If I Ran the Zoo

The animals would keep on doing what they’re doing. Here’s a post about how the animals at the Atlanta zoo do a lot of things people are embracing more and more, including babywearing.

“Are your meetings breastfeeding-friendly?”

Often, folks will email us before attending their first meeting, and this question came up recently in one such email. Our meetings are friendly, period. Babies come, and since they require frequent feeding, people feed them. Breast or bottle … we aren’t going to look at you funny either way.

They Blog From a Land Downunder

Blogging here has been light for a few months as I focus on getting the Babywearing International programs running. I am delighted to report, however, that Baby Carriers Downunder are now blogging away, and so far the content is really just fantastic, ranging from toddler wearing to today’s post about babywearing during and after a zombie apocalypse. ‘Cause it’s good to be prepared.

Seriously, get a cup of tea and spend some quality time with our Aussie and Kiwi friends, most of whom are brilliant and some of whom are brilliant AND insane. We’ll pick up the posting here again soon just in case you miss us.

Wrap, but don’t re-wrap!

You’ve gotta see the video in this blog post from former Birmingham slinger Bonnie showing how to tie your wrap then take it off and put it back on without ever untying or re-tying. Honest.

If you make and sell slings, children’s clothing, or crafts for children

… then you’ll want to check out this blog concerning the Consumer Product Safety Commission Improvement Act, how to comply with it, and how to seek changes to make compliance easier (especially if you don’t know what the Consumer Product Safety Commission Improvement Act is and how it will require you to do lead testing on your handmade products).

The Double Hammock

Here’s a video, with French captions, demonstrating the new and wildly popular “double hammock” back carry, for your viewing pleasure. This is a video promoting a stretchy wrap, but this carry is being done by lots of wrappers with wovens, and it’s actually a quick carry notwithstanding the video’s leisurely pace. I tried it today and it was extremely comfortable!

Front Torso Cross Carry

Carli, Lizzy, and Stephanie

You can do a strapless wrap carry on your front as well as your back. The key is having a way to load your baby securely while you wrap … when you do this as back carry, you can bend forward to make your back like a table … obviously, though, bending over backward while you wrap is not the way to a front torso carry. The trick is to start off as if you’re doing the front wrap cross carry, then one by one convert the shoulder straps to torso straps.

Here’s a video showing how to do this carry with a Moby Wrap. The same technique works with woven wraps, too. Enjoy going strapless!

Just for fun

I find this website hilarious. What’s not fun about sweet sling babies suddenly becoming GIANT when you mouse over them? I’m not too sure about the arm pillow that comes with the sling, but hey, I haven’t tried it so I can’t really knock it.

Many thanks to Rebecca in Japan for posting about it on TheBabywearer.com so we could all enjoy bouncing back and forth between the babies.

With apologies, one more Motrin ad post

I know, I know, we’re all tired of this topic. I just have to get a few more thoughts out.

Thought One: “Why the ad is so bad.”

This has been explained in so many places, including at Babywearing International, that you’d think people would understand, but many still don’t. Here goes another try:

The ad uses the language of babywearing. Right off the bat, it talks about “wearing” a baby, not just “carrying” a baby. It talks about the wide variety of carriers available. It talks about bonding, and about worn babies crying less than others. These aren’t just random words and concepts. These aren’t words and concepts that the average Snuggli user necessarily relates to. These are words and concepts that people who self identify as babywearers use.

We didn’t start the fire

Cue the Billy Joel music …

Advertising Age, in its “Timeline of Motrin-Gate,” says we wrote the first discoverable blog post about the now-infamous Motrin ad. Did you neeed more proof that advertising and marketing professionals don’t understand social media?

I feel I just have to set the record straight: We didn’t start the fire. I have serious doubts that my irreverent little post poking fun at the persona portrayed in the ad (c’mon, she’s a total dingbat) was even a significant spark leading to the firestorm of outrage that erupted over the weekend of November 15-16 and resulted in the ad’s withdrawal. Seeing it on the Advertising Age timeline is pretty amusing.

I posted after I finally opened a thread about the ad in the forums at TheBabywearer.com. (Why didn’t I open the thread earlier? Because it was International Babywearing Week and I was busy.) The thread was started November 12, and the original poster said the ad was in the issue of Real Simple magazine that she received that day. People immediately began posting that they were emailing the makers of Motrin to complain about the way the ad portrayed babywearers and babywearing. Later that evening, someone posted a link to the video on the Motrin website. Although responses to the print ad were negative enough that some people decided to write based on it alone, the video version really pushed people’s buttons, and more people posted that they were writing McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the makers of Motrin.

So, people were talking about the ad AND complaining to McNeil at least as early as November 12. Which, by the way, was a Wednesday. (The advertising and public relations professionals who felt McNeil was blind-sided by the eruption of chatter in social media on a weekend might find that fact relevant.) By the time I posted here on November 14, people were already chatting about the ad on message boards and in email groups. Maybe it hadn’t been blogged or tweeted about yet, but the kindling was already ablaze.