Green Options » baby carriers

Babywearing 101: Tie on a Mei Tai

Julie Finn — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 13:23:17 +0000

You know the benefits of babywearing. You know some guidelines for babywearing. You know how to use the pouch. You know how to use the ring sling. You know how to use the wrap.

Now we’ll talk a little bit about the mei tai.

The mei tai is most accurately pronounced “may tie,” although since the words come from a language with some phonemes that are different from English, a completely accurate pronunciation in English is unlikely. And don’t fuss at people who pronounce it “my tie,” either–you know they mean the carrier, not the cocktail.

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Babywearing 101: It’s a Wrap!

Julie Finn — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:42:20 +0000

Okay, so we’ve talked about the Benefits of Babywearing. We’ve noted some General Guidelines for Babywearing. We’ve also so far discussed two types of native-style baby carriers, the pouch and the ring sling.

Next up? The wrap!

Remember that we’re evaluating each carrier based on its own pros and cons. Each carrier has its own style for wearing your baby, each carrier looks very different, and each carrier may feel very different on your body and to your baby.

All the possible styles of carry are this: cradle front, vertical front facing in (baby’s legs are frogged up as a small infant and spread to fit around your waist as an older child), kangaroo front (a vertical carry facing out, in which baby sits in the carrier and tucks her legs in front of her), hip on either side, piggyback. These mimic ways in which you might carry a baby in your arms, and thus tend to be pretty comfortable and ergonomically correct.

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Babywearing 101: Do’s and Don’ts of Babywearing

Julie Finn — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:25:22 +0000

In Benefits of Babywearing, I told you about the real benefits to a baby of being worn for the majority of the day by a caregiver.

And no, I didn’t even go into some of the most awesome benefits–the fact that native-style baby carriers are portable, convenient, and cheap, and the knowledge that by babywearing, you never have to be one of the dozens of couples I witnessed one afternoon at the Louvre, my own eight-month-old snug in her ring sling. The Louvre really isn’t that accessible, friends, and watching all those parents attempt to lug all those HUGE strollers up and down all those HUGE flights of stone staircases? Well, not only did it look dangerous, but it looked like it sucked. Big time. I took a lot of joy in bouncing right past those miserable families, my own delightful burden slung on my hip.

There are some general guidelines that can make babywearing a safe and enjoyable experience for you and your child:

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Babywearing 101: Benefits of Babywearing

Julie Finn — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:29:27 +0000

The day that I found myself at Bloomingfoods shopping for groceries, with my preemie infant nursing, hands-free, in her sling, and my not-quite-two-year-old (I know–scandal! And yet they play together soooo well) sitting in the shopping cart, and I was actively CHECKING OUT with the cashier at the time, I knew that I was basically the most awesomest mother. Ever.

We talk a lot about babywearing here at Eco Child’s Play, and for good reason. Babywearing, or the act of wearing your baby on your body for a good part of the day, generally (although not always) in a native-style carrier, has a lot of real benefits for all kinds of kids and all kinds of parents.

As a babywearing instructor here in my community, I’ve had a lot of practice teaching parents about babywearing and helping them learn the right ways to carry their babies, and I plan to share all my wealth of knowledge here with you.

First up–benefits of babywearing:

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Create Natural Bonding Time By Wearing Your Baby

Susie Kim — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:39:51 +0000

The buzz word in parenting nowadays seem to be “bonding” and nurturing that bonding can be a lasting effect on having a loving and connected relationship with your child. I am all for bonding; therefore, I am also into baby wearing. Baby wearing has been done for centuries and even dates thousands of years. Hard to know that a carriage or a stroller is a modern invention. The plastic contraption that wheels your baby around is actually counter-productive to this phenomenon called bonding. But I digress, We have a stroller and we happily use it. However, I do notice that we are naturally more connected to our daughter when we baby wear Layla.

So what exactly is baby wearing? Baby wearing is exactly that. Wearing your baby to your body. There are numerous ways to achieve this. A Psling to a long wrap (pictured above) can achieve baby wearing. Many primitive cultures baby wear and scientists have discovered that in those societies, colic is virtually non-existent. Keeping your baby close to you also have great benefits. It frees up your hands so you can get on with your life, WITH the baby in tow. One of the most inspiring thing I heard was from Ergo Baby DVD. A woman worked FULL TIME while keeping her baby in the Ergo Baby. I must say that I was highly impressed with this. Anyone with a newborn knows; there are days when taking a shower is a struggle. So imagine working full time while wearing your baby. This is one of the tenants of attachment style parenting which I am a proponent of. I knew from the beginning that I would baby wear perhaps because It was so common in Korea, seeing halmonies (grandmothers) carrying their grandchildren on their back wearing a podeigi (a korean style wrap). So it was ingrained into my brain that this is what I would be doing when I grew up and had children.

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