Boppy, nursing pillow.

When our son was born, a veteran nurse at the hospital told me jokingly about all the unnecessary things new parents bring to the hospital with them. One of the items she was gasping over was of course, The Boppy. "What is wrong with a regular pillow?" she was wondering out loud. "All the countless things that new parents get tricked into buying!" she exclaimed. Uhm, at that moment I was glad we hadn't brought our Boppy to the hospital with us, nor did I tell her that we actually had two of them waiting for us at our house. I could see her shaking her head in disbelief. We had two of them! Okay, they were gifts but somehow we thought this item was so essential to successful nursing that we needed to keep both, one for upstairs and one for downstairs. And of course, there was the brilliant idea I had read about, that you could bring a Boppy on the airplane when you travel and don't have a seat for your infant! You already need an extra arm and leg to carry all the baby stuff on board... So unless the Boppy has feet and walks on its own I don't see how it gets on an airplane.

Well, my relationship with the Boppy ended when our son was about 1 month old. I got the worst sciatic pain in my shoulder from using it. At first I didn't even realize that the Boppy made me slump forward while I was feeding our son. It wasn't until I was so desperate that I decided to try different things while feeding him, including not using anything at all, that I noticed the difference... Not using the Boppy made me sit up more straight and little by little the shoulder pain went away. 


The Boppy did come in handy for a while after this, particularly when I wanted to have my hands somewhat free while my son was snoozing in my lap.

I never used the Boppy with our second child. In fact, with the arrival of our second child I realized that the nurse at the hospital two years earlier had been 100% correct in her statement. I used a pillow, or just held her. It worked perfectly. Our daughter also couldn't snooze in the Boppy because she was small and somehow slumped into it and couldn't sleep. And believe me, sleep is all she did and wanted to do for the first 3.5 months! Just not in a Boppy.

We still have one Boppy laying around on our day bed because our kids like to play with it sometimes (they are 3.5 and 1.5 years old now). The other one is gathering dust in our garage.

I know many moms swear by this nursing pillow and it's supposedly America's favorite baby product, but I wouldn't buy it again. And I would recommend it with great hesitation. I think the success rate of it depends a little bit on how the mother is "built". I'm guessing (from my own experience) that it may not work very well for small/petite moms.


Or maybe I should have put the two Boppys on top of each other? Hm. I may be onto something here.

So, in my humble opinion...

Pros:

- Good for having babies sleep in your lap to give you free hands (while they are small and don't move much)
- Can be used to support babies as they grow (it's a good little spot for lounging, playing, sitting and tummy time). 
- Probably helps some moms with nursing.
- Can be used for bottle feeding baby.
- Washable cover.
- Cute cover themes.
- Boppy has done a great job branding a half-moon shaped pillow. I think every expecting parent on this continent knows what it is. Kudos to them for doing that.

Cons:

- It doesn't work for everyone. (Get a used one or borrow one from your friends and test it for a minimum of 2 weeks).
- Can give you bad posture and achy shoulder/neck muscles if you do not pay attention to how you sit.
- Pricey. If you want to save an extra $40-$50, use a regular pillow instead.
- You really don't need it to survive motherhood, no matter what people say. 

www.boppy.com