If you’re an avid outdoor adventuring family pre-baby, it can be daunting to try to incorporate baby into your outdoor loving lifestyle. We were determined to keep doing the outdoor activities we love like rafting. We had quite a fun adventure taking our little nugget on her first river float and are here to tell you it is easy and can be done safely!
This last weekend we took our baby on her first river floating adventure on our raft. We are avid boaters so when we were pregnant, we knew we had to figure out how to incorporate baby into our love of river floating. And we’re not just talking a day float, we especially love to haul our camping gear along and camp out over night and do extended river trips this way for up to a week at a time.
So last year on my usual thrift shop, yard sale and auction adventures I kept my eyes peeled for outdoor baby gear. We now have a good stash of life vests to fit infant through child so we’re set for the next couple years for the most important piece of river gear for our little nugget. At just 10 months old, the infant size life vestwith the awkward (but important) head pad fits the best!
This spring as the weather warmed, the river levels rose which is prime time for whitewater enthusiasts to start hitting the water but not for little babies! We anxiously waited for the water levels to drop to a safer flow so we could take our baby on her first river adventure. Before we embarked on an overnight boating/camping trip we wanted to do a shorter day trip to see how our little nugget liked boating.
This last weekend two of our friends with birthdays this week organized a river float on the Blackfoot River near our house to celebrate. We figured it was the perfect occasion for our little nugget to join in the festivities and have her first ever river float!
Luckily on Sunday we had a beautiful sunny, warm day with the gorgeous bright blue sky beckoning. Even though I covered our baby in sunscreen (I am LOVING the all natural (that’s) “THE” BALM! sunscreen) I was still a little leery of her frying in the hot summer sun. Like many seasoned extended trip boaters, we have a large umbrellaand umbrella mount for the raft frame so my husband set it up to provide us shade from the hot summer sun.
(And of course a river trip is not complete without a classy vintage trucker hat!)
Overall our little nugget did great. I say overall because she did get a little cranky because she hadn’t had a very long nap before we started floating. She caught a mini nap on the river bank while we all gathered and got the boats ready before we hit the river.
On the boat she was having a hard time getting to sleep because of the distraction of a new adventure. We ended up nursing a good portion of the trip and she finally fell asleep at the take out!
At first I was rather self conscious about nursing our baby so openly in a large group of folks but my husband assured me he didn’t think it was too obvious or noticeable that we were nursing since I was wearing a swim suit top and she had on her life vest. I had to laugh though because my husband just told me that word got back to him that a couple other folks on the river that day not in our floating party saw us from a distance and commented about us boating and nursing! One of our friends pointed out it was one of those “only in Montana” kind of scenes, and for us a very memorable one too!
So now that we have baby’s first river trip checked off the to do list, we’re planning our first overnight boating camping trip in a few weeks with some friends. So check back in a few weeks for an update on how THAT little adventure will go!
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Wow! Looks like fun! Baby is sooo cute!
This is cool!