When it starts to get chilly in the evening and early mornings, wrapping parents are presented with the challenge of dressing themselves and their babies for a day with fluctuating temperatures. Of course, layers are always good – you can remove them when it gets hotter, and put them back on when it gets cooler.
When you have a baby in a wrap or other carrier, it may be simplest to dress both of you in a t-shirt or light top, and then just throw a jacket over both of you until it warms up.
Even if you leave baby’s legs bare, the jacket should cover those cute little legs completely.
Remember, the two of you will be much warmer together than you would be if you were not wrapped. Your jacket will help hold in all that generated body heat!
You can use a big sweater or jacket that zips or buttons in the front, zipping it up enough to come up to the back of baby’s neck so that both of your heads stick out the opening.
Or you can use a specially made babywearing sweatshirt or jacket that is made with separate head holes for you and baby such as Lenny Lamb’s Fleece Babywearing Sweatshirt.
Back Carries can work with either your large sweater/jacket with the head opening slouched back to allow baby’s head to stick out behind yours. As in this vintage photo of me and my eldest from January 2006 (that’s just chilly when you live in Florida).
I wish it was easier to see, but that’s just an oversized black sweater that buttons up in the front and I put it on around the both of us. Her arms could have been tucked in with the sweater up to her neck, but she had warm sleeves on and at two years, preferred arms out.
While it comes easily to some nursing pairs, other moms and babies just don’t breastfeed discretely.
Sometimes getting the right positioning, latch, and keeping baby focused gets all messed up by trying to use a cover, or position clothes discretely and the mom ends up with a crying/screaming mess instead of a happily feeding infant or toddler.
Sometimes body size, or bra size, makes discretion very difficult.
Sometimes it’s babies preference for position that interferes with an attempt at discrete breastfeeding.
Some babies refuse to be covered.
Some moms prefer not to cover their babies to allow for better airflow and to keep from overheating.
Sometimes a mom who is not confident that she can manage discrete breastfeeding, or has not found a comfortable way to do it, will just not try nursing in public for fear of humiliation or judgement from strangers (or even family, in many instances).
As a result, some moms will stay home more often and say no to social invitations. They and their babies and/or other children may get less sunshine, fresh air, and exercise, not to mention social interaction.
Other moms may decide to supplement with bottles when they are in public. This may mean using formula, or pumping. Either of which is totally a valid choice, but wouldn’t it be nice if public perception was not one of the factors in making that decision? After all, using bottles is an added chore and formula is an added expense, while pumping can be time consuming.
Some moms choose not to breastfeed solely based on modesty. And I support their choice! But what if we could slowly alter our culture’s comfort with breastfeeding until it was considered modest? What if nursing your baby was absolutely normal and no one ever blinked an eye or suggested you were out of place?
I think the pressure would be lifted off moms who breastfeed and moms who bottle feed. And that would be beautiful <3
Starts on 12 July (Wednesday) at 12am EST through Friday. Choose your first wrap and check-out. Your second wrap will be a surprise!
The second wrap may be 1st or 2nds Quality. It may be a wrap conversion ring sling, a discontinued Didymos wrap, or even a babywearing sweatshirt or jacket (we will pay attention to your shipping address and not send babywearing outerwear to a customer in the hottest climates)! However, most of the surprise gifts will be another woven wrap. It may be the same size or a different size from the one you order.
International customers will need to pay shipping for both, so I will contact you for the additional shipping payment when I receive your order. US shipping is free.
This deal cannot be combined with other coupons or discounts and is not applicable retroactively to any items purchased from me before the start of this sale.
The Story
Our family, Diana and David, Ada (12), Annabelle (7), and Cassidy (6) are moving our life and our business to the East Mountains of New Mexico where we will live in a one room, off-grid cabin on 20 acres where we will be neighbors with David’s parents.
If we love it, we will build a house to live in. In the meantime, we intend to set up solar panels and a rain water catchment system to provide minimal electric and water needs.
