Everything You Need to Know About Nursing and Pumping at Disney World - Episode 201

This week Hayley is flying solo and telling you everything you need to know about nursing and pumping at Disney World, because she's basically done it all. 

Want help planning your own adventure? Danielle would love to help! Reach out to her at daniellegriggs@fantasticalvacations.com to get started!

Mickey with Minis podcast outro music

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everybody. I am coming to you solo this evening, which is never as much fun as recording together, but um it was a little bit hard this week to find time when we were both available because the month of May is absolutely bonkers with all of the recitals starting and the end of the year activities and all that good stuff. So also this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, so it made sense for me to cover this, and I'm really excited to share everything that I learned on my couple of trips um when I was pumping uh breast milk for my baby. So this whole episode is going to be um to some extent about nursing at Disney, but I know less about that because I was an exclusive pumper. Um, so it's most of it is going to be about um pumping at Disney Worlds and at your hotel and everything you need to know to make that work because it's a little overwhelming, but you can definitely do it. Um, and I'm really psyched that I was able to do it on a couple of trips. So, first of all, uh, where can you nurse and pump at Disney Worlds? And the answer is literally wherever you want, and that is protected by law. Anywhere that you can legally be, you are able to nurse or pump. Uh, that's a hill I will die on. Please don't let anybody make you feel uncomfortable about doing what you need to do, feeding your baby, cover, no cover, whatever you're comfortable with. Um, you are able to do it. So just go for whatever you're comfortable with. Um, it is really convenient, I will say, to nurse um while you're baby wearing if you can master that before your trip. I was able to do that um with one of my prior kids that I was able to nurse a little bit. Um, feeding her in the carrier was really easy once I got used to it. Um, as far as nursing goes, there's a little bit, I think fewer logistics involved in it. Um, pumping involves, you know, all of the parts and keeping things cold and sterilizing and all that good stuff. So but I did want to touch on um some places that you might want to nurse at Disney World if you're not looking um to go to one of the baby centers, which I'm I'm gonna talk about in just a little bit. Um maybe you just want to get on with your day and you're looking for good places to nurse. So I kind of thought through what good places might be in each park. Um, obviously any show would be good. Um, maybe nothing that's too loud. Maybe your baby would be distracted, but for the most part, um, all of the shows would be good places. You're sitting down for a good period of time. Um at Magic Kingdom, Carousel of Progress, I think would be a really easy one to nurse in. Um, maybe the tiki room that could be a little bit distracting, I think. It could be a little bit loud for kiddos, but um there are some like thunder effects and things like that. But um it's a small world, I think would be perfect. It's a pretty long, smooth boat ride. Um, and you could probably get a good nursing session in there. Um, maybe the haunted mansion, but I feel like I don't know, I would be distracted on the haunted mansion, so maybe that's not a good one. Um, the Hall of Presidents would also probably be a good one that kind of goes along with shows. Um, at Epcot, Spaceship Earth would probably be a good one. Um, that one's relatively quiet and it's slow and it's kind of long, so you'd have plenty of time. Um, also Living with the Land, Hollywood Studios, there's a ton of shows there. So definitely you could do that um at some of the shows and at Animal Kingdom. Navi River Journey isn't super long, but if your baby feeds pretty quickly, that would be maybe a good option for you. So we are going to move on to pumping in the park. Oh my goodness. I was so daunted by this before I actually did it. It just seemed completely overwhelming. So I'm psyched to share everything that I learned, um, either from all of the research that I did before the trip, which was a ton, um, and also just what I learned on the go. Um, so first of all, what you want to bring with you, your mileage may vary. I never had good luck with a wearable pump. I just didn't get the same output. Um, I tried a couple different things and it just did not work for me. So I didn't even bring my wearable pump. But again, if you get good results from your wearable, that probably is the easiest thing for you to do. They're usually more lightweight. Um, if you, you know, want to be discreet, they're definitely more discreet than you know, setting up your regular pump with the flanges. Um, so if that works for you, that's awesome. That did not work for me. So I rolled into the park with my massive um Spectra gold. Super big, not ideal, but we made it work. So, first of all, going through security with the pump, this was really interesting to me. Um, I did two trips where I was pumping. On the first trip in January, zero problems getting through security with the pump. It never set off the alarm. Second trip, I kept setting off the alarm and I told one of the security guards, I said, What is setting off the alarm? I know it's not my pump because I brought it before and it wasn't a problem. And he said, Oh, we turn up the what was the word he used? The sensitivity on the scanners, depending on, and