I came across this blog by Tania Dutton, who is a carrying advocate like myself, and has a wheelchair. It needs a wide audience and she gave me permission to reblog. She makes a very important point: it is easy for language to become “ableist”, however well meaning (as I discuss in the Unhelpful Rules of Babywearing) and we carrying advocates have to be sensitive and thoughtful and aware of the implications of some of the terms we use, such as “babywearing for all”. I asked her to write an introduction for Carrying Matters. “Inclusivity  – the practice of including people from mino ..read more

Babywearing and Autistic Caregivers Shared with kind permission from Sarah Selvaggi-Hernandez of the Autistic OT ______________ Did you wear your baby? I did! All the time, mostly in a sling ring or woven wrap. I had a million+1 people tell me to put my baby down more, teach him to self soothe, etc. However, that advice did not resonate with me OR my baby. ? * So I wore him. Often. * Benefits to me as an autistic mother: Reduced vestibular – I’m extremely sensitive to vestibular input, especially inversions. Bending over to pick up/put down baby frequently would be dysregulating. Reduced ..read more

Reflections on Maternal Mental Health Week “Journeys to Recovery” and European Babywearing Week 2021 With thanks to Anna Nham “My mental health and babywearing have been an inseparable fulcrum upon which my experience of being a mother has spun. Having lived with complex PTSD for over ten years, when I became a mother I knew it would be part of how I experienced motherhood. I just didn’t know exactly how, or how much the traumas of motherhood would compound my symptoms. When I looked around for examples or stories I found very little. I did find lots of writing on post-natal depression, anxiet ..read more

Carrying Culture & Congenital Heart Disease Abbie (abbies_mind) and I came across each other on Instagram and I was captivated by her photos and her story about how slings helped her and her family when their little boy was born with a congenital heart disease. I asked her if she’d like to share her experiences to encourage other families in a similar situation. How did you come across babywearing and how did it help? When I was pregnant, our babe was diagnosed with Congenital Heart Disease and we were informed his health would begin to decline a few weeks post birth and like clockwo ..read more

“Your history of connectedness is a better predictor of your health than your history of adversity.” It can be distressing, as the parent of a baby who had to be separated from you in the first few weeks of their life due to illness or frailty, or as the parent of a baby who cries a lot, to hear that the first few months are key to their future health and happiness. I often get messages from concerned and deeply loving parents who hear messages about the impact of physical closeness and loving relationships in the early weeks, and begin to feel a failure, that they have let their child down o ..read more

Parenting criticism often comes from a place of unacknowledged discomfort. So often, when someone chooses to parent in a way that seems countercultural, they come in for a lot of criticism from family and friends, and even strangers. Why is this? Why do so many people feel the need to pass commentary on how someone else has chosen to bring up their child? There are several reasons for this. Sometimes it comes from a place of love, especially from our nearest and dearest. They may recall how exhausting they found parenthood themselves… and want to help you avoid that, by passing on the things t ..read more

A huge amount of work has been done in recent years to understand the role of soft touch in how babies’ brains develop. Here I summarise the major points in one page! It has been a great privilege to visit the Affective Touch conference in Liverpool and all the ACE-Aware Nation events in Scotland (with Nadine Burke-Harris and Gabor Mate) and to see all this research coming together. Soft touch changes the DNA and the brain It switches certain genes on and off, thus affecting cortisol receptor expression and therefore modulates the stress response. This was sh ..read more

Everyone who has had a baby, however their baby was born, will find that their pregnancy has had an effect on their pelvic floor and that this affects how they carry their child. What is the pelvic floor? The pelvic floor is a complex group of muscles, connective tissues, nerves and blood vessels in a flexible hammock structure that supports and keeps the pelvic organs in place (the uterus, vagina, bowel and bladder.) The pelvic floor helps us to keep control of bodily functions, by relaxing and contracting to allow exit and entry. It is mostly under unconscious control; but can be be conscio ..read more