What do I mean by wearing your baby?

Well for hundreds of years and prior to prams women across the world ‘wore their babies.’ There was not many other means of transporting babies 350 years ago, you could not exactly hop in your station wagon and zip down the road for some milk.  Babies were handled and carried everywhere.  In most eastern cultures (and still to this day) babies were passed from mother to other family members and were rarely put in cots or cribs.  It was not uncommon that babies were carried for the first year of their life.

Bark and Flax

In many different cultures throughout the world they used different things to carry the babies from pieces of bark to flax bags and the more traditional cloth or capes.  Since around 1900 wearing you baby has been phased out.  Mothers stopped listening to the advice of other mothers and started listening to male doctors as they were deemed experts in the matter.  Along with the loss of wearing your baby the benefits were lost too.  Previous to the 1980’s wearing your baby was seen as something done by hippies and poorer people who could not afford a pram or stroller.  A chap called Raynor Garner created a basic sling for his wife to carry his children around.  It was then developed by Dr William Sears and the basic design you can still see today across many different varieties of slings and carriers.

Benefits

You may be wondering why I am talking about wearing your baby and how it can help with colic.  Well let me cover a few benefits of wearing your baby:

• Easy to carry baby around, cook dinner, go to shops meanwhile soothing your baby
• Skin on skin contact, one of the greatest things you can do for the little one to know they are safe and warm
• You can get to know your little one very well when they are in such close proximity
• A great way for the new baby (and especially premature babies) to adapt and learn about life outside of the womb
• Mothers can breastfeed handsfree whilst on the phone or shopping.
• You can exercise whilst baby sleeps
• No need for heavy prams or car seats
• Being elevated stimulates the babies senses and helps with brain development
• Babies are known to cry by as much as 50 percent less when carried
• Babies  are quickly able to develop a sense of security and trust when they are carried
• Plus the one I love is that it feels amazing to carry your son or daughter around with you and look at them when ever you choose
• It is known to be great for mothers who may be a depressed as they do not need to interact with baby as it is right there all the time for when they feel ready to kiss or cuddle
• It’s also a great way for other people to carry the baby

How It helped me

From the age of 1 week through to 3 months my son was very colicky.  We found Dr Harvey Karp’s techniques very useful indeed, see my review on his products for more details.  From about 4pm until 10pm unless he was carried my son would scream his little lungs out.  I did not know such a noise could come from something so tiny!  So using Dr Karp’s techniques I would get him off  to sleep and then put on a baby sling and walk him round and round the house for hours.  If I tried to sit down he would cry, if I stopped walking he would cry.  Dinner’s would be eaten whilst moving and many other household tasks were undertaken whilst wearing him.

Great Tool

It is a great tool for the colicky period and one of the great remedies for colic I found.  Again it is one of the things that when you look at it from the babies perspective it makes sense.  To be near a beating heart, warm, comfortable in a sling all squished up like in the womb.  Safe and secure, it is recreating the best environment possible for your child that is going to serve them best through this tough colic time.  I hope some of this info helps, please leave a comment if you found it useful.

Click here to find a great sling product from Belle Baby Carriers that I would highly recommend.

Thanks for reading

mitch