then he kind of gestured and was like, What's going on in the world? So basically the scanners were up to a higher sensitivity on my second trip, and that's why the um pump temp setting it off. So um easy enough, you just get you know flagged and you go over to somebody um who searches through your bag, or you might have good luck if you um take your pump out of the bag and carry it in front of you, then they can visibly see what it is, and it doesn't usually cause an issue with the scanner. Uh at one point when I brought, when I did get flagged and went over to have um my bag manually searched, it was very funny because the security guard was kind of a young guy and he found it and was like, What is this? And I said, Oh, it's a breast pump. And he was like, Well, what's it for? And I kind of explained it and he just like stared at me with his mouth open and he was like, That sounds like a lot of work. I was like, Yes, sir, it is a lot of work. Thank you for recognizing that. It was very funny. He like had no idea why someone would possibly do this to themselves. Um one thing that is not ideal, I'm going to talk about the baby care centers, which are certainly, I think, the most convenient places to pump during the day. Unfortunately, they don't have lockers in them. That's my one complaint about the baby care centers. Um, the lockers at the parks are pretty much right by the entrance. And then the baby care centers, for the most part, are kind of centrally located in the parks. So it wasn't really convenient or feasible for me to put my pump in a locker and then go back multiple times to the front of the park to grab it and then go all the way back to the baby care center. Um, so I invested in a pumping backpack. I got it for $40 off Facebook Marketplace, used, and it was fantastic. Um, it was kind of big, but it fit my Spectre Gold, which is probably on the larger size for pumps. Um, and it also had plenty of room for all of my parts, um, things like that. So I kept that um in the stroller when I could. It was kind of heavy to carry on my back, but when I had room under the stroller, I would I would shove it under there, and that worked out pretty well. Um, as far as what I brought with me during the day, I put everything in the pumping backpack, and then I also brought a separate soft-sided cooler with me. So I had the pump and all of my parts. Um, I had a wall charger. I had a portable charger in case I wanted to try to charge to try to pump on the go anywhere. Like I thought maybe if I'm at like a quiet, quick service restaurant, I could just pump there really quickly. I never ended up doing that. I just used the baby care center, so I never um needed the portable charger, but it could be a good thing to have. Um, I brought a bunch of gallon bags, which are just good for storing things, and then I also used that for storing my pump parts after I used them. So I'll talk about that in a minute. I brought baby bottles both for drinking and also some of those bottles with the flat storage tops. I didn't need a lot of those. I'll talk more about that in a minute. Um, but I did bring a couple just to have. I brought a huge water bottle. Obviously, you want to stay really hydrated. Um, I brought nursing pads for inside my bra. And I brought a hand pump with me just in case. I never actually used it, but it made me feel good to have. Um and then don't forget to wear something that is conducive to pumping, um, whatever your comfort level is. I really liked where layering a um nursing tank top underneath like a regular shirt, so I could kind of pull up and pull down and be pretty well covered. Um, but whatever, you know, whatever you're comfortable with, you just want to make sure you're able to easily do what you need to do. So let's talk about the baby care centers. These are pretty amazing. This is kind of one of those things you don't really notice until you have a baby, and then you're like, this is incredible. Um, so there's one in each park. At Magic Kingdom, it is right next to Crystal Palace. At Epcot, it's by the Odyssey Building. At Animal Kingdom, it's by Creature Comforts. And then at Hollywood Studios, this is brand new this week. Um, there's a brand new baby care center at the Walt Disney Studios courtyard. It looks really, really nice. I'm excited to check it out. Previously, the Hollywood Studios baby care center was right at the front by Guest Relations, so you had to go all the way back to the front of the park. It was pretty inconvenient. And also the space was not awesome, I would say. Um, the new place seems much more convenient and looks really, really nice and cute as well. So inside the baby care centers, um, most of them have not a private nursing space. So it's you're not going to be in your own room, but there is a separate room that says nursing room. And if you go in there, it's all people who are nursing or pumping. Um, so not completely private, but semi-private, I would say. I have heard the one at Animal Kingdom has um, I think two private nursing rooms. So you could check that out. At Hollywood Studios, the old one had private nursing rooms, but they were itty bitty. Um, I had my stroller with me and my older son, and it was really hard to like fit everything in there. It wasn't ideal. Um, so uh yeah, so there is like a whole room, and the room has super comfortable um rocking chairs. There are, I guess maybe that you would call them gliders. I honestly could have fallen asleep. It was super comfortable. Um, it was honestly kind of nice to get off my feet in the air conditioning for a little bit to pump. I actually didn't mind it as much as I thought I would. Um, the