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The day we first took our newborn outside for a picnic, I felt an unexpected sympathy for the pioneers of the Oregon Trail. By the time I’d loaded up the stroller with a portable bottle warmer, breast pump and pumping supplies, bottles, diaper bag, blankets and clothes, picnic chair, picnic blanket, books, toys, and more, I felt I could almost understand the pioneers who heaved pianos hundreds of miles out into the plains.
I may have been walking up 600-foot Mount Tabor pushing a stroller instead of around Mount Hood with a covered wagon, but it definitely wasn’t the casual stroll in the park I’d seen in movies. In the fog of first-time parenthood, this undertaking was an epic quest.
In today’s post, I’ll share the essentials to pack to successfully take a newborn outside…and how to make it more efficient than we did!
An Important Aside
As we approached the park with our baby and our loaded stroller supply cart, a whimsical melody floated down the tree-lined street. Then a unicycler clad in a black kilt and bright yellow t-shirt wheeled into view, belting out music on bagpipes as he rolled down the street, turning the pedals of his matching yellow unicycle with his sandaled feet.
“Oh my god,” I said, stopping abruptly on the sidewalk. “It’s the Unipiper.”
“No, it’s not,” said Bryan, squinting after the unicycler as he turned a corner. “This one doesn’t have flames coming out of his bagpipes.”
I guess there is more than one unicycling bagpipe player in Portland.
The Idealized Picnic
The other thing we noticed when we got to the park was a young couple enjoying the sort of romantic picnic you might find in a lifestyle magazine. In a field below a canopy of cherry trees, a white sun umbrella on a pole overhung a low wooden table set with a bouquet of flowers and two wine glasses.
My eyes strayed from the idyllic scene to the assorted lumpy contents of our stroller, and I felt a bizarre twinge of picnic jealousy. My days of planning for our own picnic suddenly seemed to have missed the mark.
But they really didn’t. With a few essentials, there are a thousand ways to have an awesome picnic. Let’s dive into how to have a successful picnic with a newborn.
10 Essentials for Getting Out of the House with a Newborn
Picnic blankets aside, since newborns eat every 2-4 hours, you’re basically heading out for a picnic if you take a newborn outside for more than an hour or so. So, whether you’re going hiking with a newborn or out for a long neighborhood stroll, these ten essentials may come into play.
1. Portable bottle warmer
This is the item that really freed us up to go out with our little one. She doesn’t mind milk straight from the fridge, but she needs a milk thickener to treat her reflux…and it only dissolves if the milk is warmed.
If a bottle warmer is part of your feeding routine at home, warming baby bottles on the go as well is totally achievable. There are lots of portable bottle warmers out there. Many are battery-operated and allow you to set the target milk temperature. However, most models seem to require unscrewing the bottle nipple and essentially immersing the milk in the heating element. Since our little one sometimes goes on long eating sprees and downs multiple bottles, we didn’t want a bottle warmer that we’d have to clean on the go between uses.
Instead we went with the very simple, not-even-electronic, Tommee Tippee portable bottle warmer. It’s basically a super-insulated thermos. You need to pre-load it with boiling water, but it keeps the water hot for hours. Just pour some of the water into the lid to create a hot water bath for your milk bottle.
To avoid “overcooking” the milk with this delightfully low-tech bottle warmer, we bring along our trusty infrared thermometer to check the temperature of the milk as it heats up!
2. Wearable breast pump
This one obviously only applies if you’re pumping, but it’s so useful for getting outside with a newborn that I couldn’t leave it out. Since our little one was born 9 weeks early and was in the NICU (more on that story here!), these days I’m exclusively pumping.
Aside from my occasional jealously of extravagant picnickers, mostly I’m jealous of people who fully breastfeed and people who fully formula-feed, because exclusively pumping is wildly less efficient. Wearable breast pumps lessen that gap a bit by allowing you to pump without carrying a heavy pumping unit around with you.
Wearable pumps easily range into the multi-hundred dollar zone, but I’ve been happy with the relatively inexpensive Momcozy S12 Pro. A caveat is that you definitely can’t do an interview or anything like that while wearing this thing. If the giant plastic milk collection cups that tuck into a bra weren’t noticeable enough, the boxy motors sticking out the top are a definite giveaway. That said, I’m totally comfortable wearing them to the park. On the other hand, I’m also happy pumping in the park with my highly un-subtle Spectra pump with all the tubes sticking out.
3. Baby carrier and/or stroller
Our little one currently takes to the stroller about the same way she takes to sleeping in her crib…which means we’ll end up a few blocks from home before a meltdown ensues. That said, I’d still consider the stroller a top item for a long outing with a newborn, particularly if it has lots of storage space.
We use the UPPAbaby Vista V2 stroller, and it has a huge undercarriage area where we can load in all the other baby gear. The hooded bassinet completes the covered wagon look! In addition to being our mobile baby supply cart, the stroller bassinet is also our mobile baby changing table.
For our little one herself, baby carriers work pretty well. I like the ErgoBaby Omni 360, since it’s a structured carrier that doesn’t take a lot of practice to get right. When she was too small for the ErgoBaby carrier, we tried the Boba Wrap instead. It’s super snuggly once you get it set up, but getting her into it was a bit like trying to figure out a jigsaw puzzle with a baby screaming. I’m sure it gets better with practice, but by the time we’d worked up the nerve to try again, she’d grown into the ErgoBaby. Whew!
4. Sun protection
We haven’t delved into the world of baby sunscreens yet, but so far our go-to sun solution is a basic umbrella. Plus, then we’re covered if it rains, too!
In our hopes of someday using the stroller for carrying our baby in addition to all her supplies, we’ve picked up a sunshade that clips onto the stroller. It’s a universal option that fits most strollers.
While she mostly snoozes while we’re out on walks in the baby carrier, one of our stroller misadventures found our little one wide awake, eyes so round they looked like marbles, staring at the bright sunlight. We made a beeline for home, where she proceeded to stress-eat for 3 hours. Bryan ordered baby sunglasses that night, and they live in the stroller now, just in case.
5. Camp chair
Unless you know you’ll be at a picnic table or bench, I’d recommend a foldable camp chair to make feeding easier.
Ours are enormous and definitely contribute to the overloaded stroller effect, so if you’ll be carrying them with you on foot, I’d recommend something small and light.
6. Diaper bag
I’d recommend throwing in some extra clothing and a blanket, in case of accidents and unexpected weather. On our first picnic, the weather report said it would be 81, but we left so much later than intended that Bryan and I were both shivering. At least our little one had extra blankets and a hat!
7. Bottles and milk
Definitely a must-have if you’re pumping or formula-feeding! Remember to pack a burp cloth along with the feeding supplies.
8. Toys & books
For us, this baby mirror is really all we need. Our little one is fascinated by staring at her own reflection.
9. Food & water bottles for the adults
We overlooked this one, but it definitely would have been a better picnic if there’d been food!
10. Picnic blanket
This one goes without saying!
While it felt like getting out of the house with our newborn took a lot of prep the first time around, now our stroller is loaded with the essentials, so next time we can just pack the food and go!
Let us know in the comments if there’s other essential outdoor baby gear you’d recommend.
Happy adventuring!
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