I was going to make a video of a back carry, but Cassidy wanted to nurse and would not be put off. So there I was standing on the beach nursing with him in my arms, holding a wrap. What could I do? I wrapped him up while he nursed! I thought I was improvising, but watching the video, I realize now that I ended up tying a hip cross carry with my (almost) ten month old in a cradle position.
Tying a wrap around a baby who is already nursing is often the easiest way to learn to nurse in a wrap, because instead of having a hungry baby becoming frantic and making you frantic while trying to learn a new skill, your baby is happily nursing from the beginning, buying you contented time to figure it out!
I would, however, start in a seated position, and not standing in the middle of a beach! I made a video of this with Annabelle when she was very young, in our living room–on the very couch that she was born on, in fact! In this video I had already pretied a front cross carry. I sit down and insert her into it, latch her on, and then get everything tightened up so that it becomes truly hands-free.
Usually while wrapping up my nursing baby, he gets jostled off the breast at some point, and I just stop to help him get latched on gain, then continue.
Patience is important as staying calm will get you a lot farther faster than anything else! If you work at it for a few minutes and it almost works, then baby wants to get down, or needs to burp, or even just because youâve had enough and donât want to get frustrated, go ahead and stop. Work on it more the next time. Youâve made progress–take a win!
A note on nursing in the cradle position: Make sure you can see your babyâs face, and that your babyâs nostrils are clear and have access to plenty of fresh air.
You also need to be aware of your babyâs airway which is especially delicate in very young infants. In order to keep the airway clear, be sure that your babyâs neck is not bent forward bringing your babyâs chin to his or her chest as that can fold the tube closed that your baby needs for air. You should be able to fit two adult fingers between chin and chest at any time.
Babywearing at the Grand Canyon is the way to go! A stroller might be able to get to the railing overlooking the Grand Canyon, but from there all you get is a view like a postcard. While we would love to hike through the canyon, my husband and I are saving that for when the kids are older . . . possibly moved out đ Today we settled for plunging down into the canyon only a short way. Enough to get a sense of the immensity and a taste of the craggy winding way. Here’s a picture of the trail, complete with icy patches:
So David wrapped 2 year old Annabelle in a front wrap cross carry (our 4.6 meter EllaRoo just makes it around them for this carry) and took our seven year old by the hand to help her navigate the icy trail. I popped Cassidy (9 months) on my back in a Short Double Hammock Carry with my 3.1 meter Inka Storchenwiege (video below) and threw a warm babywearing kindercoat over us, leaving my arms and hands free for balance, and photography (whichever seems most urgent at any given time).
Wrapping allowed us to get the experience we wanted, and it allowed all three of our little ones to get an experience they wouldnât have otherwise (like sleeping through the Grand Canyon). Because, life is for living, no matter your age, and there are endless possibilities waiting to be experienced in every juicy detail!
Nicole posted pictures on our Facebook page of her custom Double Hammock Carry. She doesnât like how those rucksack straps feel (they dig into her shoulders). So she does the DHC tied Tibetan style. Problem solved!
Any carry that has rucksack straps can be done Tibetan instead. Crossing the straps over your chest like in a Back Wrap Cross Carry can also be done instead of rucksack straps.
These variations can help solve the problems some mamas have with straps cutting off circulation to their arms, or with the straps slipping off their shoulders. Many people love rucksack straps, but every bodyâs different so try âem all and see which style makes you most comfortable.
If you are a pregnant or breastfeeding mom, you want to make sure you are not pinching any milk ducts because a clogged duct will NOT make your life easier. So when wrapping over any part of your chest, spread well, tighten evenly to avoid pressure points, and pay attention to any discomfort!
Hip Carries have never been my favorite, but there have been phases when I found it very handy and this was one of those times:
my son was 8 months old
we were traveling somewhere different every day
it was cold
Hip Cross Carry was my go-to hip carry. I like how simple and versatile it is!
Here we are at the playground appreciating the ability pop baby in and out of the wrap easily:
The Deluxe KinderCoat is made to use with front, back, and hip carries, but the regular KinderCoat is only designed for front and back carries. Nonetheless, I find it pretty easy to use with a child in a hip carry, and you could do the same with a self-made babywearing coat.
