Best high chair for baby: A mom's messy guide

It was a Tuesday in 2017, and I was sitting in my Nissan Rogue in the parking lot of a BuyBuyBaby (RIP), wearing yoga pants with a suspicious crusty stain on the left knee, crying into a lukewarm vanilla latte. Maya was five months old and sleeping in her car seat, and I was completely paralyzed by three text messages on my phone.

My mother had just texted: "Get the big plush Graco one with the ruffles, Maya needs to be comfy like a little princess!"

My best friend Jess had texted: "Don't be an idiot, spend twenty bucks at Ikea, hose it down in the yard when she smears bananas everywhere."

And then there was the internet. Oh god, the internet. I'd just read a terrifying forum post by a self-proclaimed posture guru who basically said that if my infant's ankles weren't perfectly aligned at an exact 90-degree angle in a three-hundred-dollar Scandinavian wooden throne, she would never learn to chew properly and would probably end up in college still eating pureed peas. It's completely overwhelming. You're just trying to figure out the greatest feeding seat for your infant, and suddenly you feel like you're failing at parenting before they've even had their first bite of sweet potato.

Anyway, the point is, I bought like four different chairs over the next few years across two different kids. Here's what I actually learned.

The great posture panic of 2017

So, about that whole 90-degree angle thing. I asked my doctor, Dr. Aris, about it because I was losing sleep over Maya's dangling feet. He looked at me, sighed—probably because I was the tenth anxious millennial mom to ask him that day—and explained it in a way that actually made sense.

He was like, imagine trying to eat a heavy meal while sitting on a tall barstool with no footrest, while someone is occasionally shoving a spoon at your face. You'd be spending all your core energy just trying not to fall off the stool, right? So apparently, babies are the same. If they've a flat place to put their feet, and their hips and knees are bent like they're sitting in a regular dining chair, they feel grounded. It helps them focus on the wildly complicated new skill of moving food around in their mouths without gagging. Which, honestly, fair enough.

But he also said to absolutely wait until she was around six months old and could hold her own giant, bowling-ball head up without slumping sideways. We started her in a seat too early once when she was like four and a half months old because my mother-in-law was visiting and wanted to "see her eat real food," and Maya just looked like a sad, deflated balloon leaning to the left. We waited.

Speaking of eating real food, once they do start, the mess is absolutely biblical. You think you're prepared, but you aren't. We used to put Maya in her seat, and within three seconds, she'd flip her bowl of yogurt directly onto her own head. I eventually found the Walrus Silicone Plate from Kianao and it literally saved my sanity. We stuck it to her tray one morning with oatmeal in it, and I watched her grab the little walrus tusks and pull with all her might, grunting like a tiny weightlifter, and the thing didn't budge. The suction base on it's basically industrial strength. Plus, the deep divided sections meant her peas didn't touch her applesauce, which was apparently a huge deal to her at nine months old.

Plastic versus wood and the absolute hell of cleaning

If you think buying a fabric feeding chair with cute little ruffles and piping is a good idea, please come to my house, look at the ghost of a spaghetti stain still embedded in my dining room ceiling, and reconsider your entire life.

I don't know who designs these heavily padded chairs, but I'm pretty sure they don't have children. Babies are liquid. They will find a way to get mashed avocado into a seam that you didn't even know existed. I remember trying to clean a borrowed padded chair with a toothbrush at 9 PM on a Thursday while my husband Mike was washing bottles, and I was just quietly weeping over crusty cheese.

I read this article once where a product tester lady basically said that the busier the design, the more you're going to hate your life. She was right. You want smooth surfaces. You want something you can wipe down with a damp rag while holding a screaming toddler on your hip. Wood is great because it wipes clean, but there are a lot of crevices where the seat boards slide in. Hard plastic is usually the easiest. Smooth plastic trays that you can just rip off and shove in the dishwasher are the holy grail.

We also tried the Kianao Silicone Cat Plate during the messy phase. It's fine, it's cute, the suction works just as well as the walrus one. But Leo, my second kid, just kept trying to bite the cat's ears off instead of eating his dinner. So it became more of a chew toy than a plate for him. It's a nice plate, but we definitely got more mileage out of the walrus one because of the deeper sections. Anyway.

If you're already dreading the cleanup and just want to browse plates that actually stay where you put them, check out Kianao's baby feeding collection here.

That time Leo almost launched himself into orbit

So, federal standards only say you need a 3-point harness (just around the waist). But my son Leo was, and still is, a feral animal. When he was about ten months old, he figured out how to use his chubby little thighs to bridge himself up, push against the footrest, and try to stand up while strapped in by just his waist.

