This is the first in a series of posts aimed at helping parents with special needs. Here, we look at babywearing with a shoulder injury.

You’d like to wear your baby or older child, but red-hot pain is holding you back. Depending on the extent of your injury, it may be possible for you to wear your child while supporting the healing of the afflicted area. In this post, I’ll take you through babywearing with an injured shoulder(s). It’s an area of personal experience for me. My right shoulder has had (at various times) bursitis, tendonitis, a thinned distal portion of the rotator cuff, dense calcifcation in the tendons, possible cartilage damage and “changes to the tendonopathy of the region”, whatever that means. I didn’t understand much of the preceding, but my GP summed it up nicely when she looked at the xrays: “this shoulder is stuffed“.

If you have any injury, shoulder or otherwise, it’s important to define exactly what the problem is. I’m going to divide the possible problems into two areas: reduced range of movement and reduced ability to weight-bear. Each of these can occur independently or together, but the consequences for babywearing are quite diffferent.

Reduced Range of Movement

A reduced range of movement can occur for many reasons, but the main consequence for babywearing is difficulty in getting the child into the carrier in the first place. In this case, the simpler the better. In my experience with shoulder injuries, long wraps were disastrous- passing fabric to and fro was very painful and practically impossible. Simpler carries and carriers like short wraps, mei tais or SSCs were easier to get on with less pain. Ring slings and pouches may also be an option if only one shoulder is injured and you can bear weight on the uninjured shoulder.

When wrapping, your strategy depends on what portions of your range of movement are affected. Carries starting with a chestbelt may provide support while you wrap through your available range of movement. Alternatively, back carries tied under the wearees bottom may be impossible.

Lifting a child onto your back may be difficult in itself. It may be worthwhile reviewing other options if your regular method doesn’t work. Superman tossing is my usual method of initiating a back carry, but when lifting my arm above my head was intensely painful, lifting 9kg of baby didn’t seem sensible. The hip scooting method proved to be an acceptable compromise.

Reduced ability to bear weight on the affected shoulder

Let me be very clear: if it’s painful to wear your child, it may be wise not to do so if you want the affected area to heal. However, if wearing is important to you, there may be ways to get around the problem if you are unable to bear weight on the affected area. There are several options:

1. Avoid the area altogether. If you have two injured shoulders, it may be well worth looking into torso carries and carriers, which will eliminate any weight on your shoulder. These include torso carries with long, short wraps and straight-strapped podaegi. If you have a single injured shoulder, you have the additional option of one-shoulder carries in a short wrap, ring sling or pouch and modifying certain wrap carries (such as the BWCC with chestbelt) to avoid the affected shoulder (this was my personal favourite for extended carries. If anyone wants to know how it’s done, hit me up in the comments section!).

2. Reduce the weight on the affected area by distributing it to other parts of your body. Depending on the extent of your injury, you may still choose to bear weight on the affected shoulder(s). Carriers such as SSCs, chunei and mei tais tied tibetan or with straps crossed in front will distribute weight to your hips and across your chest, reducing the weight on your shoulders. Wrap carries with chest belts, tied tibetan or tied at the waist will do the same.

3. Teach your partner to babywear, put your feet up and wait to get better. More seriously, you may need to re-evaluate your babywearing goals. In my case, it became apparent that attempting to tandem wear 20kg+ of children at once was no longer the best option. I bought a better stroller and put babywearing on the needs-only list for awhile. It doesn’t make me a bad person! And, as a result, I’m now able to lift a coffee cup without wincing.  It was one of my better decisions!

Hopefully, this post gave you some ideas for babywearing with a shoulder injury. Look out for our next installment on babywearing with a back injury.

Have you continued to babywear with an injury or disability? What were the challenges you faced and how did you overcome them? Leave a comment and let us know!

Parenting in Public Ain’t For Wimps.

From the minute we have left the “safety” of closed doors, we are a walking, talking, mobile piece of artwork. We’re visible. The choices we make are on display. And if you choose to do something which is atypical in your community, you lose your anonymity. Like a goth at a Laura Ashley appreciation meeting, you stand out. I think. I’ve never been to a Laura Ashley appreciation meeting.

