Thankyou [insert well-known brand here] for a swinging good time!

 What unusual uses do you have for your baby carriers? Leave a comment and let us know!

My little baby is not so little anymore - two years old and walking. But I still carry him near busy roads, or when he’s overtired and needs settling down. Problem is that he’s old enough now to know what he wants, strong enough to make it hard to prevent him doing what he wants, but not yet mature enough to understand that sometimes what he wants is not good for him. So I am learning little tricks to get him into a sling quick, before he can struggle away from me and get into serious trouble. He may complain as I tie him on, but it’s better than letting him run onto the road or cry himself to sleep.

First, I choose carriers that I can use quickly. Some people find wraps quick and easy, others get swamped in long pieces of fabric. Some people find an SSC (soft clip-on carrier) simple, others struggle to find the clips and fasten them behind their back. For me, the quickest carrier is a mei tai. There are times when a ring sling or a wrap might be more comfortable for the purpose I’m carrying him, but it’s no good if I can’t get him into it securely while he’s struggling to get down.

Second, make sure there’s lots of fabric behind his upper back, and that the carrier is tied securely. He struggles for a while before settling down to rest, and I don’t want him falling out before then.

Third, be prepared to pass him toys or drink bottles if he’s on my back to avoid danger (rather than for tiredness). If I remember, I tie toys onto carrier straps so I don’t have to pick them off the ground every two minutes. You could also use a dummy clip to attach toys to carrier straps. Making or buying carrier strap covers with little ribbon tags or embroidery on them is another way to keep kids amused and protect straps from sticky fingers/teeth at the same time. I try to avoid giving drink bottles with anything other than water in them, unless I want to wear food in my hair and fruit juice down my back.

Despite the tricks it takes to get a toddler on my back, it’s worth it. It won’t be long and he’ll be long past being carried, and in the meantime babywearing helps me to keep him safe and soothe frayed nerves (his and mine).

This is a story of how babywearing helped us cope with a sticky situation, in this case an unplanned birth…

A year ago yesterday, my wife Mel was 37 week pregnant with our third son. Our two older boys (then-5-year-old Sam and then-22-month-old Isaac) were born exactly on the due date, so we thought that this baby would follow in the footsteps of his brothers. We were planning to have this baby at home with the help of our lovely midwife, who helped us birth Isaac in the Birth Centre. My mother-in-law, who lives overseas, was planning to be here a week before the due date so she can help out with the older boys just like she did when Isaac was born in the middle of the night (Sam was fast asleep then). She had called earlier in the week to ask if she should come earlier, but we confidently said this baby is staying put for a few more weeks. Little did we know…

I was in the office at 1pm when my phone rang. Mel was on the other line, and she sounded calm but I could sense worry in her voice. She told me that she just woke up from a brief nap with Isaac (she had put Isaac to sleep on her back in a woven wrap as per usual and fell asleep after she put him down on the bed) when she felt a gush of liquid between her legs. She thought her water had broken but when she looked it was blood, and quite a lot of it. It reminded her of the bleeding episode she had at 12 weeks. She was also having some contraction pain. I told her to call the midwife and rushed home. When I got home, I found Mel squatting at the foot of our bed. She was clearly in pain but was calmly breathing through what she felt were regular contractions. The bleeding was still continuing. Not long after I arrived Isaac woke up from his nap. He was a bit cranky and wanted to be carried. I grabbed a nearby ring sling and popped him in a hip carry so I can attend to Mel. He instantly calmed down in the sling.

Our midwife came soon after and did a check of the blood and said that she was not comfortable with the amount of blood loss so far (definitely more than a bloody show) and that something could be happening with the placenta. She gave us a choice: we could wait and see how it would progress at home, or we could go to the Birth Centre so if something else more urgent were to happen there was already help standing by (the Birth Centre is right next to the maternity unit inside the Royal Brisbane Hospital). We decided that the latter was the best thing to do under the circumstances, so I popped Isaac on my back in a Mei Tai so I could have my hands free to quickly pack our bags. By this time the contractions were stronger and Mel was clearly in a lot of pain. We left home just before 2:30pm. Mel was squatting on the back seat and Isaac was in the car seat next to her, watching quietly as his mum let out screams of pain every few minutes and his dad driving like a maniac through Brisbane afternoon traffic. We arrived at the hospital 20 minutes later (though it seemed more like forever to me!). I parked at the emergency space in front of the hospital, quickly threw Isaac on my back in the Mei Tai (in probably my fastest-ever back carry as Mel was yelling at me to open the back door because of child-lock!), and helped Mel up to the fifth-floor Birth Centre unit. It was an interesting experience seeing the reaction of an elevator full of people to a pajama-wearing, bath-towel-toting woman in obvious labour pain, who was trying her best not to scream in front of strangers and clutching the arm of a man wearing a toddler on his back. And of course the damn elevator had to stop at every.single.floor all the way up to level 5! I felt like yelling, “Yes people, she IS in labour! Now move out of the frickin’ way!!”