baby care centers also have nice changing tables. Um, oh, and I should have mentioned in the nursing room there were a lot of outlets, um, which is great for all the people pumping. And then outside the nursing room, but still in the baby care center, um, there is a TV and high chairs and kind of spots where your older kids can hang out while you are pumping or nursing. Um, and then there were high chairs if you wanted to feed your baby in there. Um, there were a couple of sinks, a microwave, um, a bottle warmer, and then there was also a little store. Um, you know, you don't really want to depend on that because you never know exactly what they're going to have and if they'll have the brands you need, but they do have a small selection of baby supplies, diapers, wipes, a couple kinds of formula. We actually did have to buy formula there once. Um, we combo fed in the end. So um that was that was good to have. Um and then yeah, so like I said, you could have your older kids in there. There's no age limit. Um, my seven-year-olds came in with me, and that worked out really well. Um, I saw some pictures of the new one at Hollywood Studios, and it looked like they had toys and coloring stuff set out as well. I don't remember seeing that in the ones I went to, so that could be new, or I definitely could have just missed it. That's entirely possible. Um, one thing to note is that um I think on Disney's website it says you can't bring your stroller in any of the um baby care centers. I was able to bring it in at Hollywood Studios. I'm not sure if that's the case with the um new baby care center there. I definitely could not bring my stroller into the Magic Kingdom baby care center, which was a little tricky because I did have my baby with me. So I kind of didn't know what to do with him while I was pumping. So what I ended up doing was laying a changing pad on the floor at my feet and then laying a blanket over it and just laying the baby down on the floor at the nursing room while I pumped. Uh, definitely not an ideal solution. Um, normally you're traveling hopefully with other people who could hang on to your baby while you pump, but um I was solo that trip, so I just had to make do and it worked okay. You know, we made it work. It wasn't ideal, but we made it work. Um, the nursing room, I have to say, was one of my favorite memories from that trip. It was like a big old party in there. I think there was one person nursing and everybody else was pumping, so everyone was super friendly, commiserating, just kind of talking about their pumping experiences and how things were going, um, pumping in the parks and training their tips and everything like that. It was really nice. Um, it did get a little crowded in there. I would say I think all but one seat was full at the time I was in there midday. And I would also mention people were in totally varying levels of undress. Like some people were very covered up, some people were not covered up at all. Um, it was very much like whatever you are comfortable with goes in the nursing room. I should mention there are unfortunately no baby care centers at the water parks or at Disney Springs, which I think is a huge bummer. Uh, I did see a Planned Disney article. Those aren't always accurate, but I did see one saying that you could pump at the first aid station at the water park or in the family changing room. Um, so your mileage may vary. I haven't tried that out myself, but if you're really in a pinch, that's something you could do. And then I also read that at Disney Springs you could pump at the Welcome Center, um, which is not private, but they it says they might let you use an empty office. Um, again, not ideal, and I'm not entirely sure if that's accurate, but that's what I found. The other thing I'd mentioned back when I was nursing, um I was able to occasionally use a dressing room at a store. I did this at the outlets one time when I was out with the baby. Um, so Disney Springs obviously has a million retail stores. You could potentially ask at one of them if you could just borrow a dressing room for a little bit and go in there and pump or nurse if you needed to. So moving on to what you do with your milk once you are done pumping it. Um, I didn't have to worry about this too too much because my baby was with me and I basically only produced what I needed. So I really only needed to store it until his next bottle. So for you know, an hour or two. I will say before my trip, I found a ton of outdated advice on the internet about um leaving your pump at the baby care center, leaving your pump at first aid, using first aid to store your milk. Um, Disney officially says on the website, storage for personal items is not available inside the baby care centers. So definitely plan to be, you know, personally keeping your pump and your milk with you at all times. Um and it specifically says first aid centers cannot store breast milk. The website does say, Disney's website does say that you can get ice packs from first aid for your personal cooler. I did not know that before my trip, and I wish I had. Something that's a little tricky, and I'll talk about this a little more later, is now so many of the hotels just have a beverage cooler. Um, unless you're staying, you know, at one of one of the DVC villas with like a full refrigerator and freezer situation. Um, there wasn't really anywhere to get an ice pack cold. So that was a bit of a problem. What I ended up doing, you cannot bring loose ice into the park, but you can bring it in a gallon bag. So each morning I would fill one or two gallon bags with ice from the ice machine and I would use that inside my cooler. I