Beau Choix

My 10 year old sling

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Maya Wrap unpadded extra long

This is my sling that has lasted 10 years and 3 children. It’s my woobie.

I took all the kids out after lunch today to run errands. We made it to the post office before my almost 3 year old took the hand of my almost 10 year old in the back seat of the car & fell asleep. This is a heart exploding moment as it is.

We decided to go ahead to our next stop.  I brought out my trusty sling. And then it hit  me – this sling is 10 years old. It has carried my oldest as a toddler & my next 2 babies since they were newborns until they were well into toddlerhood. It has seen so much work in so many countries in so many different kinds of weather. I’ve breastfed and fed cookies (fishing crumbs out of my bra every step of the way) & had a snack for momma too. So many hours of sleeping babies in this sling. I’ve had prenatal & postnatal appointments with clients, teaching breastfeeding, babywearing & cloth diapering classes in this sling. Playdates, parties, shopping, cooking, baking, laundry, moving, packing & unpacking, pta meetings, volunteering in the classroom, support groups, vacations & walks, many many many walks. The list is endless.

I bought 2 crappy, really crappy box store excuses for babywearing devices when my oldest was born. Such a waste of money, frustration, time and fabric. But I knew there had to be something better out there. She was a baby you just couldn’t put down. I knew babywearing worked but I had tried to save money & cut corners in the wrong way. These didn’t work for us. I could have easily made my own sling but wasn’t confident enough until much later.

When I was pregnant with my 2nd baby I found the right people to talk to and the right place to look at what I call a real sling. And so, I bought my sling, my Maya Wrap.  It has been, & always be, my go to. So easy to slip  on,  slide a baby in & just keep on going.  The learning curve was minimal & within days of my 2nd baby being born I felt like an old pro. And I wore him for 3 1/2 years.  The last time I remember wearing him was when we were in Rome. He was sick & we had a tour of the Vatican scheduled. We decided to try it & I would go back to the hotel if things deteriorated. My trusty Maya Wrap was at the bottom of my backpack. He decided he needed to hap as his fever ramped up again. At 3 1/2 & a good 35 lbs or so he curled up on my chest, the sling came out & he slept through the entire tour. I don’t remember how many hours it was, but it was quite a few. He woke up, his fever broke & we  continued on the day.

Today, as baby #3 snoozed away while we shopped for school supplies I kissed her little head in the same place it’s been for the last almost 3 years, just below my chin. Right where all babies should be – close enough to kiss. I realize these times are fleeting & I don’t know how many more there will be, but I will cherish every single one of them. I’m so grateful that I didn’t give up on babywearing.  It’s made my life so much easier, and so much easier for my children to be where they wanted to be, where they needed to be.

I’ve expanded my babywearing library to other wraps, slings, pouches  & soft-structured carriers, and I love them all for different reasons. But my hand always goes back to this sling. There’s not a thread popped  & it’s soft with years of use.  Sure it’s a just a tad bit faded, but I know this, when I am blessed with grandbabies, this will be the first thing I pull out to snuggle the next generation of our family.  Soft, warm, fuzzy little heads resting under my chin.

Visible Change

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Most everyone talks about the changes they will make at the beginning of each year. Life inevitable gets in the way & most of us fall into our normal routines pretty quickly. It’s much the same in our work lives. Most of us have the best of intentions, really. In fact I hesitated even posting this, my first post of the new year because I didn’t want to post unrealistic goals & why it’s almost the end of the month before I’ve actually hit publish.

This year I decided would be my year for Visible Change.

The first is easy. I’m going to continue to wear my baby. She’s 2 years old now, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be worn. Why? Well, besides the fact that she’s a tiny peanut with short legs many times I hear or read of parents who quit babywearing because their baby got “too big” at 4, 5, 8 months old. If you have the correct carrier and wear it correctly, you can safely babywear until your child is around 40 lbs. Know your carrier, know your baby. You will find that you and your baby are happier when you can stay close, especially when your baby can tell you they want to be close!

Oh yes, I will continue to breastfeed and breastfeed in public. Yes my child is 2 and yes she still breastfeeds and yes I still feed her when she asks most of the time. I know when she’s just bored & asking for the sake of asking. I also know when she has a genuine need. It’s biologically normal and we will continue until she decides she’s outgrown her need, same as my other two children.

I will take better care of myself in order to take better care of my family and my clients.

As a Birth Professional I will continue to work with, not against my client’s care providers. I will be the face of doulas everywhere so that those who come after me will not have to clean up after me. I will be kind and respectful at all times. I will not be a doormat. I will show what constant support is in labor and how it is beneficial to birthing families regardless of how they  birth.

I will bring the doula magic to every birth: Being, Listening, Touching, Holding & Believing,  Fully, Completely and Without Reservation or Hesitation.

I will continue to support breastfeeding mothers. Period.