When we got to the Birth Centre our midwife had already set up the bean bag and mats on the floor just like the way Mel preferred it when she gave birth to Isaac. She had also started filling the birthing tub as we had also planned for a waterbirth. But when Mel dropped on her knees everything suddenly progressed very quickly (and blood was still coming out of her in gushes) and suddenly the head was crowning! Isaac witnessed the whole commotion from my back in the Mei Tai and got very excited when he saw the baby’s head and wanted to get down so he could see it up close. I didn’t think that was a good idea so I just turned around to give him a better view. The midwife asked if I wanted to catch the baby like last time, but I didn’t want to risk having an extra pair of little hands helping out. With one final push, our third son Efram slid out onto the midwife’s hands and his loud cry immediately accompanied our tears of joy. That was 3:10pm, only 20 minutes after we had arrived at the hospital. He latched on to his mum like a pro and breastfed for a long time afterwards while the three of us quietly marvelled at this little creature who clearly wanted to make a grand entrance into this world. I continued wearing Isaac on my back for about an hour after the birth as he became a little distraught when he saw the new little person in the room. It was only when his brother Sam joined us after school that he was happy to go down. Sam was completely surprised to see his new baby brother who was still in mummy’s tummy in the morning, and was a bit disappointed as he had been looking forward to participating in the whole birth experience at home but just missed out.

After carrying a 12kg toddler for a few action-packed hours, my body was very relieved when it only had to wear a 2.75kg newborn. After a big feed, Efram slept blissfully in the sling for 3 hours until we all went home early that evening.

An examination of the placenta afterwards revealed a small rupture, which was probably what caused the bleeding and triggered the labour.  It was a rollercoaster of an afternoon for sure, and while we didn’t get the calm homebirth we were hoping for, in the end we got the same desired outcome: a healthy mum, a healthy baby, and a relatively fast labour (plus a happy toddler and a slightly tired dad). Babywearing certainly made handling a toddler during the whole ordeal a lot easier, at least for me.

Has babywearing ever gotten you out of a sticky situation? Share your experience in the comments below!

Please support the future of homebirth and private midwifery in Australia: http://www.homebirthaustralia.org/

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

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!

The next in our tandem babywearing series, Sarah talks about wearing her toddler and her infant. Previous posts on tandem babywearing include Ruby’s post on wearing her newborn twins.

I never intended to spend several hours a day wearing a three-year-old and a baby at the same time…. it just happened that way.  My two-year-old was still happy to be worn throughout my second pregnancy, and I had no intention of stopping after the baby was born.  I expected my older child to be worn less and less throughout her fourth year, but she knows when she’s onto a good thing! 

We moved to India for five months soon after the baby was born and wearing two became an absolute necessity.  We were living in the mountains and walking several hours a day, taking advantage of great hiking trails but also just doing what we had to to get around without a car or access to public transport.  The roads were too rough and steep for a stroller and fraught with dangers and annoyances for a walking child, like maniac drivers, stray dogs, cows and monkeys and cowpats and other excrement.  Now we’re back in Australia and even though I have a hefty seven-month-old we’re still going strong! 

Because tandem babywearing has been so essential for me, I’ve been forced to make it work as effectively as possible.  The carriers that work best for me may not suit everyone, but here’s what I’ve learned about tandem carrying in general:

Considerations when choosing your carriers:

• Bulkiness - The carrier that goes on first generally needs to have thin straps, which can sit unobtrusively under the second carrier.

I use a Mei Tai on the front first and have my older child in a structured carrier on my back.   It helps to have carriers which tie in different places - e.g. one at the waist and one at the hips.

I occasionally use a ring sling on the front but it’s hard to get the back carrier straps positioned snugly over the bulky sling fabric.  It works best with an unpadded ring sling with a trim shoulder style and thinner fabric.  I like a pleated shoulder. 

Invest in a babywearing coat for cold weather - it’s hard to get two sets of shoulder straps to sit comfortably over a bulky coat or jumper.

• Ease of use - it’s going to take you twice as long to get ready as it does with only one child - streamline things as much as possible by choosing carriers you can put on quickly. It’s also hard to take the time to do a complex back carry properly when you already have a baby dangling from your chest!

Think about ‘poppability’ - does your toddler like to get down and walk regularly?  Does your baby need to be taken out to be fed or pottied a lot while you’re out?

• Weight distribution - choose carriers which distribute weight to different parts of your body - e.g. a front carrier like a wrap or Mei Tai which puts the weight on your shoulders and back, and a structured carrier which distributes the weight to your hips. I’ve carried two in one ring sling, and it’s quick and easy but gets heavy very quickly!

Think of tandem babywearing as a strenuous sport and ‘train’ accordingly:

• Practise every day or nearly every day to stay in shape.

• It’s the ultimate progressive weight training system - so start early, with a newborn or preferably during pregnancy if you feel comfortable.

• Take it easy the day before and after a long session of tandem wearing. I can manage a four-hour hike if I limit tandem babywearing to 30 minutes or so the day before, otherwise I end up with aching shoulders very quickly. Expect to feel exhausted the next day!

• Become more aware of your body’s needs - in particular be gentle on your knees. I tend to hyperextend my knees when walking fast so I keep my pace slow and steady and use ski poles for steep descents.

Never sacrifice correct positioning to accommodate a tandem carry - it’s even more important when you are carrying extra weight.

• If you use a Mei Tai on the front, the straps will have a tendency to ride up to your neck. Make sure they stay under the straps of the second carrier as you put it on.

• Take the time to put the first carrier on correctly and always bounce and tighten. Retie both carriers if you need to - it’s worth the extra time it takes.

Travel as light as possible

• I can get everything I need for a longish walk, including drink bottles and snacks into a furoshiki bag made from a napkin, which I tie on to my waist belt.

• Heavy grocery bags are a killer - invest in a nana trolley!

Keep an eye out for other tandem wearing posts during March. Did you muscle up and wear your toddler and your infant when your family expanded? What worked for you? How did you go about it? Share with us!