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In this episode I go over what to expect when adventuring with kids, along with some specific tips on how to make the experience more safe and enjoyable so you are prepared for your time exploring as a family!
Resources Mentioned:
Blog: Outdoor Essentials For A Baby
Blog: How To Hike With A Baby
To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
Resources Mentioned:
Blog: Outdoor Essentials For A Baby
Blog: How To Hike With A Baby
To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
For next level fat loss strategies, hormone/gut health help, serious performance goals and unparalleled support, apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching. Learn more HERE.
For more free wellness resources, hiking/travel guides, and other blog posts, check out my website HERE.
What is Fit for Hiking?
Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a longtime fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. In combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your onestop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female. Wellness, trail talk and adventure hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel, and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the Fit for Hiking podcast. 1s Welcome back to the Fit for Hiking podcast. This is your host, Brady, and today we are going to be talking about a topic that a couple of people have reached out specifically about and that is adventuring with kids and really like incorporating having babies and having a family, starting a family into your already adventurous outdoorsy lifestyle. So I'll be the first to say, when I got pregnant, a lot of people I think, were kind of skeptical of, oh, how are you going to maintain this lifestyle? Like oh, just wait. The just wait comments. And it really did kind of discourage me, I'll be honest. We got pregnant a little bit of our backstory. We were living out of our campervan at the time. When we got pregnant with our daughter Juniper, it wasn't necessarily unplanned, but it also wasn't the most well thought through plan, if that makes sense. So when we got pregnant, we didn't have a home base. We were fully living out of our van and we were kind of scrambling and I got really sick in my first trimester. I had a lot of just issues. I ended up on bed rest later in my pregnancy, and even though I really did my best to stay active, keep working out, keep getting out for hikes in some capacity, my pregnancy was kind of a discouraging experience because I was just thinking, wow, my life has done a full 180 here. We were living in a van. 1s Literally hiking every day after work, going somewhere new, really having this amazingly adventurous first few months in our marriage and then it totally flipped on its head when I got pregnant. Immediately started having horrible sickness all day and it really just kicked my butt, to be honest. And I wasn't I wasn't expecting how much it changed things so quickly. You know, we very fast, very quickly got a house and really started to settle in. I was just kind of like laying around on the couch most of the time because of how I felt and it totally changed our lifestyle. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, it's already happening. I'm not the person that I was even a few months ago. I am not going to be able to be this outdoorsy, adventurous person anymore. And I remember that feeling just really deflating. It kind of gave me a bit of an identity cris. Being pregnant is already this kind of weird time where you feel like you don't really fit in either category. Like going and doing things with people who don't have kids and aren't pregnant feels a little bit weird. And then also on the other side, you don't quite have kids yet, so you're just kind of like, I'm in this weird in between phase, especially when it's your first. 1s So I just remember it being kind of a weird. I still lading and a hard time identity wise because I was just wondering, what am I going to do? How am I going to maintain this part of myself? So then fast forward to giving birth 1s and really starting to incorporate juniper into our lifestyle. It was. 1s Actually really cool to see how quickly we were able to get out there, even with postpartum and some of the struggles that came along with that. We prioritized getting outside with her, and we were very blessed that we had her in May, so we were able to really start doing things very quickly. I remember we took our first hike with her at three weeks old, our first road trip with her at three weeks old. So we really just started to get out there. And I think if I could offer any advice, if you have the ability physically and mentally to start doing some of these things and weather wise, do it. Because I think the longer you wait, the more daunting it feels. And I think just getting out there and kind of breaking the ice really helped with my anxiety around it and just seeing like, okay, this looks different, but we can still do it. Okay. So I wanted to kind of share what our first year looked like with Juniper and then some of my top lessons that I learned along the way and then just a few really helpful tidbits to know that I would have liked to know before starting my journey of adventuring with a baby. So a little bit of our story, once we did have her, like I said, we started to get out right away. We actually ended up taking several van trips. For those of you who maybe have been following along with me for a while, you know that we have a converted Sprinter van, the same one that we lived in. We kept it and we use it for trips. We rent it out sometimes. And so we decided, okay, we want to be able to still do these things with her. So we added a third seat to the van so that we could have seat for her, put her car seat in it, and we started taking van trips with her when she was about three months old or maybe two months old. Actually, she was pretty young. And we did our first one just kind of locally. We went to Aspen, so it was only a couple of hours. We just wanted to break the ice, kind of see how it would go doing the overnights. And then we ended up doing a three week band trip all over Idaho and Wyoming. We went to several national parks, and that one was the longest that we've done so far. And it was so