I will finish up my courses that have been almost finished for entirely too long. First it was the baby, then it was the deployment, then the move, but now, no more excuses. I’ve put much of it into practice already, but I will finish out the last of the courses. And I will continue to find opportunities for continuing education.

With that I will set up Childbirth Education &  Breastfeeding classes. Women deserve to have a veritable smorgasbord of classes to choose from as not every woman births the same. There should be many offerings outside the traditional hospital based classes. Mothers and their partners deserve classes that can be fine tuned to what they need. I will also re-establish a Breastfeeding Support Group & a Cloth Diapering Circle.

I will once again host the Great Cloth Diaper Change & finish my Real Cloth Diaper Leader training.

So yes, some of this is more of the same, but it’s my commitment to staying the course even though I’ve done much of it before. It’s why I’m combining a few personal goals with my professional goals. I’m hoping that when others see what I’m doing that they will not be afraid to show some of the same visibility.  Walkin’ my Talk. Hold me to it. I will post updates to the website, the blog and social media. How will your community see your visible change?

Babywearing is Freedom

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October 10-16 2011 is International Babywearing Week

“Don’t you ever put her down?”

How many of you have heard this ad nauseum?  My answer: “Why should I?”

A common assumption about babywearing is that you’ll spoil the baby because you don’t put the baby down. Or that you have no time to your self because you are always with the baby. Or that it’s too uncomfortable. Or that it’s too complicated. Or Or Or

How is it possible to spoil a baby when you are providing it’s most basic needs? Warmth, love, attention, food, safety. Even older babies, this is all they really want. How is cluttering up your house with every baby accoutrement ever made to put down this little being better than simply wearing your baby? They grow out of that stuff in a matter of months anyway. Consider this: would you be happier hanging out on a warm chest with rhythmic beats & waves looking around as you please, or would you rather be on a thin mat on the floor with a bunch of bright  colored things hanging over you? What is the environment this baby just left? A warm, wavy, rhythmic belly. It makes sense on a fundamental level.

Babywearing doesn’t tie you down. In fact, it frees you. You don’t need to lug a big stroller everywhere. It’s convenient to unsnap that car seat & just leave the baby in there, but you still have to carry that big honkin’ piece of plastic around, at least until you snap in a cart. But car seats are supposed to be for the car, not for all purpose use. Snap baby in the car seat, snap car seat in the stroller, snap car seat in on the cart, bring baby into the house, leave baby in the car seat while you do what you need to do. After a little practice you can just slip the baby from place to place into your baby carrier of choice without much fuss. You will be happier, your back will be happier, your baby will be happier, your car will have more room in the back of your vehicle.

Yes, your back will thank you. A proper wrap, sling or other carrier will distribute the weight evenly across your back & chest. Simple adjustments will help distribute the weight more evenly as the baby gets bigger. If the carrier isn’t comfortable it’s either on incorrectly or it’s made poorly.

You can breastfeed on the go, easy peasy. And, if you think you need to feed with a cover, most carriers offer a fair amount if not as much privacy as a cover would with even more discretion. There’s no big cover over you saying, “Hey! Breastfeeding here, Don’t peek!” You simply make a few adjustments et voila! instant discrete, hands free (did I mention hands free) breastfeeding!

If you’re like me and single parent on a regular basis, babywearing becomes the literal fabric of life. I am a military spouse. My husband just spent the last year in the Middle East, again. Once again we were living in Germany. The baby was 8 months old when he left this time. I have 2 older children. How did I get anything done? Babywearing. Not just me but the older children took the opportunity to learn that they could wear their sister too. Did this save my sanity on a daily basis? You bet it did. I took her everywhere, prenatal & postnatal visits, breastfeeding visits, support groups, shopping, big kids’ activities, teaching comfort measures, doctors’ appointments, she was the perfect prop to teach babywearing in the breastfeeding class, I took her everywhere except to the births I attended.

Babies grow up soon enough. They all find their independence. Keep them close while you can, it’s for a shorter time that you can ever imagine. Let babywearing free you.

Do you Babywear?

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It’s International Babywearing Week!

I can’t imagine my life as a mom without babywearing.

I had the WORST carriers with my first daughter in 2000.  Awful. I tried to make them work. I really did. But I didn’t know anyone else who used them or who I could ask about them so quietly they went away.  I knew they were good & I know other people had made them work, but I had the wrong ones. Cheaply made bought from big box stores. W-R-O-N-G, just wrong.

In 2002 I bought a Maya Wrap  sling from my doula and boy what a difference! I used it from day one & didn’t stop until my son was 3 1/2. He was a big ‘ole chunk of a kiddo too! I learned to breastfeed hands free in that sling & it saved me! My favorite story to tell is we were living in Europe & went to Rome one spring. My son spiked a fever & vomited the night before we left. We decided to still go & if I only saw Rome from the hotel room, so be it. It was the only time we had to go. I thought to pack the MayaWrap in the bottom of my backpack. While he did ok, he did need to sleep while he spiked another fever as we toured the Vatican. He slept, all 3 1/2 years & 30+ pounds of him, on my chest for several hours while we walked the tour in that sling. It is my pride & joy & I will never part with that sling. I bought a solarveil sling too. I was hooked.  I even started making my own slings. Babywearer for life!

