Birth doesn’t always go to plan. Sometimes it does go to plan and that plan involves a caesar. This can present its own babywearing challenges and Rae, who’s been there twice, lets us in on her strategies for babywearing after major surgery. 

“I’ll be back in a minute…” so said my husband, as he popped his brand new baby, all of one hour old, into our nice, clean ring sling. It was new and crispy. I was exhausted and sore, and, well , very high on the drugs from the c-section. Those first days in hospital are truly amazing - the desire to keep our babies close is so overwhelming.

But how, post C section?

In those first days after the birth, the best place for Mum and baby is in bed, snuggled up skin to skin, getting to know each other. On our way out of the hospital, I finally got a chance to use that ring sling:

For the first six weeks or so at home, I remember being just SO sore, as my body slowly healed. The best sling for this period is just a simple ring sling. There are several ring slings commonly sold through baby stores, but they are all too structured for my taste - too much padding- they severely limit the comfort possible for Mum and baby. They are designed for a very loose cradle carry, which will sit just above the stitches - way too low for comfort!

A simple, unstructured ring sling can be worn initially in a cradle hold and also in a tummy to tummy hold. Both positions keep the baby well away from the incision site, and allow the Mum to sit down and rest in a chair whilst snuggling the baby - a definite plus in that hectic time of adjustment! Instructions are available to make your own, perhaps from a sarong or some fabric from Spotlight - a wonderful thing to do prior to the birth of your first baby!

Once the scar had started to heal, it was time to get some exercise… and the next sling we found really helpful was a simple mei tai. A soft structured carrier would be equally as good for this stage, as would a wrap - they each have their advantages. I have and love each of these styles of carrier:

• A mei tai is easy on and easy off, placing the straps comfortably for a front carry post c-section is very easy, a great help with muscles that are easily tired out.
• A wrap can be worn in Front Cross Carry, which was incredibly easy and supportive of those weak tummy muscles!
• Finally, a soft structured carrier is simply wonderful - there are some really comfortable ones out there. These two shouldered carriers are characterised by a lovely fit through the waist straps, and the baby being placed close to Mum’s tummy with very supportive, comfortable shoulder straps. The more structured waist, with some padding, can be a nice help to remind you to pull the tummy muscles in.

When our second baby arrived three months ago, after another c-section, I took out that ring sling and got to wear it all over again! Only this time, I was running around after a busy toddler all too soon..

This time, I really found a wrap worn in a Front Cross Carry was invaluable. It was so handy to be able to pop the baby in and out of the wrap for feeding, whilst being able to spend some time with my daughter.

This particular wrap carry is very fast and easy to learn, and provides lovely back support for those weak muscles! I also left it on all day long - so we could drive to the park or shops, then pop the baby back in, get the toddler out of the car - and enjoy some time together. Here we are at about 3 months post c-section.

Thanks to Rae for her insight into babywearing post-caesar. Have you had a caesar? Did you babywear afterwards? What worked for you? What didn’t? Leave a comment and let us know!

Welcome to the Carnival of Breastfeeding! Our theme this month is “Personal Stories” and my story of traveling to one of my favourite places, nursling and wearee in tow, is below. If you’ve arrived here for the first time, you might want to check out our series on breastfeeding hands free. If you’re a regular, make sure you check out the other carnival participants below.

He stirs beneath the mosquito net. He edges closer, still half asleep. I know it must be close to four since the monks are chanting in the grey pre-dawn and the valley is silent but for their hum. He breaks the stillness, demanding my sleepy attention. I roll closer and feed him. He drifts off to sleep and I am left listening to the Buddhist cannon chanted across the valley.

An hour and a half later, the Imam chants the call to prayer and his voice sounds across the town. The Buddhists have finished their praying before the Muslims have begun and my little one has felt the passage of time too. He edges closer, pressing himself into me. As the sun is dawning, I feed him again, listening to the Imam’s prayer, piercing and clear as the day brightens.

By the time the church bells begin to toll, I am out of patience with my nursling. His father has taken him away and I luxuriate in my loneliness beneath the mosquito net listening to the bells ring out from just down the hill.