awesome to actually see, wow, like, we can do this. And she's happy. Like, she loves getting out for walks and hikes with us after we're done working. She likes being outside most of the time and, you know, it was just such a pleasant surprise. And we ended up this past winter, we traveled abroad and we lived in Guatemala for several months with her and figured how to do that. And in a few weeks, well, by the time this airs, we'll probably already be on our trip or back from it, but we are doing a month in British Columbia and Alberta in the van and then coming back down through Montana. So I share all of this just to say that your travel and your adventures don't have to stop once you have kids, even when they're a baby, I just think people will be the first to tell you like, oh, well, you just can't anymore. Life changes so much and yes, it does. And I'll share some of the top things that we've learned and how it did need to change, but you can still do it with some adjustments. So I just want to encourage you if you're thinking about starting a family, maybe you're currently pregnant or you want to be soon or maybe you have little ones, but you haven't really ventured out yet, and it feels daunting like it is possible. And I will share with you some of the mistakes and lessons learned along the way. So some of the top lessons that we really learned in this first year with her is to plan for more time than you think. Whether that's a hike or a drive or an airport trip, you're always going to need a little bit more time because things happen, blowouts happen, tantrums happen, they need to stop and eat. You need to breastfeed. You just need to plan for more time when it's just you and your partner or just you or whatever, you can really go at your own timetable. You're not having to factor in this little human that has a lot of needs, and I don't think I was fully prepared for how much I'd have to factor that in. Juniper is not an awesome sleeper. She can get really grumpy. And we had many experiences where we had in our minds, okay, this is our plan. We're going to go do this hike. It's going to take this long. And I remember one time specifically, this was the longest we'd done with her up until that point. I think she was only like a month and a half old. We ended up doing like a six or seven mile hike. It was kind of intense. And we had a time frame because we were working with this brand and we had to get back and return some things by a certain time. And I just remember that being such a stressful experience because I was used to our typical hiking pace. And now here we are a few months postpartum. We have a baby, she's having crying fits. We had a blowout out the trailhead. I'm having to stop and breastfeed her. She was hungry. We were going way slower than normal because it was slick and we were just like, whoa, we were not prepared for this. Right? So I share all of this just to say, plan for a little bit more time. Give yourself some wiggle room for things to go wrong so that you're not extra stressed. Because I think when you try to stick to the rigidity of what you've done in the past and the time frame that you're having in your mind, that's when things can become less fun because it's not going to go like that. And then you're going to feel like, overwhelmed and like you're failing when you're not. It's just normal. Babies have a lot of needs, especially in those first few months. Honestly, even at one, I feel like she still has a lot of needs, just in different ways. So give yourself lots of time, plan for some setbacks and be willing to change plans. Be fluid. Even this weekend, like literally right now, it's Memorial Day weekend and we have been planning to go to Moab. It's like a five, five and a half hour drive. Juniper got sick this week and she's on the mend and we've just been like, well, I guess this is not going to happen the way that we've been planning for it to happen. We've been fixing up the van, getting it ready for our first big trip of the season. 1s And we are definitely kind of winging it. We're going to go somewhere a little bit closer now that she's starting to feel better. But we don't want to go too far. We just have learned to be a lot more fluid because again, you can't be married to a plan or a time frame and then get super upset because your baby is not on board. I mean, they're not going to subscribe to your plans. So plan for setbacks, plan for potential sickness, plan for just added stressful components that could potentially pop up. One thing that I also wanted to talk about as far as lessons, is that your postpartum experience could kind of affect your ability to do some of this stuff. I didn't have any sort of postpartum depression, but I struggled a lot with postpartum anxiety and that's something I was pretty candid about on social media because I really had only heard much about postpartum depression. And so when I started having anxiety attacks and just feeling so afraid all the time, having these worst case scenarios about my baby play out in my head, I was like, what is wrong with me? Why am I so hypersensitive to anything that could possibly make me think that she could be getting sick or that she could have something wrong with her? I mean, I would go down these rabbit holes of watching TikTok videos about baby sicknesses or signs that something could be wrong. It was so horrible for my mental health. But that's where I was at the time and I know that I'm not alone in that because in sharing about it, a lot of women. 