As a doula I was exposed to the many new carriers available as my clients had more & more babies. And I began to collect them.  I bought an Ergo Organic that sat in the closet for many years waiting for a new addition or for me to start teaching classes. In 2009 our 3rd baby was born a tiny peanut, all 2160 grams of her. I started wearing her while we were in the KinderKlinik (NICU) in my new Moby Wrap. I knew all the benefits of kangaroo care and babywearing & used every one of them to get us out of the Klinik. These benefits include, but are not limited to:

  • Better self regulation of baby’s body temperature, respiratory rate & heart rate – overall healthier babies, this is especially important if your baby has any health problems, prematurity or is small at birth. Simply wearing your baby does things that no machine or medicine can regulate quite like it in most cases.
  • Happier babies – Humans are not self sufficient at birth. This is one of the reasons babies like to be held. They know where they are safe & warm & near their food supply & don’t like to be separated from it. This is why babywearing is so great during the newborn period. Babies cry less when worn. The baby can be where they want to be the caregiver can still have hands free to continue doing what they need to. So instead of putting that baby down, place your baby where they want to be, right on your chest.
  • Happier more confident parents – Babywearing is a tool to help bond with baby whether that’s mom, dad, grandparent, sibling, caregiver, you name it. It eases some of the stresses of having a new baby and allows a parent (or whomever) to be more confident in their abilities. In my eyes, this is invaluable. Babies respond to physiological changes in the wearer, but also respond to facial expressions and touches that are so readily available when baby is ‘right there’ and the wearer can give these cues constantly when wearing baby. And the wearer can respond to the baby’s needs in an instant. If you have to go back to work relatively soon after the baby is born, babywearing allows you to reconnect after a long day while still allowing you to attend to the baby’s needs and the needs of the household. This applies to both parents. Babies really like to be on dad’s warm chest feeling the vibration of the adam’s apple.
  • No more Tummy Time – yup, you get as much if not more benefits while wearing the baby upright on your chest than if you do structured tummy time to strengthen the neck muscles. Babies learn quickly they can check out the whole wide world while being worn and they do. When they’re done, the tuck their little heads away & relax. Another self regulation technique learned.
  • As babies grow older you can keep them safer when you wear them whether that’s at the store, at a festival, big family functions, the farmer’s market, the airport or Aunt Madge who wears too much lipstick and too much perfume (you get what I mean). It also keeps older babies from being overwhelmed when presented with these situations.

I’m not sure she came out of the Moby Wrap for the first few months.  That’s how everyone expected to see her, in the wrap. It was a permanent fashion accessory for many, many months, if not the first year instead of the scarves etc. I wore before she was born. Yes, I still used my Maya Wrap as well. My husband discovered the Ergo when I started attending births again which he found to be an important tool because, like our first two, she also had severe separation anxiety. Babywearing didn’t alleviate all the anxiety, but it did help her to relax and helped my husband know she was ok & would calm her for a while.  I picked up a Hot Slings pouch, ok, 2. Both the sized and the adjustable. And this spring I picked up my first woven wrap, a NeoBulle while at the La Leche League conference in Paris. I told myself it was because I had forgotten any kind of babywearing device, which I had, but I’ll admit I really wanted a woven wrap too. I’m still getting the hang of back wrapping with the woven, but despite Little Miss Independence I keep trying to learn.

Please note that wearing your baby facing out on the front is generally considered unacceptable. Not only can your baby not self regulate outside stimulation, but it’s not good for their spinal and hip development. And if you’ve ever really looked at a baby facing out, they don’t look as comfortable as a baby facing in. It’s because they’re not, but they don’t always know that. It’s also not comfortable for the wearer. The alternative is to wear them on your back. It’s much healthier for them and for you.

Overall, it’s important to know what carrier is appropriate for your size and your baby’s size and age and it’s important to wear your baby safely. Know what babycarriers are safe to use. Anything that hides the baby’s head (not intentionally as with the hoods you can snap up) or you can’t adjust so you can kiss the baby’s head are usually not considered safe. I could write a whole post just on safety, but I’ll link you to a fantastic site that says it all instead. The Babywearer has a fantastic page on safety.

So if you haven’t tried it, but want to, try to find a babywearing or attachment parenting group in your area. If you can’t find that, check with local doulas, midwives, breastfeeding groups. At least one of them will know at least one person who is knowledgeable about babywearing. And there is a plethora of video clips online to walk you through wearing your baby, step by step.