For us, we left the hospital with our two babies in a sling. A gorgeous sling. Orange, red, blue, green – nothing quiet about it. We got stopped every 5 metres between the door to the Special Care Nursery and the elevator. In the elevator, we were trapped with “twin tourists”. Then we got gawked at and stopped every 5 metres from the elevator to the exit. It seemed like 30 minutes before we were safely - and privately - in the car.

Parenting in public is difficult. Your decisions are sort of on display, and baby wearing is really obvious. No matter how neutral your wrap, sling, MT or other carrier is, it seems to glow neon when you’re out and about. Parents who wear their babies in public are brave. They are saying “I’ve thought about this; I’ve consciously decided to parent this way and even though you look at me and talk as I walk past, I am going to do what I believe is right by these kids.”

Taking your newborn out in public seems to have a magnetic effect – people seem compellingly drawn to you and your wee one. Wearing them somehow increases the magnetism, and wearing two children must be akin to the force of a neodymium magnet! It has taken about 7 months of wearing the babies in public for me to feel a sense of acceptance about the attention. In a way, I say “bring it on!” – because my children will only have this time once. My conscience tells me it’s important that babies be worn close to my heart. My conscience tells me not to distance my children from myself; to keep them near to me physically and emotionally. I don’t think it’s the easiest way to parent – and there are times when I really tire of having child after child all over me – but I believe it is right.

If you’re going to make it through with your sensibilities intact, you’re going to need support. It’s wonderful if you can get that support from your friends and family, but there’s every chance they won’t understand immediately. Please know you’re welcome to join the forums at BCD; we’d love to help support you on your parenting journey.

Do you find babywearing makes you conspicuous? Is it a positive or negative experience for you? Leave a comment and let us know!

Leaving Hospital with a Premmie (or two).

When you are pregnant, you normally anticipate things will go a certain way; maybe the way previous pregnancies have gone, or maybe better! Some people expect particular hiccups because of their medical history and so on.

For me, I expected two things. Literally, I expected two babies, because I was pregnant with twins, and secondly, I expected to need to fight hospital policy. I think every IRONY light in heaven and earth was flashing, when at 34 weeks, I sent my husband and son to Adelaide for some follow up medical visits, and my daughter went to visit a girlfriend for the morning. Ah, peace… I remember I was going to rest that day; I was going to read, and I was going to spend some time at peace. Just as soon as my midwives visited and left. Except things didn’t quite work out that way. My midwives walked in, said “ooh, you don’t look very good” (which is what every 34-week-pregnant-with-twins woman wants to hear) and “go pee on this!” Having experience peeing on sticks, I did as I was told. It was more fun finding out I was pregnant than it was finding out I had protein out of the stratosphere. Blah. Add the revolting oedema that made my ankles practically slosh, and the blood pressure paralleled only by a job interview for a position you really want, and there I was, at home, my family elsewhere, being told to pack and bag and go to the hospital.

So, all the fight out of my sails, that’s how I was going to end this pregnancy. A premature Caesar at 34 weeks. Perhaps you’re pregnant as you read this. Listen, when you’re done, spend a few minutes looking into what you want to do if your baby is born early and needs to go to special care. I had done a little bit of reading, but there was so much I didn’t know until well after we all came home. I’ll say from the outset – we all make it home safely.

The birth story is pretty good, and the way my friends helped look after my two big kids was just fantastic, but this blog post is really about getting out of the special care nursery (hereafter, SCN). You may have read my earlier post about baby wearing in the nursery… if not, check out LINK. Being in the SCN was awful – fine for a day or so, but after that, really tedious. Every nurse had a different opinion on everything, from sibling visits to bathing to feeding to formula. If you are ever in the same situation, it would help to know what you think about all these things. For us, we just flew by the seat of our pants as we worked on getting the babies from 1700g and 2200g to the acceptable-but-arbitrary-weight-required-to-go-home.

Finally, our featherweight baby girl hit 2200g. We’d been in the nursery for a life time, but on day 20, we were finally able to fly the coop! We had the two car capsules installed, and like all parents of newborns, we did the strange journey from the maternity area to the car park.

However, we did it a little differently to most parents. I slipped my ring sling – just the one – over my shoulder, and settled their tiny 2700g and 2200g bodies on my chest. I settled them in tummy-to-tummy (theirs to mine) and side by side (one another) as I had so many times for cuddles, and we waited for an ice age for the doctors to officially say “go on, get out!” and then we stood up, and walked out the door.