After the Christians have finished, a new hymn begins. Staccato and impatient, a language all of its own, the car horns signal the beginning of a new phase in this valley’s daily round of devotions: commercial enterprise and the accompanying traffic chaos has begun.

This is Kandy, Sri Lanka. There is no other place like it.

These sounds are a morning ritual in Kandy, an  ancient city tucked into a valley in the mountains of central Sri Lanka. Those frequent night-time and early morning feeds were our personal experience of that cultural ritual.

My son is Sri Lankan by descent, though Australian by birth, and in the New Year holiday of 2007-2008, we traveled back to the place of his father’s birth to introduce him to his extended family and his second home.

Travelling in a foreign country with a small child can be a challenge at best. Travelling in a poverty-stricken foreign country can add a new dimension to that challenge. We were lucky enough to take our son at a stage in his life when he was still worn and breastfeeding regularly. All too regularly at night, alas, which is one of the reasons I’m so very familiar with the sounds of Kandy in the early morning!

Breastfeeding helped us negotiate the intricacies of travel in several ways. Firstly, we never had to worry about clean drinking water for him. He drank water when it was safe, but if it wasn’t convenient to find it at any given point, there was a ready-made drink on hand. As a toddler, he ate solid food and was very familiar with the local cuisine, but there were inevitably some changes and differences. Breastfeeding allowed us to make up any nutritional gap. Breastfeeding also provided an important part of our routine that helped him cope with the changes that traveling entails.

Breastfeeding was a way for me to connect with the other mothers in the family. We were vastly different people from vastly different places, but our children were all fed in the same way. In a country where extended nursing is the norm and poverty is rife, it’s obvious that breastfeeding provides an important protection for infants and small children. There was a respect for the process that we shared on both sides of the cultural divide, but at the same time it was just a normal part of mothering.

The other major part of our traveling experience was babywearing. I remember tucking him up into a wrap one tropical night in Negombo and feeding him to sleep as our relatives chatted about us. The mosquitoes were ravenous that evening (and dengue fever was rife), but the wrap mercifully protected most of him from their attention, acted as a light blanket in the tropical weather and screened him from outside distractions as he drifted off to sleep in an unfamiliar place.

 
From his vantage point on our backs, our son was able to experience the full richness of Sri Lanka for himself. Whether it was getting Kozy with the elephants, attending temple for the first time with his father or walking the beaches at sunset, our son experienced all of it.

Like breastfeeding, babywearing was certainly useful from a practical standpoint. Negotiating multiple airports with a toddler who’s not just out of his time zone, but totally out of patience is much easier when you’re not juggling a pram. At our destination, however, babywearing was essential.

As a traveling rule of thumb, any street that’s just as likely to have elephants in the traffic stream as motorbikes is probably not a place where toddlers should roam freely and prams run easily. Another important piece of information for travellers: elephants do not follow road rules. Because when you’re driving an elephant down the main (one way) street of a major city against the traffic, it’s up to the rest of the city to get out of your way.

We are returning to Sri Lanka again this year with our son and our younger child. Another nursling, another wearee. More elephants to avoid and monkeys to fend off. Poverty to attempt to explain, thousands of years of history to observe. There are more memories to be made, more experiences to share. I’m quite certain I’ll be breastfeeding and babywearing on this trip, once again. I don’t know if I’ll be doing those things in tandem, but the unknown is one of the wonderful parts of traveling.

Other Carnival of Breastfeeding participants who are sharing their stories today:

• Breastfeeding Failures and Success at GrudgeMom
• Hannah’s Weaning by Amber at Strocel.com
• Weaning a Toddler at Laura’s Blog
• Life, Death and Nourishment at Stepping off the Spaceship
• Sticking with it: Our Breastfeeding Story by So Fawned.
• How Breastfeeding Changed my Life at the MotherNews Blog
• Flying Breastmilk at All That Sazz
• Ben’s Story at Massachusetts Friends of Midwives
• The “I Told You So” at Breastfeeding 1-2-3
• “They said his latch was fine” at the Motherwear blog
• Breastfeeding is not easy, but it’s certainly best for baby at Chronicles of a Nursing Mom
• Can Early Public Breastfeeding Sightings Shape One’s Future Breastfeeding Practices? at Nursing Moms Unite
• Celebrating My Chest, in Honor of Breastfeeding at Zen Mommy
• Breastfeeding After Reduction Surgery at The Towells
• Breastfeeding in Public at Blacktating
• Breastfeeding Made my the Mother I am at Breastfeeding Mums

As you’ve probably noticed, we’re running a series on breastfeeding hands free. This is a “bookmark” post with links to all of our hands free topics and will be updated as we add to the series.

