Big Kid Babywearing

The baby REALLY wanted to spend some time with Dadda on a recent Sunday morning, but the Dadda REALLY wanted to finish putting up the tall wall shelves in the girls' brand-new-to-them bedroom. Fortunately, crunchy granola attachment parenting Momma always has a compromise handy:

I don't think that Matt really wants to repeat the experience of doing manual labor while carrying a 40-pound load on his back anytime soon, but the shelves DID get built, and the baby WAS all smiles in the meantime, so mission accomplished.

You're welcome.

Babywearing 101

I taught a babywearing class today at Barefoot Herbs Barefoot Kids. Babywearing is another one of the million+ things that I absolutely adored about having babies, one of the many things that I'm learning to grieve as the younger of my babes grows by the day big enough to run and hike and climb by herself without needing or wanting to be carried by Mama.

What is babywearing, you ask?

It's a way of life. It's a method of bonding to your newborn, promoting a positive breastfeeding experience. It's a way of comforting and calming a person new to this world, whose only idea of security is the warmth and closeness of an adult body. It's a connection to a more traditional, less detached society, in which babies and children are included necessarily and matter-of-factly in all aspects of life.

Babywearing helps babies cry less. Babies like to be in contact with bodies; they do not like to be put down alone--this is an instinct ranging from a time in which a helpless infant lying alone would be in desperate danger from any number of predators. Some babies tolerate being put down well, but for other babies, to be put down alone is confusing, frightening, and stressful. Stressed babies don't nurse as well or grow as quickly as happy babies.

Babywearing is good for the baby intellectually. Baby's job is to learn about her world. When worn she learns about bodies, about movement/motion, about her environment, about human behavior.

Babywearing is good for the baby physically. Conforming to a warm body shape is more comfortable than conforming to a carrier or crib. Constant motion stimulates the balance reflex and the inner ear. Proper positioning is good for hip/joint development. A carried baby avoids flat head syndrome. The wearer's body temperature regulates the baby's body temperature, and the wearer's respiration reminds the baby to breathe.

Babywearing socializes the baby. The baby sees faces from near head height, learning about people and their behavior, seeing dialogue, experiencing the wearer's interaction with the world. Proper positioning allows the baby to gauge her own appropriate level of stimulation.

Babywearing is especially beneficial for special needs children--preemies, ill children, children with mental or motor delays, children who fail to thrive. It's comforting, comfortable, and good for their brains at the same time. Less energy spent crying/fussing/maintaining their own body temperature is more energy spent growing and learning and healing.

One of the great things about native-style carriers, however, is that they're mainstream enough that you have a good choice of independent crafters and WAHMs and a few businesses from which to purchase one, but they're not so mainstream that ugly and ill-sewn ones are available at every Wal-mart in the country. It's open season, then, for the independent crafter and small business, and it's nice to find a product in which this is the case.

For ring slings, I like Divas N Babes, especially this red and black one, and Chicken Scratch Slings, especially the skulls one (I think skulls belong everywhere), and this one with the skulls and crossbones all over it, on account of I like things that are awesome.

For mei tais (which, seriously, I won't correct you or anything, but is pronounced "MAY-tie"), I way love, of course, BabyHawk, especially this one with the tattoo print, but I also like KozyCarrier, especially the blue camo fabric. I bought my own pink skulls and black mei tai from MaterialNana--it's a nice thin one, with no padding, good for going and getting gone.

But one of the other great things about native-style carriers is that you don't absolutely have to buy one--you can sew these yourself. The best instructions, I think, are from Jan Andrea at Home on the Web. I followed her instructions to make the ring slings I used for myself and gave as gifts, and the mei tai I used myself.