In this video I’m using the insert of the regular Kindercoat. It works exactly the same with the full coat:
And here’s where I demonstrate the versatility I was talking about that comes with Hip Cross Carry:
Have you dreamed of owning the totally stylish and flattering European MamaJacket or MamaPoncho, but can’t justify the price tag? You’ve shown remarkable restraint in the face of really beautiful, and practical, wares, and now you are being rewarded with a significant savings: Don’t miss this price!
20% off all MamaJackets and MamaPonchos through 15 December 2011!
These are easy to get on and off yourself and your baby in a front carry or back carry with a wrap or most other popular baby carriers. They are beautiful and sophisticated wool garments, in gorgeous colors, made in Europe. Both are suitable as maternity wear as well, and the MamaJacket is a beautiful jacket for when you go out without your baby as well, so it is really three-in-one!
Don’t get caught out in the cold this Winter! A babywearing coat makes it easy to keep you and your baby warm while babywearing without being frumpy. Going out won’t be such a chore!
I canât tell you how excited I am to roll out a few new, beautiful gifts Iâve been working on for YOU! Talking with the Wrap Your Baby community on Facebook helped me pinpoint what sort of things would be appreciated and I was fortunate enough to get tons of feedback from the wonderful ladies (and occasional gentlemen) there so I am confident these will be just what is needed and wanted . . .
A magnetic picture frame for your moment of baby wrap triumph!
My gifts to you:
A cool magnet: pop out the inner magnet and the outer portion becomes a magnetic picture frame on your fridge. Print a photo of you (or your husband, or your mom) wrapping your baby and voila–instant WrapStar!
Some babywearing info cards to help you out when you get the inevitable questions about what your wrap is, where you got it, and how you use it. Also nice for informing people who are worried about the safety of your wrap. If you are part of a babywearing group or any other group that is a good resource for babywearing, write the contact info or meeting place and time on the back of the card. If not, and you are willing to help out newbies yourself, put your own phone number or email address so that people you hand the card to can find local babywearing help!
Your own babywearing bumper sticker! Tell the world that you are keeping your baby close to your heart!
A pair of beautiful koala earringsâŠand, of course, the koala is babywearing!
An instructional wrapping DVD.
All the gifts will be included with any wrap or baby wearing coat/outerwear order between now and Christmas.
If you want to have a magnet, bumper sticker, or info cards for yourself or a loved one (stocking stuffer?) without placing an order this month, send me an email requesting them and Iâll try to get it out. I say âtryâ because I canât predict the volume of response, and I donât want to make any promises I canât keep (busy mom with three little kids over here, you know)!
I love the idea of a tandem costume. You know, you and your wrapped up baby (or toddler) are something together. A Kangaroo and a joey (as sported by Alyson Hannigan in the above photo). An owl in a tree. A two-headed monster.
Whether you’ve got older kids to take trick-or-treating, or you’re dressing up for a party, I want to see those tandem costumes! Post your photo on the Wrap Your Baby Facebook page next week to join in. We’ll count up which photo gets the most “likes” and I’ll send a warm fleece babywearing cover* to the lucky tandem pair!
But just for participating, winner or not, you will get 10% off a purchase from my store! Just send me an email with a link to your photo on Facebook, and I’ll send you the coupon code!
So, everyone who posts a picture gets 10% off, and one winning photo will get a free babywearing cover for winter! It’s a win-win-win situation! I can’t wait to see what you come up with!
*if the winner is outside the US, I will have to ask you to pay shipping–sorry!
Some costume brainstorming ideas from the community at large:
I wish I could send a prize to everyone! I am not kidding when I say this was hard. In the end I practically just tossed a coin because I couldn’t stop going round and round on these great photos. I had photos of children learning about the world from a wrap, babies were snuggling in perfect contentment on a parent’s chest, mommies babywearing and daddies babywearing, infants and toddlers, broad smiles, wide eyes, and sleepy grins, wrapping in the water and in the snow, in the orchard and in the city…
It’s just what I wanted: the variety of where wrapping takes you, but I didn’t realize how impossible the choosing would be. There were also some really stunningly beautiful photos that would win a photography contest, but I was looking for context, too: all the places that wrapping can take you, how much of life you can experience with your baby!
Do you feel sorry for me, yet? No, you just want me to shut up and show you some pictures, already! Okay, okay, here’s what you want:
The two mommas who have a free babywearing pendant coming their way are:
Candace, who so epitomized “mommy” that the very description of her photo won the hearts of so many of you–like April who commented, “A picture of how babywearing brings joy and simplicity to what could be drudgery. We all have babies, we all clean up messes on hands and knees, with mussed hair. No matter the ethnicity, the creed, the country. We are ALL mothers!”
