If you think parents who wear their babies are swathed in tie-dyed baby slings, striding around in vegan sandals, and driving hybrid vehicles, you may be accurately describing oh, I don’t know, a hundred parents or so (definitely a good description of Julia Roberts, by the way)! But truth be told, there is no one type of parent who uses a baby carrier.
If you have been discouraged from wearing your baby by the nagging thought that you are not the babywearing type, banish the thought. You are the babywearing type because you have a baby!
Read on to equip yourself with a host of anecdotal situations where a babycarrier is far preferable to a stroller. Then, get acquainted with the many benefits to you and your baby when you choose a carrier over a stroller.
At Home, Wear Your Baby More
At home, I recommend several tasks while carrying baby with a carrier that frees up your hands. Vacuuming, cleaning mirrors and countertops with all-natural nontoxic spray, checking my email (with the laptop on the kitchen counter), watering the plants, and sorting through the mail are the regular tasks I enjoy more when doing them while carrying my baby in our Bjorn or wrap. She has fun, too, in getting tactile and visual stimulation, and in seeing the world from a different vantage point. One of her favorite pastimes is ripping up the junk mail bound for the recycling bin.
Oh Baby, It’s a Wide World
You don’t have to be a full-fledged believer of the philosophy known as attachment parenting to get the benefits of wearing your baby in a carrier, nor does the carrier versus stroller decision have to be all or nothing. Try to choose one new circumstance when outdoors and see if your baby’s mood improves when she’s in a carrier instead of a stroller.
Before we leave the house for a stroll around the block, to visit neighbors, or head to a park, I essentially just take stock of my infant daughter’s mood in order to decide whether she’ll be more content in the stroller or carrier. The weather is a definite factor in her mood, and she prefers the stroller on very hot days. If she might need to eat or if she’s feeling tired, I know she’ll be happier if I carry her in a wrap.
Shop Til You Drop?
If you’ve ever had your heel pinched by a stroller in the hands of a distracted parent, or if you’ve been the distracted parent yourself, you know that strollers are more hazardous than helpful in many of the following settings: small stores and boutiques, book stores with long narrow aisles, and (the site of many a heel injury for me) farmers markets and outdoor festivals.
And from your stroller-riding baby’s point of view, the entire outing is a parade of thighs, butts, and bags. If you live someplace where smoking is more common, your child is right in range of the cigarettes dangling from the hands of passers-by. Not to mention the potential for baby to get jostled by people’s shopping bags.
Face it: the air, the view, and especially the company are all much better for baby up there, “there” being on your chest or back in a carrier!
What Difference Will a Little Carrying Make?
You don’t have to be committed to carrying your baby all the time. Many people lump babywearing in with no-cry sleep solutions, hyper-responsive parenting, attachment-style parenting, or breastfeeding until your baby starts kindergarten. But there is a lot of middle ground between your baby being stroller-stuck or being constantly carried.
Chances are that all parents and caregivers can probably benefit our babies and ourselves by assessing where we are on that continuum. I remember when my son, now three, was two months old. Walking through the mall with my mom, we stopped so she could extract her suddenly fussy grandson from the stroller. I felt strangely uncomfortable and wondered aloud, “Mom, is it okay to just carry him in your arms like that? Is it safe?” As a new mom, I was so used to seeing babies always in strollers. I was conditioned by the moms I’d seen in public – thousands of them, with babes-on-wheels rather than babes-in-arms.
So what can be gained from wearing your baby just a little bit more often than you do at present? Here’s a couple:
- For your baby, less exposure to being thwacked by shopping bags
- The closeness to you. Your baby will be able to communicate with you more subtly if you can see and hear her in her carrier.
- For you, there are fewer strangers to apologize to (“Oops, are you okay? Did I run over your heel?”),
- More freedom to move around in stores with tight corners,
- and a clearer view of what your baby is thinking and feeling.
As for mutual benefits parents and babies share when using a baby carrier more often, it’s cliche but true that they grow up too fast. Growth is a continual process of a child separating himself from his parents. Keeping them close when they really crave your presence can help tide you over when, later on, they don’t even want to be in the same room with you. I should know. I teach high school.
Growing up is truly a process of carving out an ever-widening distance from parents. So wear your baby a little more, push her a little less, and remember for a long time afterwards how it felt to be this close.