We knew a bit about how we wanted to parent; we have two older children and had been working on refining our beliefs and practises for a while. While the babies really were small, they were also healthy and strong. We saw no reason not to use carriers, and saw a lot of good reasons why we should.

• Kangaroo care has been shown to benefit premature babies
• Keeping the newborns close allowed us to continue being involved with our older kids activities- and our own
• Wearing the newborns meant we could respond to their needs more quickly
• Wearing the newborns meant my precious, residual, often depleted energy was conserved by not having to get up and down to them constantly

If you have a premature – or even small-for-dates baby – unless you are given a solid medical reason not to, baby wearing is going to help you. Unless there’s a medical reason not to, baby wearing is going to be beneficial to your baby/babies. Whether your premmie (or preemie – both are used) is your first child or your tenth, you are going to want them to feel settled, calm, peaceful and secure. Keeping them close to your heart is going to do this. You might choose not to socialise – especially out of the home – for longer because of immunity concerns; you may be recovering from major surgery and not as mobile as you normally were; you may have had weeks in special care where you had every last drop of self-assurance and strength removed from your body, but there comes a point where you are free to make the parenting choices you believe to be right. Go for it!

A premature baby can be worn in a soft sling or a soft wrap. My own experience has been that a mei tai is too large and a soft structured carrier is too inflexible, but you may have a different experience. Do join the Baby Carriers Downunder forum if you haven’t already – people are always willing to share their experiences and help you find your way on this parenting path.

I don’t think these photos are particularly flattering to me - but here you go: Ruby leaving the hospital with the twins at 20 days.

Have you left hospital with a special care baby? A premmie (or two)? Another baby who had a special care start to the world? How did you find it? Did you wear your special care baby? Leave a comment and let us know!

Another in our posts on wearing two, this time we dial down the oestrogen and get a Dad’s perspective! For other posts on wearing two, see Ruby’s post on getting started with twins, Sarah’s post on wearing two with mei tais and SSCs and Steph’s post on wrapping two at once.

Consider this scenario: your wife had go away suddenly due to an emergency, leaving you home alone with your cranky toddler and even-crankier baby who’s due for a nap. You can:

(a) put them in a double pram (if you have one) and take them for a walk outside, hoping the fresh air will calm them down,

(b) try to put the baby to sleep and hope the toddler will calm himself down,

(c) try to carry both in your arms (good luck with that for more than a few seconds!), or

(d) wear the baby to sleep AND wear the toddler to calm him down.

Tandem babywearing is really not as hard as it looks. If you think of it as a form of exercise, it works those upper body muscles quite effectively. And of course you can actually do other stuff while wearing two, like play your favourite video game, go for a walk (be prepared for swarms of adoring women), or weed that garden like you’ve been promising the wife for months.

In addition to excellent front and back carry tips in Sarah’s previous tandem carry post, you can also wear your sleeping newborn/infant in a ring sling and your toddler in a structured hip carrier where most of your toddler’s weight rests on the waist band. I find this comfortable even for quite a long period (at least long enough for said cranky toddler to calm down).

Lastly, as Steph’s wrapping two post showed, a long woven wrap (or two) can also be used effectively to carry both your sleeping infant and your curious toddler. If you are using two wraps, make sure to tie the baby in one securely first before using the other wrap to tying your toddler on your back as you need to bend down while doing the latter. A quick back carry like rucksack is usually best for this purpose, but make sure you tuck enough fabric under your toddler’s bum to prevent the dreaded bum-popping.

I hope this gives some incentive for the babywearing dads out there to give tandem carry a try, either with your twins or your baby and toddler. Good luck and let us know how you go!

Are you a babywearing dad? Have you tried tandem carry before? Leave a comment and let us know your experience!

Another post in our series on wearing two. This time Steph looks at wrapping a toddler and a baby at the same time in a wrap. The same carries apply to wearing twins. Previous posts on wearing two include Ruby’s post on how to get started wearing two and Sarah’s post on how she wears her toddler and infant in a Mei Tai and SSC combination.

When my younger child was born, my eldest was 2.5 years old. It quickly became apparent that with a newborn and a toddler making a tough transition, wearing them both was one way to keep everyone happy.