Googled why you can't bring loose ice, like why can't it just be in your cooler? Somebody said they think it's because security might need to like manually go through your cooler to check if you set off an alarm or something. So maybe that's why you can't have the ice loose. I don't know if that's true, but if you want to bring ice into the park, it does need to be in like a Ziploc bag or something like that. Um so yeah, getting getting ice packs from first aid would be, I think, a really good option. Um, if you don't want to deal with, you know, bringing a bunch of ice around with you. I again, I didn't mean to use this, but I did buy, I might say this wrong. Ceres C-E-R-E-S, a Ceres chill. It basically looks like like a big water bottle, like a Yeti kind of, but on the inside it has this like pod that that freezes and it gets very, very cold and keeps your milk cold all day. People really sang the praises of this when I was researching. Um, I thought I would be taking a trip while I was still pumping without the baby and would be trying to store my milk. Um, so that seemed like a really good option. I again got that, got one used off of Facebook Marketplace for I wanted to say maybe $30. Um, I never ended up needing it, but it I think it would have been really good to have if I was pumping and then needing to keep the milk cold in the parks all day. Um, another option, obviously, if you don't have your baby with you, you can always pump and dump, which is a huge bummer and pains my soul to say because pumping is so much work and I hate the thought of wasting any of that milk. But one other option someone suggested to me, um, if I was there without my baby, is you could look for website uh Facebook pages called Human Milk for Human Babies. And it's basically where people post if they have extra breast milk or if they're looking for extra breast milk. Um, you know, you could join the one for the Orlando area and see if anyone wants to take your milk if you have a bunch and you don't want to deal with flying home with it, um, but you really don't want to dump it out. That's another option you could look into. Um, so what I did anyway was I just, like I said, I kept the um storage bottles with me. I would put my milk in there when I was done pumping, and I would just pop it into my cooler with the ice, but I only needed it to stay cold for like a couple of hours until he was ready for his next bottle. So that worked for me. It may or may not work for you. I also um at home, I would use what they call the fridge hack for my pumping parts. So I would um sterilize my parts at night, and then in the morning, I would do my first pump, and when I was done, I would take all the parts, put them in a Ziploc bag, and keep them in the freeze in the fridge until my next pumping session. I wouldn't do a full cleaning in between every um pumping session because they say that your parts are fine if you're keeping them cool in the fridge. So I basically did sort of a um, sort of something like that in the parks. I put all my used pump parts into um a gallon Ziploc bag and I put that in my cooler as well, which was filled with ice. I figured that sort of sort of mimicked what the fridge was doing. So um, and it worked out fine for me. So back at the hotel, um, one thing Disney has just started doing, and I just saw this a week or two ago, they announced that they have some more amenities for people traveling with um babies or small children. I guess now you can ask for a bottle warmer at check-in, which is pretty cool. So if your baby's used to that, um, that's something that you maybe don't have to bring with you. Personally, if my baby was used to warm milk, I would err on the side of bringing one probably or renting one. Just because I would worry what if what if you go to the front desk and they're out of them and your baby's used to warm milk. Um, Luke is a fourth baby, so um nobody has time for that. He's getting some uh room temperature milk and he's fine with that, thank goodness. I brought dish soap and a bottle brush to wash everything with wash everything um at the end of every day. I wish I had got a bottle washer for all of my pump parts. So at home I use the Mom Cozy bottle washer. It is literally the best money I've ever spent. At the end of the night, I would throw the dirty bottles in there, my used pump parts in there, and just run it and everything comes out nice and fresh and clean. Saves me so much time. I kind of wish I had maybe rented one for vacation because it did take a ton of time at the end of the day to wash everything. Um, I have rented uh the SNOO through Baby Quip. Baby Quip is an awesome website. You can rent almost every single baby or kid item you can think of that you would possibly need on vacation and have it delivered to your hotel. Um, I didn't end up doing that because we were doing a split stay and I was worried about what I would do with the bottle washer on our transfer day. I didn't think I would want to send it with Bell Services if I got one. So I didn't end up doing it. And I kind of regretted it. I wished I had gotten um rented a bottle washer. It would have just made my life a lot easier with all of the pump parts. Again, I did not need to worry about storing my milk, but I have read online that you can leave frozen milk with Bell Services or give them bags of milk for them to freeze during your trip. So that sounds like a pretty good option. Again, most of the rooms now have the beverage cooler instead of a fridge. And Dizzy's website specifically says those beverage coolers are not suitable to store medication that requires refrigeration. Again, I did not have a lot