Baby Won't Be Put Down

Well I was just peeking at what search strings people use to come to my website and I noticed someone searched yahoo on "baby won't be put down". My website comes up first for that term. That is well-earned!

I write from the heart because babywearing is not just some passing fancy. My older daughter absolutely would not be put down. Nor passed to anyone else. She was my little girl and when other people wanted to hold her, I couldn't imagine what they were thinking; it was just not going to work so why bother torturing my baby? It absolutely amazed me that people didn't hear or respect that as they reached for her and she screamed and cringed. And it was a total shocker to me for a while that other babies could be passed around.

She was also a...um...rather plump little girl. She was around 27 pounds at a year and probably 35 by two and not overly tall. To put that in perspective, my second daughter finally hit 25 pounds sometime after her third birthday.

My older daughter also very likely had undignosed poor muscle tone. She carried like a sack of potatoes. She just didn't help out in any way at all. She went totally limp forced me to hold her up, even to the point of supporting her back. Just having her sit in my lap took a whole lot of energy. This is a photo I just found of her at around age three. You can see I am totally holding her up.

So yeah, when I have on my website that you might consider babywearing if you have a baby that won't be put down, I sure know where I'm coming from! Babywearing was a total life-saver for us.

I didn't really think my second daughter would want to be worn as much but in the end, I did wear her just as much until she retired. She got worn for some very different reasons. As a strong, fit, independent little person, she felt it her birthright to run off and got a real giggle out of being chased. Having seen that sort of behavior in others' kids, I was able to totally nip it in the bud. If we were going across a parking lot, I simply never let her walk. Ever. And if she was tired or hungry, into the carrier she went. She loved the snuggle time and instantly relaxed when I did this. Through babywearing, we were able to avoid a whole lot of dangerous running into traffic stage stuff.

Sadly, her independent streak won out and at around her third birthday, she retired from babywearing. Thankfully, she had enough sense by that age to walk along next to me or hop in the stroller. (Yes, we use strollers. True, mostly for groceries, but I am most definitely not anti-stroller.) She'll still let me use a new, never before seen baby carrier just one time, and if I wake her from a nap when we have to leave, she'll often allow me to pop her into a snuggly front carry, but other than that, she's just on my hip, in her stroller, or walking. When she first "retired" from babywearing, I could barely hold her with one arm; my muscle strength just wasn't there. But now I can carry her on my hip with one hand no problem! And it's all good; it's nice to get a bit of upper body strength back.