Breastfeeding hands free, instructions by carrier:

• Ring sling
• Mei tai
• Long wraps: Part One
• Long wraps: Part Two
• Short wraps

Have you got the skills and time to do a breastfeeding hands free post? Have we not covered your favourite carrier yet? Are you a size larger or smaller than average? Do you or your nursling have special circumstances that need to be taken into account? We’d love to feature your know-how on the blog. Please drop us a line in the comments section!

As part of our “How to Breastfeed Hands free series” which started here, this post discusses breastfeeding in a long wrap. Specifically, we’ll discuss breastfeeding upright in a Front Wrap Cross Carry. If you’re not familiar with the carry, instructions can be found here. Another carry with a similar technique is the Front Cross Carry which is slightly cooler. Instructions for this carry are here.

Breastfeeding upright in this carry involves the same technique as breastfeeding in a mei tai which Sarah explained last week.

• Place baby in the carry, untie and bounce down to the correct level (mouth at nipple height or a little higher) and retie.
• Latch the baby (if you are larger breasted, it may be easier not to undo your bra, but to remove the breast from over the top of it for extra support, see the mei tai post for more detail).
• Once baby is latched, you can use the crosses of the wrap to offer head support or privacy as desired.
• That done, go about your business! (Thanks to Lara for some great spur-of-the-moment photography.)

It’s obvious that this method of breastfeeding works best for a child with some head control. It’s also possible to nurse newborns (and other sized kids) using this carry in a cradle position, however that’s the subject of its own post in the future. The upright nature of this method is great for babies with reflux who don’t do well being breastfed in a cradle position. See this post for more details on babywearing with reflux.

Do you breastfeed in public? Do you prefer to do it in a carrier? Why? Leave a comment and let us know!

As part of our “How to Breastfeed Handsfree series” which started here, Sarah takes us through breastfeeding handsfree in a mei tai.

I find Mei Tais the easiest carrier to breastfeed in, as they require very little adjustment from a normal carrying position.

All you need to do is untie the shoulder straps and lower the baby down a little until her mouth is almost level with your breast.  It’s OK if she’s slightly too high - she can lean down to reach the breast and I find this better than having her dangling too low in the carrier.

Retie the straps either under her bottom or around her back, but keep them loose until you have her latched on.

To latch the baby on, I usually reach through the side of the carrier and lift my breast to her.  Instead of unhooking my bra flap, I lift my breast out of the top of the bra, so that the bra helps to keep it elevated and steady if I’m walking.

Once the baby’s latched on, tie the shoulder straps tighter.  I usually tie behind the baby’s back to keep her body pulled in close, which keeps her weight steady and comfortable for me, even with her lower and looser than in a normal carry.

Welcome to the Carnival of Breastfeeding! Our theme this month is “how to…” and we all know there’s a lot of know-how that goes into breastfeeding! If you’re new here, take a look around. If you’re a regular, you may want to check out some of the other “how to” guides featured below.

This post is the first in a series which will show you how to breastfeed, hands free. It’s a great way of liberating yourself from the couch when your baby is having an all-day nurse-athon. It’s a perfect way of fulfilling your infant’s need to nurse when at the same time your toddler needs you to play, chase or just cuddle. It’s also a subtle way to breastfeed in public, if that is your desire.

This post will show you how to breastfeed hands free in a ring sling. Future posts will show you how to breastfeed in other types of carriers. We will also show you how to use items you already have around the home to breastfeed hands free.

It’s a common misconception that larger or smaller-breasted women cannot breastfeed hands free in a sling. Kate, who is significantly better endowed than our model below, said “I thought I would never ever be able to hands free [breastfeed]… then I found ring slings and I was in heaven!” In the future, we’ll bring you a photo tutorial specifically dedicated to the larger-breasted nursing Mum.

At the other end of the spectrum, smaller-breasted women can also breastfeed hands free. Emma, who wears an A-cup, said she sometimes “find[s] it hard to breastfeed hands free in a sling because I don’t have the ability to move the feeding apparatus to meet baby’s mouth. I can only move baby’s mouth to the apparatus.” Emma eloquently describes the main point to remember when breastfeeding in a sling. Like ordinary hands-on breastfeeding, the baby is moved to the breast rather than the breast to the baby.

A note of warning: breastfeeding hands free can be a difficult skill to master. It can be done with any age of nursling. However, if you are wearing a newborn, please keep in mind these safety recommendations.

Breastfeeding an infant, hands free

Here, we have Aurelia, Steph and a ringsling. The top rail is white and the bottom rail is brown, Steph will adjust the rails  independently to support Aurelia while she nurses.

• Take one ringsling and one baby. Start with the rings high on the shoulder. 

• Put the baby’s feet through the sling, sliding her down through the gap between the fabric and your body.

• Rotate baby across to your hip and pull the fabric up around the baby. This is the hip carry. If your baby is smaller, you can start in a tummy to tummy carry. An older baby can nurse from a hip carry if you wish.

• To continue into the classic cradle nursing position, bring both the legs together and lower the baby toward the breast.

• Latch the baby. Notice the top rail is still loose, Steph is still supporting the baby in the correct position.

• Once the baby is correctly latched, only then tighten the top (white) and bottom (brown) rails to support the baby’s weight. Notice Steph’s hand coming away from the baby as the rails are tightened.

• Bring the top rail over baby’s head to support it and adjust as necessary. If you have a newborn remember safe positioning. Now that you’re done, breastfeed in comfort and handsfree!

Notice that no breast has been exposed to the camera lens in this process. This is an excellent way to breastfeed in public if doing so makes you nervous.

Breastfeeding an older child, hands free

Breastfeeding handsfree can also be done with a larger child. It’s an excellent way to nurse an older baby or toddler to sleep away from home. The process is more or less the same, so we’ll just give you the end result. It’s surprisingly subtle for such a big kid!

Conclusion

We hope you’ve found this post useful. If you haven’t had a chance to breastfeed hands free before we hope you give it a go. If you don’t have a ringsling and are thinking of getting one, you can see how to get started with them here. In the meantime, look out in the coming weeks for our other tutorials on breastfeeding handsfree in other types of carriers.

 Other participants in the Carnival of Breastfeeding:

• How to Breastfeed (Or Just Look Like You Know What You’re Doing), by Mamasaga
• How to Pump Successfully at Work, by The Marketing Mama
• How to Get Baby to Take a Bottle, by BabyREADY
• How to help your baby kick the nipple shield habit, by Motherwear
• How to Get Breastfeeding off to a Good Start, by Strocel
• How to become a breastfeeding support professional, by Breastfeeding Mums Unite!
• How to care for a sick nursling, by Milkact
• How to increase milk supply using supplements, by Maher Family Grows
• How to wean a breastfeeding toddler, by Breastfeeding Mums
• How to treat a cold while breastfeeding, by Blacktating
• How to be comfortable around a breastfeeding Mom, by It’s All About the Hat
• How to Get a Spouse to Help With Breastfeeding, by Mama Knows Breast
• Using Youtube to STOP nosey questions!, by Zen Mommy
• How to (Naturally) Increase Your Milk Supply - Try Seaweed!, by MoBoleez
• How to deal with family members who aren’t supportive of breastfeeding, by Happy Bambino
• How to teach your baby nursing manners, by Breastfeeding 123
• How to improve milk supply through nutrition, by Natural Birth and Babycare
• Tandem Nursing: How to Do It Without Driving Yourself and Your Nurslings Crazy, by Tiny Grass

Do you breastfeed handsfree? What has it helped you to do? Would you like to? Any difficulties in doing so? Leave a comment and let us know!