of milk to store, and I was comfortable just leaving, you know, one bottle in there for a couple of hours if I needed to. But you can request a fridge from the front desk. It says it's subject to availability, but if you do need a proper fridge instead of the beverage coolers, you can definitely ask for one and see what happens. So I just wanted to wrap up with a couple of the other do's and don'ts I've kind of picked up along the way. Don't underestimate how often you will need to pump. I would try to pump right before leaving the room to head to the park. But by the time you make it out of the room with the stroller and your bag packed, get on the bus, get to the park, get through security. I was always sort of shocked, like, oh, I need to pump again in an hour. Um, which was kind of a bummer. Just plan for your plan for your trip to go a lot more slowly than it normally would and carve out that time for pumping. It's kind of a bummer, but I think if you plan for it and sort of have the expectation of how often you'll need to do it, um, it will make your life a lot easier. On our second trip, I didn't pump so much on the go. I really, I was sort of starting to wind down pumping at that point. And I really stretched the amount of time that I would go um between pumps. And sometimes that was super uncomfortable and it probably wasn't worth it. In retrospect, I probably should have just popped away to the baby center and done a quick pump. But um again, I think if you just plan for it and have sort of a realistic plan of how often you'll need to be pumping, how long it takes you, and you know, what else you're hoping to accomplish in a day. If you have a realistic plan, um things will go a lot better. Also, don't underestimate how much your baby might drink in the Florida heat. Um, toward the end, like I said, we were combo feeding with formula. We were at the parks on kind of an unseasonably hot day, and I think the baby was maybe having a growth spurt because he um he went through all of my milk. I was done pumping and I didn't have any more to give him, and he went through way more formula um than we would usually give in a day. He would usually get maybe one, maybe two bottles of formula, and he went right through that. Um, we were really lucky the baby care center had our brand. We were just using regular Similac at that point. Um, so we were able to pick up some extra formula and didn't have to run back to the hotel. Um, but I doubt they would have had now we're using a hypoallergenic um formula, and I doubt they would have had something that specific there at the baby care center. So basically just bring more milk or formula than you think the baby might need because you want to make sure they're staying super hydrated in the Florida heat. Uh again, for you, you want to make sure you're staying hydrated. Um, both trips I was pumping, I bought a full case of bottled water. I felt bad about the environment. I try to use bottled water as little as I can, but I knew I would drink more water the more readily accessible it was to me. So that's just what I had to do for this for these trips. Um I would bring a couple of bottles in um the cooler with me each day so they were staying cold. And I also brought like a really good water bottle that I could drink from on the go and kept that filled up and just made sure I stayed as as hydrated as possible. You can also go to any quick service and get a cup of water for free if you need to do that. But for pumping, you want to be getting a lot more hydration than that, obviously. So you want to kind of plan accordingly. Um, and lastly, don't forget way more parts than you think that you will need, as well as backup items. So one day in the park, I forgot one of my flanges. I misplaced it. I thought I had lost it, and then I found it back at the hotel. So I could only pump one side at a time, um, which was fine, but you know, then that takes twice as long as I had planned on for every pump session. Um, I did ultimately find that flange back at the hotel, but I I didn't panic because I knew that I had another full set of flanges and tubing and everything with me back at the hotel if I needed it. Um, so you want to just bring more than you think you'll need because that's something that can be kind of tricky to get delivered, you know, from Target or Amazon as quickly as you might need it. Again, like I said, I did bring a hand pump as a backup. I never actually ended up needing it, but it did feel really good to have it with me just in case I ran into any problems with my pump. Uh, and then I would say if you're relying on a wearable pump, I would consider bringing your wall pump as a backup as well. You don't necessarily need to bring it into the park with you every day if the wearable works for you. Um, but having the wall pump back at the hotel as a backup, I think, would be a really good idea. So I think that is all of the knowledge I gained about pumping in the parks. Feel free to shoot us any questions you have about this. I'm happy to answer them. It's something I was really proud of myself for being able to do because it's hard. It's I'm not gonna lie, it's hard and it's time consuming and it makes for a very different trip. But if if nursing or pumping is something that's important to you, then you know you want to make sure you can have the best possible trip, um, even while you're taking care of that need. So uh so yes, good luck if you're going to do it. Uh, you can do it if you want to, and um don't let anybody tell you otherwise. So that is everything. Um, I'll be back next week um with Danielle, which will be great, and I will see you real soon.