Scheduled

Where am I going to be on the weekends in the fall, when I sneak away from my evening freshman comp classes and masquerade as a non-teacher real person (Didn't you always sort of feel that your teachers weren't really real people--I mean, how could someone who got THAT into English GRAMMAR really be a real person?)? Here's where:

Saturday, August 23, 4:00-6:30: Cloth Diapering Workshop, Barefoot Herbs Barefoot Kids, Bloomington, IN. This is the funnest of workshops, because there's something about a big group of pregnant people and people with newborns that is just awesome fun. I give everyone a page of lecture notes, printed front and back in tiny print, and then I tell them every single thing there is to know about cloth diapers. I demo with dolls (the part where I hold the Cabbage Patch Doll upside down and shake her to show how well fitted diapers stay put just KILLS, I tell you), I show off my old ratty four-year-old diapers, I describe, in detail, the two different kinds of poop using a peanut butter metaphor--good times, people. Good times.

Do the joyful dance of vending at my first big craft fair along with me! Strange Folk is located just outside St. Louis, Missouri, one of my family's favorite places to play, and thus fits into my craft fair criteria of being indie, about a four-hour drive or close to family members, and including awesome stuff for the family to do around town and at the venue while I vend. I'm super-excited, but also weirdly jealous that although I'll be doing exactly what I've been wanting to do for a while, I'll have to miss out on the St. Louis Zoo and the St. Louis Science Center. Thank goodness The Container Store, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Torrid will still be open when I'm done for the day.

Saturday, October 11, 9-1: A Fair of the Arts, Showers Plaza, Bloomington, IN. This is the last farmer's market craft fair of the year! My computer crashed and we went to California at around the same time, so I unhappily can't remember if I was on top of life enough to apply to the Holiday Market here, but I sadly think that maybe I didn't. Oh, well...I'm not really that into Christmas, anyway.

Saturday, October 18, 4:00-6:30: Babywearing Workshop, Barefoot Herbs Barefoot Kids, Bloomington, IN. This is the other of the classes I teach just to be near cutie little baby patooties, with the added bonus of occasionally being permitted to hold a really live itty baby while talking a parent through putting on a carrier, or maybe even wearing said baby myself for a minute, just to demo, you know. We work our way through all the attachment parenting standards--pouches, ring slings, wraps, mei tais, and the ergo. No Baby Bjorns need apply.

Whew! What are you up to this fall?

Craft for My Kids Conclusion

The Craft for My Kids Swap is OVER, at least on the giving end. Being as my partner just, you know, gave birth and all, I reckon I can wait patiently to receive my goodies. Here's the swap gallery in which my partner very generously compliments my crafts, and here are my photos of what I made:
My partner's nursery is decorated in blue and sage, so this denim quilt has a sage wool felt backing and binding and is tied with an embroidery thread that sort of, but doesn't quite, match the backing:



I made this baby powder by sieving cornstarch over and over with lavender essential oil. It smells so excellently awesome that I wish I had an excuse to, um, powder myself...I used some different essential oils in these vegetable glycerin soaps. Lavender is calming and soothing on the skin, peppermint is energizing and helps upset tummies, and lemon-eucalyptus clears up stuffy noses: I think babywearing is critical to attachment parenting, which I think is critical to raising calm, confident, creative, and self-actualized people. I make a lot of these ring slings, and I teach babywearing locally at Barefoot Herbs+Barefoot Kids, so I felt very comfortable making a ring sling for my partner, but I still wanted to weight-test it, of course. Yeah, I think it will hold a newborn...One of my partner's kiddos loves turtles, so I wanted to make a turtle stuffed animal out of felted wool, but I never ended up totally happy with the pattern. I've got some more ideas, though, so I'm going to keep sussing it out:

I've made so many of these crayons in the past year that, seriously, the girls are running out of crayons. Is it still a recycled craft if you have to buy your kids new stuff so you can craft with their old stuff?This is my most favorite thing ever--I made my partner four of these, in different colors. These are made out of old T-shirts, y'all!I like to make kiddos doll ring slings to match their mommas' slings. Only Sydney uses them to carry actual baby dolls, though. Willow is more partial to hauling dinosaurs...On the whole, this swap was a huge success, and I haven't even received my own package of goodies! I learned some terrific new skills that are already serving me well, which is one of the big reasons why I love these swaps, and I developed some great new ideas for new products for my web shop and craft fairs. The essential oils soaps went over really well at their first fair last weekend, and I'll be bringing out the tie-dyed T-shirt bibs really soon. The felted wool turtle still needs some work, but I think it has potential.