1s Told me that they had very similar experiences. So if that's you, you're not alone. It's really hard. I think my anxiety was pretty bad for about the first six to eight months postpartum. It still flares up now and then I'm a year postpartum now, so just know that it is a journey, it's a process. And sometimes I didn't want to get out and do stuff or I would be fearful the entire time we were hiking because I was just sure that I was going to fall on her or something bad was going to happen. So just know some of these things are going to need to be fluid because of your mental health as well. It might not always be about what's going on with the baby. You need to take care of yourself, too. And I know some moms don't do very much of anything outside of the house for a while because of postpartum depression or anxiety or other postpartum complications, and that is totally fine. Your journey is going to be totally unique and your own. 1s So definitely factor in that, that could be a possibility. You could not have any of these things going on, or you could have a few of these components that you're working through and your adventures, lifestyle might have to take the backseat for a little bit because you need to deal with your own physical and mental wellness as well. As a mom, you're already dealing with adjusting to so many things, so give yourself some grace if you're not able to get out and do these things right away. The next lesson is that you should always come prepared with a couple of different items. So these are the things that were always in our pack when we would go hiking with her, and they still are, even at a year. So always, always a sun hat and a long sleeve outfit for total coverage. Feet as much of the hands as possible because you're really not supposed to put sunscreen on babies until they're about like six months to a year. I think a year is really where you want to be, so you got to come really prepared, especially if you know that you're going to be on an exposed trail. The next is always having a bottle. If you're doing like formula law or pumped milk, you can also breastfeed on the trail. My only advice there would be. 1s Just maybe bringing some sort of, like, little foldable chair or something like that. I found it really uncomfortable on my back. I had a lot of back pain with breastfeeding because you're in that kind of hunched position. So I didn't love breastfeeding on the trail because I found that it really exacerbated my back pain, especially when you're already carrying the baby on your front and you're still kind of, like, healing from some things. So you can absolutely breastfeed. But if you're not breastfeeding on the trail, then I would make sure that you have plenty of milk for the baby, depending on how long the hike goes. I cannot believe how much Juniper could eat in, like, a four mile hike. It was insane. She was just always hungry. So bring more than you think. Come very prepared for that. A changing pad. So just a small foldable changing pad. 1s Extra diapers. I would bring more than one and wipes. You never know when they're going to have a blowout. And oftentimes that bouncing position where they're being carried by, you can bring about some accidents. So you want to come really prepared with that. And even bringing like, a bag, something to dispose of the dirty diaper. You have to make sure you pack it out right. Don't leave it on the trail, but put it in something so it's not just like, loose in your pack. Having an extra outfit in case of blowouts. This is something we learned the hard way. You always want to have an extra outfit, some sort of rain coverage. So whether that's just like a little thing that you can put over them or your terrier has something. Ours had like a little flap that we could clip on over her head in case we really wanted it for sun or rain coverage. So have something in case of a storm and definitely check forecast. It's not ideal to be out with a baby in a storm. You don't want to be in that situation. And then snacks as they get older. So really this doesn't apply until they can hold a snack and feed it to them themselves. Juniper started doing that, I feel like around eight months. And so now when we hike with her, we have these little crackers little snacks. She loves pancakes, so we'll make a thing of pan cakes and have her just hold and eat them as we go. Kind of gives her something to do and something to focus on and keeps her well fed as well. So definitely start bringing some snacks as they get a little bit older. And then my final lesson is that you really just don't want to expect it to look the same as before. I can't stress this enough. Like. 1s You can still get out there, but know that it will look different. Like your priority is different now. It's not just about you getting out and having an awesome time or taking the perfect Instagram shot, like you're going to be addressing your baby's needs first and foremost. And anything else that you get to enjoy is a bonus. If you have days where they're totally happy, amazing. It's such a great day when that happens. But you can also expect that there will be equal amounts of days where maybe that's not the case. I know some people are like, oh my gosh, my baby always sleeps through every single hike. I haven't had exactly that experience with Juniper. She probably slept through half of each hike, maybe a little bit more, but then sometimes she would wake up really grumpy or really hungry or just irritable. So just expect that you'll have good days, you'll have bad days. So just a couple of things to know that are just kind of helpful little tidbits of information. One is that they are going to be in a front carrier until they weigh 16 pounds. So really until they're able to hold their own head up successfully and they have that trunk strength and they weigh enough, they're going to need to be in that front facing carrier. So whether they're like facing you in that carrier or facing outward, they just need to be on the front. They're going to have better support that way. So we used the Lily baby carrier. I really like that one. It's been a great brand. It doesn't have a ton of much in the way of pockets or anything like that, but it has good ventilation. It has that little cover like I was talking about. So especially for the first like six months, I definitely think that that's an awesome option. Once they reach about 16 pounds, which will be different for every baby as to when that happens, then you can transition them to a back carrier. So because of the timing of hiking season, we actually just ordered our first back carrier with her because we just haven't really needed it. Once she was 16 pounds, it was like the dead of winter. And so we're just now realizing, okay, yeah, we need like a back carrier for her now because her head is poking way out of the front carrier. And we you better. 1s Sun coverage. So we ordered the Osprey poco plus. This is an awesome brand in general for hiking packs. We love Osprey, but we did a lot of research about different packs. Mainly we were looking between the Deuter pack and the Osprey pack and Osprey just ended up having more of the features that we were looking for. Definitely do your own research and see the things that matter to you. We use YouTube as a resource for some comparison videos, 1s so I'm excited to try that out. They basically have their own little space with an awesome built in sunshade. They're going to have the ability to take naps really easily and the Poco Plus. The plus gives it that bit of extra room. So if we ever did want to do like a backpacking trip, we'd have way more space to pack things below where she sits. So that's the carrier that we're going with. I'll keep you guys posted as we start to hike in it and see what we think and give you a little review on that. So like I mentioned before, another thing to know is that you're going to need total sun coverage when they are not able to wear sunscreen. So for about the first year, you don't want to do really exposed trails. You want to make sure they have a sun hat that clips on because as they get older they're going to try to knock it off or pull it off and you want to make sure it's fully covering their little cheeks and you don't want their hands and feet out too much either. So we would always put her in lightweight footy pajamas that were white and yes, it is a little bit hot for them, but I found that that was a lot better of an option than having her get some on burnt because their skin is so thin and delicate when they're young. So make sure you do as much sun coverage as you possibly can. 1s The next one is that babies can't spend a lot of time at high altitude if they aren't used to it. So we had a bit of a unique experience because we live at 9500ft. So we had to bring her home from the hospital on oxygen. It was a whole ordeal. It was very stressful to not help with my postpartum anxiety, but we learned quite a bit about what it's like for babies at high altitude. And because she gested dated up here, we only had to have her on the oxygen for a little bit because she was so little, they needed her to grow appropriately. But if your baby is gestating and living at sea level, you probably don't want to fly to Colorado and then come and do a 14 or right away with them. They're going to feel really deprived of oxygen the same way that you would. So it's just something to factor in, I think anything above about 10,000ft, they say there's conflicting results, right? And we've definitely taken Juniper up higher than that because she is used to it already. But it's just something to consider, especially if you are not exposing your baby to higher altitudes on a regular basis. The next tip would be to avoid scrambles, especially when they're in that front carrier. If you're having to lean forward and use your hands and all these things, you're putting their head in a really vulnerable position, especially as they get a little bit heavier and they could kind of tilt forward. So we definitely learned the hard way, like, got to really research the trail that you're going on. If it's a new one, you don't want to put them in a position where they're not safe and you're feeling like, oh, crap, we should not be on this trail. So definitely do your research beforehand. If you see scramble anywhere in the description, you might want to reconsider just for a little while because again, it's not worth it to put yourself and the baby in that position of vulnerability. And the final thing would be to expect some disastrous hike or road trip travel experiences. This is totally normal. Obviously, I have shared a lot of my journey with Juniper and the hikes that we've done, the travel that we've done. But we've also had some horribly disastrous stressful moments when I have thought, why are we doing this? This was a mistake. We should just go home. And I just want you to know, if you have those moments, you are valid and it's normal. Like, you're not the only one. I guarantee every single person who's attempted to do a lot of travel or a lot of hikes or a lot of adventurous things with their kids has experienced plenty of those moments. So just expect it. I mean, we've had hikes where June cried the entire time and we just had to turn around. We did a winter hike a few weeks ago where we accidentally bumped into a tree and knocked a massive amount of snow on her head. It got all in her clothes and we had to turn around and get back to the car as fast as we could because she was so cold old. Like just total parent sales. 1s And it's going to happen like it's a learning curve and you're human and the baby's human. So give yourself some grace. Give your baby some grace. They're not trying to ruin your time. This is just how it is. So expect some disasters and it's going to make the whole thing a little bit less stressful if you can just go into it knowing that it's not going to be perfect, but you can still enjoy some really beautiful moment moments. And I mean, think how cool it is that you're getting to do this as a family. Some of my favorite memories from her first year are the trips that we've taken, the really cool hikes that we've done, seeing her take in nature and learn to love the trees and the animals and the mountain views. It is a really special thing. So don't let the fear or all of the things that could go wrong keep you from doing those experiences as a family. So all of that to say, I hope that this has been helpful and encouraging. I have a couple of resources on my blog, hiking with a Baby 101 and then Outdoor Must haves for your baby. So in that I link some of the things that I talked about today. So I'm going to link both of those blog posts in the show notes so you guys can check those out. And I hope that this encourages you to get out there with your baby or with your family. And 1s if you found it helpful, if you want more like Mama Adventure episodes, please let me know. Like, I am all ears. I want to know what you guys want me to chat about. I hope this has been helpful and I will see you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Fit for Hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling and inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at ponytail underscore on a Trail. That's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at fit Underscore for Hiking and find more free resources@ponytailonatrail.com. Happy and healthy trails.