And Amanda, who gave me scores of photos of her family wrapping with multiple parents and through multiple children (sometimes both kids at once) across years in the snow, in orchards, on hay rides and firetrucks…so here’s just a sample:
I’m going to make these photos into a movie about baby wrapping, but in the meantime, here’s are a few of the others I had to choose between:
I asked for photos of “where wrapping has taken you” and was flooded with beautiful pictures of happy wrapped babies đ
One winner was already chosen, but I promised three, and I’m having a hell of a time choosing those last two winners. Narrowing it down has caused me an entire Saturday of agonizing, and now I seem able to narrow no narrower:
Do I pick the breathtaking moment of sibling bonding in the woods?
Or the mom with baby on back peeking through leaves in an orchard?
I’m sorely tempted to choose the photo of a mom on hands and knees, cleaning up a mess, grinning up through mussed hair with a happily undressed baby on her back–you know, the one I can relate to most of the time!
But then there’s the way wrapping brought a little Native American baby to her first powwow…
So help me out, here. Based solely on my descriptions, which photo do you choose?
For the past two and a half months we’ve been traveling (those of you ordering wraps may see varying postmarks!) and the wrap has taken us everywhere from way out in nature, to the Staten Island Ferry. We haven’t missed a step.
I can’t say it’s more helpful than when we’re at home though, because I use it just as much when I’m being a domestic stay at home mother and housewife type.
And conducting business on the road? A little tricky because the internet connection and electricity are not reliable–we’re not in hotel rooms, but in our motorhome. And it’s a very little motorhome so we have to take out the kids’ carseats when we get an order to take a wrap out from the underseat storage. This hasn’t been too bad, since we just pretty much do this once a day before we drive, and the carseats are taken out every night to change the seats into the girls’ bed anyway. We sure could have used some of that storage space for clothes, though. Or craft supplies!
But we’ve kept up relatively well with customer communications and we’ve maintained a speedy shipping rate, and I think the experiment could be summarized as a success!
We’re back in Florida now, where all the grandparents are, and where our house is still under negotiations. Still under negotiations means it still belongs to us, so that gives us somewhere to park and plug in while we’re here. And we’re staying a while because we want to have Thanksgiving with our whole family, since we won’t be here for Christmas. And we’ve got plenty to do before we leave around the first of December. I would love to get some work done on the Wrap Your Baby business, including but not limitted to:
picking photo contest winners (from the contest I held a few months back)
compiling a photo montage from the contest entries and sharing it with the world
making a super quick “nursing from FWCC” video
making a tandem babywearing video
putting together a pregnancy wrapping video
updating my mailing list
adding gift certifcates to my website
adding a couple of products for sale on my website
adding some sponsorship to my blog
We have a lot of goals that are not Wrap Your Baby related, too, so we’ll see how much gets done! But as always, I’m available by email, on Facebook, and we are shipping out orders every day. And at least I’m not bored!
My first little wrapling is now a tall, strong, talkative girl who is about to have her seventh birthday! For those of you who are still in babyland, you might like to know that she is much easier than she used to be, a great help to me with the little ones, and very sweet company. Worth all the sleepless nights! Happy birthday, Ada!
Out on the rocks into the chilly Atlantic on the coast of Maine in Acadia National Park!
Cassidy couldn’t have come with us in a stroller, and wrapping kept him safe while leaving our hands free to keep ourselves and our other kids safe on the rocks. More about our time in Maine at Free Range Dreams.
Annabelle, no stroller baby, had a blast climbing and playing among the rocks (she’s 1/8th troll) but after an hour of this, she was ready to be in arms and cuddle her way back (to where we had foolishly left our shoes and socks too close to the encroaching waves).
This is a my-loss-is-your-gain sale. Here’s what happened: A tiny, unnoticed leak in our motorhome got to where my Bali Breeze Kimber wraps were stored. All of my Bali Breeze wraps are in one place except for the Kimber which just didn’t fit. So I’m fortunate that only the Kimbers were affected!
So I’ve washed and dried them and now my entire stock of Kimbers is in like-new, unworn, washed-once condition. Since buyers are supposed to wash these wraps before wearing them, I should really charge extra for the service, but instead I’ve decided to offer these wraps at a discount:
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