Yes, we will have internet and Wrap Your Baby will continue to share wrapping tutorials, entertainment, and resources, and to ship wraps all over the globe.
How You Can Help
You know what would really help? Selling a huge amount of inventory so that we can replace it with new designs when we arrive at our new place, without having to pay to haul it across the country!
That’s why we are launching an unprecedented 2 FOR 1 SALE on in-stock wraps starting this Wednesday!
Adventures to Come, Friends to Make
New Mexico has a thriving babywearing community including a big group centered around nearby (one and a half our drive) Albuquerque and a spectacular social program for bringing baby carriers and other resources to some of the population that needs it most. Please check out the Babywearing Enrichment Center of New Mexico.
I look forward to getting settled in our new home so that we can begin to reach out into the community to join homeschool groups and participate in the babywearing meetups, hopefully making wonderful friends and making lots of fun videos together 😀
Wrap Your Baby Timeline
2004 (September), our first baby, Ada Maria, is born at home.
2005 (Summer), Wrap Your Baby is born as Diana and baby Ada begin selling EllaRoo wraps locally, providing local moms in Clearwater Florida with the opportunity to try out wraps in person and get one-on-one help before deciding to buy.
2007 (January), pregnancy complications lead to the cesarean birth of our second daughter, Clementine Annabelle, whose body is not strong enough to survive. She lives long enough for us to hold her and give her a name. Clementine’s birth story is here.
2011 (June), our family begins travelling full time in a 22′ Motorhome named Benny the Brave, taking Wrap Your Baby on the road.
2012 (October), we land in Tampa Florida, ready for a more sedentary life, and move in with Diana’s parents and sister.
2013, we begin designing exclusive wrap designs with huge community response, including Nati Notes, Natibaby Tattooed, Wrapsody Luna, Natibaby Odyssey, Easycare Rainbow Baby, Girasol Sunshine Rainbow, Lenny Lamb Smoki, and many more.
2016 (Summer), Wrap Your Baby gets our new website.
2017 (July), our family travels to the East Mountains of New Mexico to move into a one room, off-grid cabin on 20 acres where we will be neighbors with David’s parents. Solar panels will help to keep Wrap Your Baby in business over the internet, and we’ll have to take our packages into town to ship wraps each day.
A professional wrestler herself, now married to Broken Matt Hardy, Rebecca Hardy (aka Reby Sky and Queen Rebecca), is a key member of Professional Wrestling’s most beloved family, consisting of brothers Jeff and Matt Hardy, Reby’s father Señor Benjamin, and Reby and Matt’s 1 year old son, King Maxel.
Reby’s pregnancy and the birth of Maxel led to a major transition for her career and one that accompanied a dramatic and wildly successful shift in the family’s wrestling story line.
In the meantime, Reby and Matt Hardy have found their footing as parents, with parenting practices that some would describe as attachment parenting. But Rebecca Hardy describes her parenting style as Crunchy Glamour. Read More
Mama Miti: Wangari Maathai and the Trees of Kenya is both a children’s biography of the Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize and a work of ecological and humanitarian inspiration that shows children that you can make a difference one person, one family, or one tree at a time. Read More
No, your baby – even your toddler – is NOT too big for a wrap! How do I know? Keep reading and you’ll see!
For a toddler wrap, you will want to get a good woven wrap. You will not get the support you want from a stretchy wrap. With a sturdy toddler wrap you will find out how comfortable wrapping a one year old, two year old, three year old, or four year old can be! Read More
Below, Kadri shares her experiences as someone who had a back condition before having children. She relates how becoming a mother fueled her search for a truly comfortable baby carrier. One that would make Babywearing with a bad back beneficial and enjoyable! Read More
If you are new to wrapping (or when you were new to wrapping), did you ever wonder why so many people love wrapping SO much?
Connection between you and your baby is absolutely the most important thing that wrapping facilitates.
