Product no longer available. As regular readers will know I have introduced Little to food through baby led weaning. All our family enjoy having Little at the table with us and watching her eat, it's fortunate she doesn’t mind the audience. It can be more challenging to do baby led weaning when eating out, but with planning it works well.

Last year I wrote about my top tips for eating out with a baby when baby led weaning  but one of the things I hadn’t found an ideal solution for is what children should eat off. Normally in restaurants the highchairs don’t have trays leaving 2 obvious options: let them eat directly off the table, or risk giving them a plate. The Bibetta placemat with pocket provides another option. 

The placemat provides a clean surface little people can eat off with the extra benefit that it catches some of the food which is dropped (let's face it nothing would catch everything). It folds up to make it easy to transport so I keep mine in my changing bag. When eating out you can use it for the meal then shake off the crumbs and fold it up. When you get home you can put it in the washing machine to ensure it’s clean and ready to be used next time you go out. Bibetta recommend you run the mat under warm water straight after use, using washing up liquid to clean it.

The placemat is 58cm at it’s widest point and 35cm deep. The pocket is 26cm wide and most of the mat will fold up into it making the folded size 26cm by 12cm. At around 200 grams it is light too.

As we sat down to eat Little started trying to suck the table, obviously not ideal. I quickly pulled the Bibetta out of my bag and put it down. She then sucked on that instead which I was much more comfortable with. While she plays with the placemat a bit, as soon as food is put in front of her she focuses on that instead. I've found that if the highchair pulls under the table you can get the pocket really close to baby catching even more food.

It’s made of neoprene, like a wet suit, which seems a strange choice for something which gets covered in food. We haven't eaten out anywhere with really messy food since we received it so I wasn't sure how it would do in these situations. I wasn't convinced the neoprene would be very practical so I gave it some testing: I put a splodge of ketchup, puree, jam and butter on the mat. First I tried wiping it off with a tissue and then I put it in the washing machine. I only gave it super quick wash, but I was impressed that most of the marks came out. I wasn't surprised there was a stain from the butter as oil is easily absorbed, but this would probably be fine with some stain remover or a longer wash. The mat dried really quickly too which meant that it was washed, dried and ready to use again in an hour.

The mat is waterproof and repels liquid, but I found it does get marked by some food. I wouldn't use it everyday to eat directly off as I would prefer something I can wipe clean, but it is great for taking out to restaurants. I would use it at home when Little uses plates more as it provides more grip than our placemats or table and it will protect my table from various marks. As it is much bigger than a placemat it should work brilliantly. 

I would recommend this as a helpful bit of kit when baby led weaning or eating out with finger foods.

Disclosure: we were sent the Bibetta Placemat With Pocket for review. All thoughts and words are mine. Apart from this: G said "that's cool" when I put it down and it stopped Little eating the table.