Notes on Babywearing

My name is Meg Eisenhauer Barry, and I am a babywearing educator in Northampton, Massachusetts.

When I had my first daughter, The Palindrome, in June 2005, I was new to town and didn’t have much going on.  Which is an evasive way of saying that I was a little jobless, a little friendless, and a little disoriented by the whole motherhood experience.  So I walked a lot, read a lot of books in cafés, and bought a lot of coffees, always with my baby daughter snuggled against my chest in our blue sling.

I found myself constantly fielding questions: Where did you get that sling?  How do you put her in there?  How did you convince her to like it? I loved carrying my baby: it didn’t take much to get me talking about it, and people were genuinely interested.  Every day, I encountered parents who wanted to wear their babies, but hadn’t been able to figure out how to do so comfortably, or who didn’t know which carrier to choose, or who felt like their babies just hadn’t ever liked being worn.  I did a lot of impromptu demonstrations.  I met a lot of people.

The friendlessness abated.

One spring day, someone stopped me on the street to ask how I had learned to put my baby on my back.  As I showed her my method–by now, I was unfazed by this sort of thing–a small crowd of other interested parties began to gather, looking on and peppering me with questions.  It became a little bit of an event, and developed into a full-on pedestrian bottleneck.   Huh, I thought.  Perhaps it’s time to look into getting a better venue?

Things took off from there.

The joblessness abated.  (The disorientedness, too.)

Since then, I have helped hundreds of parents to discover how they can carry their babies comfortably and securely on their bodies while having their hands free and getting on with their lives.  I absolutely love the look of surprised delight that comes over parents’ faces in that moment when they feel comfortable in the carrier for the first time.  I love watching the babies snuggle in, sigh, and zonk out.  But my favorite thing about this work is the conversations I get to have with parents about why we carry our babies.  Why are babies the way they are?  What does it feel like to care for them?  What does it mean to be driven by instinct?  How can we best meet our children’s needs, as well as our own?

I started this blog in order to continue that conversation–why babywearing?–with you.  There’s a little bit of the “how” here and there, too.  I hope that you’ll learn something here, and be inspired to think beyond beyond the surface, whether you’re already an experienced babywearer or not.

Please jump in and share your thoughts while you’re here.  That’s what this is all about.

Wait, you want even more?

Well, ok.

My two kids are The Palindrome, age 5, and The Chicken, age 2.

They are, naturally, all the more clever, sturdy, and beautiful for having been constantly worn for the better part of their first year of life.  (Ha!  I’m kidding.  Sort of.)  The Palindrome is into quantitative data, and The Chicken is into, well, chickens.  They don’t know about glitter or Pixy Stix or Go-Karts yet, so mum’s the word, mmkay?

I love runny eggs and conifers; I hate humidity and broken glass.  I ride my bike pretty much everywhere.  I cook a lot, and I like to throw dinner parties.  I am interested in anthropology, prescriptivist grammar, traditional foods, midwifery, and the art of the essay, among other things.  Before having kids, I got myself a classical liberal arts education, went to Yosemite, and read the whole New Yorker every week.  (Well, ok, except for the Dance section.)

Did I miss something?  Ask away in the comments!  You can also email me at meg[at]notesonbabywearing[dot]com.  I’ll be delighted to hear from you.