Yet many parents are nervous about wraps specifically, choosing other baby carriers instead. These parents don’t become enthusiastic about woven wraps until the second, third, or fourth baby. Then, once they do get into wrapping, they rarely go back. What is it about wraps that lure babywearers away from other kinds of baby carriers? Read More
The push to normalize breastfeeding isn’t intended to embarrass or minimize the ways that any parents feed their babies. There are important reasons to normalize breastfeeding: breastfeeding can improve health in babies and mothers, can decrease infant mortality, and can ease poverty.
We are a music-loving family, and that’s why we wanted to make this wrap that looks like sheet music. There was nothing else like it at the time. But it couldn’t just be a nod towards music, it was for real musicians, so it had to be REAL music. Natibaby Notes is woven sheet music to Ode to Joy, the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, and a piece that most musicians have played. Read More
This is not so much an introduction to Mei Tais as it is a geeky comparison. When I first launched WrapYourBaby.com in 2005 I included instructions for both wraps and Mei Tais. My favorite carriers were woven wraps and Mei Tais and I wanted to teach others about them at a time when there weren’t local groups and spotting other babywearers “in the wild” was rare. Now that my site is dedicated to woven wrapping, I wanted to find a way to incorporate these images with my oldest daughter from all those years ago. I don’t have the originals anymore, so I can’t offer bigger versions, but I hope you will enjoy them anyway in the context of this comparison! Read More
Historical Note: This was one of the first pages on my original educational website, long before I added a store. WrapYourBaby.com was one of the earliest websites providing photo tutorials for wraps (and originally mei tais as well) before YouTube came along and provided video tutorials. I created this page to help explain the most popular kinds of carriers when they were less well known. Note that ABC was the popular descriptor for Asian-style carriers in 2005, and pouches were much more popular at the time – they are safe, ergonomic carriers and not another name for the dangerous bag carriers in which baby dangles by the parent’s hip. This page did not include descriptions of Soft Structured Carriers as the Ergo had not yet become so well known at the time that I wrote this (2005) and other brands of SSC were yet to follow.
This Mother’s Day help a refugee family by donating money or carriers to Carry the Future and comment on this Facebook post to tell me you did. I’ll choose one random winner to receive one of my exclusive woven wraps.
Carry the Future accepts donated soft structured carriers and mei tais which are personally brought to Greece by their volunteers. These volunteers are trained in the use of the carriers and meet refugees where they land in Greece or at other camps to pass out the carriers and teach the recipients how to use them. Because of the language barrier and the very short amount of time they have to teach the families safe use of the carrier, they only accept SSCs (soft structured carriers or buckle carriers) and Mei Tais: carriers that can be easily and quickly demonstrated visually.
Do I spy Pumpkin spice . . . everything? Must be time for Wrap Your Baby’s annual Facebook Costume Contest!
One entry will win a free woven wrap!
Start planning your babywearing costume now. Share it on the Wrap Your Baby Facebook page anytime in October. I will share some of the photos on social media or on my blog and on 3 November I will collect all entries to a contest album and voting will occur the first week of November. The photo with the most likes will win a woven wrap! Read More
I donated a wool Natibaby wrap to the Babywearing Group in Augusta, Georgia, with the request that they try it out in the Summer and tell me if the rumors are true: is a wool wrap really breathable and (relatively) cool in hot weather?
“Thick but not too heavy. I had this wrap in fall and it was perfect. Not too hot at all. Loved the way it wrapped, it got me hooked on baby wearing!” Kaitlyn G.
How I became a mother, Wrap Your Baby became a business, and you got 25% off a Natibaby wrap this week – read on!
I became a mother on September 9th 2004. It was a girl! I had planned to name her Molly if she was a girl but once he met her, David insisted that she didn’t look like a Molly.
Does she look like a Molly?
We spent our first day together in bed (all three of us) trying out names and the first one we all really liked was Ada. David’s father comes from a Jewish family and we loved that Ada is a form of the Hebrew name Adah, which is found in the bible and means “ornament” or “brightness.” I didn’t find out until later that Ada means First Born Daughter in the Nigerian language Igbo, and while we have no known ties to Nigeria, I love that it is appropriate in another language as well.