I spent a little time today making black bias tape to frame up a tie-dye quilt I pieced, but most of the day was spent running a child-labor fruit salad sweatshop in my kitchen in preparation for Willow's school birthday party this afternoon. Willow's teacher, who is some kind of preschool evil genius, has a beautiful birthday celebration for her students. At circle time each birthday child gives a proper introduction of their family to the rest of the group--"This is my momma, Julie, and my daddy, Matt, and my baby sister, Synee"--and a large model of the sun is placed in the center of the ellipse on which the children sit. When it's your child's turn, she holds the large model of the earth and walks around the ellipse as many times as the earth has been around the sun since she's been born, while a parent reads a brief biography of the child, prepared earlier with the child's help. Willow was insistent that I mention she'd been to France as a baby, for instance. After every birthday child has had their turn, all the birthday children stand in the center of the ellipse while the teachers and their schoolmates sing the "Tall as a Tree" song to them. Reader, did I weep? Oh, freakin' yeah, I did.

Babywearing Baby

When Willow was a baby, Matt and I wore her nearly all the time in a couple of ring slings I'd made--blue plaid for him, purple stripes for me. Babywearing is terrific for the baby's emotional well-being, physical stimulation, intellectual growth, you name it. Ring slings are terrific for wearing babies, newborn through sitting up, because they're adjustable, versatile, and comfy. They're not great for older kids, however, because their weight isn't evenly distributed--then you need something more ergonomically correct. By the time Willow was a toddler, however, about Sydney's age, I'd completely stopped wearing her, and that's because of this:

See the package hanging around my neck? That's Sydney, taking her turn at being worn in the ring sling. And that's why my back has been killing me, now that Sydney is almost two and therefore almost a big girl. Thus begins the search for the big-girl baby carrier.

The mei tai is my big-girl carrier of choice--it's a soft Asian-style carrier, modified in the US to be easier to put on independently (traditionally, Asian mommies were never alone with their babies, and traditionally, American mommies nearly always are). You can wear your kiddo in front or back, vertically, with weight distributed over your shoulders, across your back, and around your waist.

There are a lot of really beautiful mei tais being made by stay-at-home moms just like me, only they sew better and have better taste. McKenzie Shields of Bunchkin Designs makes the most beautiful baby carriers I've ever seen, with lots of rich brocades and gadgety doo-dads. I also really, really like the mei tais at Babyhawk, on account of their awesome punk fabrics. The only problem with this terrific assortment of beautiful mei tais, all of them exactly what I want? They're super-expensive, as they ought to be, and I am super-poor.

I was super-sad for a while, lusting after the awesomeness of the mei tai, but what you have to do when that happens is remember your convictions. I don't buy things new; I craft them using recycled materials. Never mind that I've never made anything this complicated before and don't have the materials to make one now. I need a padded and beautiful fabric for the back--Matt's Aunt Vicki gave Willow a Hawaiian-print baby quilt, actually from Hawaii, when she was born, but the girls haven't used it in a year. I need some long, long straps, made out of a bottomweight fabric or home dec material--I'm never going to fit again into the half-dozen pairs of jeans I wore between Willow and Sydney, and even if I did, hell, they wouldn't be in style.

I was inspired by Jan Andrea's site years ago when I designed my ring slings, and she also has these terrific instructions for a mei tai, but mostly I just fiddled around. I quilted the shoulder straps to the back, and bound all my edges in denim to keep from having to hem and turn, except for the straps, which I topstitched around but I'm going to let the edges fray because that will be very cool. It's not perfect, but I did make it, and instead of ninety dollars it was free, and it's perfect for me and my almost big girl: