at the bottom for some extra height, clips to hold toddlers in safely/stop them escaping when they’re bored and is very lightweight.

UPDATE: This particular inflatable booster seat no longer seems to be available, but a search of similar on the go booster seats includes this Munchkin travel booster seat. If you are looking for an inflatable booster seat to use in the car for older kids, check out my review of the Bubblebum.

At least one version has Winnie the Pooh on, which is a bonus where Minnie is concerned.

The only catch? They seem to be out of stock almost everywhere, which suggests it’s not being made or sold in the UK any more – I snaffled one on eBay, and you can get them shipped from the US (or pick one up on holiday there).

I’m a bit baffled as to why (unless I’m missing something and it’s a different brand name?). I’d be slightly wary of using it on younger wobblier toddlers, as there’s not much support on the sides, but once they’e old enough to be out of a highchair (and not to slide sideways), that’s no problem.

The only issue we’ve had is that Minnie felt too precarious when the cushion was fully inflated – and the fact she wants me to set it up at every mealtime with another stuffed toy in to keep her company if she’s in the high chair.

But that just proves how much of a success it is. This is something I definitely don’t mind saving suitcase space for.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links – any purchases you make are unaffected but I may receive a small commission. We bought our inflatable travel booster seat ourselves and all opinions are my own or my daughter’s (the cat had very little say).

Images copyright MummyTravels

LIKED THIS? SIGN UP FOR MY EMAIL NEWSLETTER