I turned around to grab my coffee off the counter, and when I looked back, he was standing up in the seat, wiggling his hips like he was at a frat party, completely defying gravity. My heart dropped out of my butt.

You need a 5-point harness. The ones with the shoulder straps. I don't care how annoying they're to buckle when your kid is doing the stiff-board back-arch thing because they don't want to be strapped down. Buckle the shoulders. And make sure the chair has that plastic post that goes between their legs. All the newer ones in the U.S. have them now, but if you buy a used one off Facebook Marketplace from like 2015, it might not. If they slide down without that post, they can get caught by their neck. It's terrifying, so just check for the crotch post.

People always ask me about those portable seats that just clamp onto the edge of your dining table. Honestly, I'm too anxious for them. I just picture Maya kicking the table leg repeatedly until the whole thing snaps off, so that's a hard no from me.

The seats I seriously bought with my own money

Okay, so over the years, we cycled through a few options before landing on what worked.

First, we did the classic Ikea Antilop. It's like twenty bucks. It's incredibly light, it has absolutely zero fabric, and you can literally take it outside and hose it down after a pasta night. The downside? The tray is an absolute nightmare to pop off. You need the upper body strength of a lumberjack. Also, it doesn't have a footrest, so I had to buy an aftermarket wooden footrest from Etsy and strap it on with rubber rings. But for the price, you really can't beat it.

Then, when Maya got a little older and we realized we were having Leo, I caved and bought the Stokke Tripp Trapp. Mike complained endlessly about the price. It's expensive. Like, "I could buy a nice vacuum cleaner" expensive. But I dragged Mike down a Reddit rabbit hole, and we decided it was worth it. It's made of wood, it pulls right up to the dining table so they eat with you instead of off a separate plastic tray island, and the footrest is totally adjustable. Leo is four now and he still sits in it as his regular dining chair. It's basically a permanent piece of furniture in our house now.

Oh, and a weird pro-tip. Leo went through a phase where he refused to eat unless he was wearing literally nothing but a diaper. But our dining room is drafty as hell in November. I used to take our Organic Cotton Baby Blanket Soft Double-Layer Goose Pattern and wrap it tightly around his little bare legs while he was strapped in. It's so breathable that he didn't get sweaty, but it kept his goosebumps away while he aggressively smashed sweet potatoes into his face. Look, parenting is mostly just making up weird solutions on the fly.

Mike kept bringing up chairs that folded perfectly flat so we could hide them in the closet. I told him no. If you fold it up, you just have to unfold it three times a day anyway. End of discussion.

Look, just buy something you can wipe with your eyes closed

honestly, the top infant seating solution isn't the one that looks the most aesthetically pleasing on your Instagram feed. It's the one that you don't resent cleaning at 7 PM when you're exhausted, your feet hurt, and you just want a glass of wine.

Get a 5-point harness. Make sure their feet aren't dangling in space. Avoid ruffles like the plague. And honestly, give yourself some grace if they just want to throw their food on the floor anyway.

Ready to upgrade your messy mealtimes? Shop Kianao's smart, parent-approved feeding gear right here.

Some messy questions I get asked all the time

Do I really need a footrest on the chair?

Honestly, yeah. I thought it was a stupid internet myth until I watched Maya try to eat without one. She was so distracted by kicking her legs in the air and sliding down the seat that she choked on a piece of banana. Once we got a footrest, she instantly sat up straighter and honestly focused on her food. It's a huge deal for their trunk stability.

How do I get spaghetti stains out of the straps?

Oh god, the straps. White straps are the devil's work. I used to take them completely off the chair, soak them in a bowl of warm water with a bunch of OxiClean for like three hours, and then scrub them with an old toothbrush. If your chair has machine-washable straps, you're living the dream. Otherwise, just accept that they're going to be a light shade of orange until your kid goes to kindergarten.

Can't I just hold them in my lap while they eat?

You can try! I did it a few times when we were at a restaurant with no spare seats. But babies are incredibly squirmy, and trying to guide a spoon into a moving target while making sure they don't dive-bomb off your knee into a plate of hot food is exhausting. Plus, you won't get to eat a single bite of your own food. Get a chair. Put them in the chair.

What age did you genuinely start using one?

We jumped the gun at four months with Maya, and it was a mistake—she was way too floppy. With Leo, we waited until exactly six months. He was sitting up independently on the living room rug without instantly falling over like a drunk sailor. That's your green light.

Are the expensive wooden ones really worth the money?

Look, I hate admitting that expensive things are good, but yeah. The Tripp Trapp was a painful purchase at the time, but Leo is still using it four years later. The cheap plastic one we had lived outside in the dirt after six months because the tray got warped in the dishwasher. If you can swing the cost (or find one used!), the wooden grow-with-me chairs honestly do pay off.