I prefer to wrap my kids in the same wrap at once. The advantage of this is that there’s less material involved than trying to wrap them in separate wraps. The disadvantage is that if the one on the back (the bigger child) wants to get down, they both have to come down.

I need at least 4.5m to wear both kids at once. In this size wrap, I can ruck the big one, cross beneath the legs and do a tibetan finish, leave the tibetan finish loose and pop the little one in the FCC (Front Cross Carry) this makes, tie behind the little one’s back. When my younger child was a newborn, this carry was problematic at times because she didn’t have the kind of head support I’d have liked. You can find video instruction on this carry with newborns here and the technique is the same with older children.

If you have a longer wrap (say, 5m+), then you can BWCC (Back Wrap Cross Carry) with ruck straps the bigger child and finish the same way for the little one with greater support. The three passes would give you more support with the bigger child. You can find video instruction of this carry here. A variation is to use a chestbelt rather than ruck straps with the BWCC.

Another possibility, which I have not seen and don’t have a wrap long enough to try; would be the chunei back carry (or double hammock back carry) with ruck straps, crossed between the back child’s legs and bought up in front for a tibetan finish. The smaller child then sits in the cross of the tibetan finish. I’m shopping for a long wrap just so I can try this and see if it works! (Leave a comment if you’ve had a chance to try this. Please?) I suspect it will work well because the heavier child’s weight will be distributed across the entire chest of the wearer, rather than on the shoulders. The latter point being a significant problem in my experience of wearing two as the weight becomes significant. I wouldn’t recommend this for very hot weather, however!

If you have two wraps, then I find BWCC and FCC in separate wraps -wrapping the big one on your back through the pretied (empty) FCC another way to carry two. This leaves you with about 9 meters of material wrapped around you, so you want to do this with THIN wraps! Basically, I pretie the FCC and then get big one on my back in a BWCC with crossed straps in front, passing them through the crosses of the FCC to sit directly on my chest. You could also do this with chestbelt, but I think this is a smoother finish for the little one in front. The advantage of this over ruck straps on the BWCC is that your chest is supporting alot of the weight of the big one and the rest is being passed through shoulders and down to the hips. I find the FCC rides up on the shoulders to the neck this way (there’s only so much room on your shoulders to fit all this material) but when your front wearee is still small, this is fine. Using this method, the two wrapees are semi-independent. It’s possible to remove one without removing the other, although getting the one off the back without waking the one in the FCC would be tricky, but you would not need to remove the front carry.

For very small babies, I prefer to carry both kids in this way as I don’t have to preload the smaller one and bend forward with the baby in the front. As the baby gets older, I find this less problematic.

Troubleshooting:

(1) When wearing two in one wrap, the more supportive the better, but you’re carrying two kids and don’t want to get too hot. Without wanting to add to the “silk hysteria”, compared to my all cotton vatanais, my silk indio is a better bet. That said, I have successfully worn two in a vatanai for a considerable length of time. So although you’re better off with a supportive wrap (say, a storch), I don’t think you need special equipment per se (like pamir) to do this.

(2) Supportive shoes are a must. My kids are about 20kg of combined weight and when walking for an hour or more, good shoes are awesome. That said, I wore the two of them in one wrap in heels at a wedding once for an extended period, so needs must. I did kick my shoes off ASAP though!

(3) Bend from the knees, but getting up ain’t easy

Further resources for wearing two:

• TheBabywearer’s Wearing More Than One forum is excellent for troubleshooting and ideas
• The BCD Wearing Twins and Multiples page has a broad variety of personal information, articles and links

Do you carry two? What combinations work for keeping your household happy?

It’s tandem babywearing month at BCD blog and who are we to pass up a little celebrity fixation?

We all know that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are happy to use slings and carriers to keep their six children safe and happy. But has anyone ever seen a photo of Angelina or Brad carrying more than one child at once in slings?

This is the closest thing I could find. Kind of amusing, I guess. From weird celebrity art blog Gallery of the Absurd.

For other posts on tandem wearing, see Ruby’s post on wearing her newborn twins and Sarah’s post on wearing her toddler and infant together. How many kids can you wear at once? Can anyone outdo Lara Croft? Share in the comments section below!