How to do a hip carry with a long wrap

Here’s Mandy’s brand-new video demonstrating in detail how to do a fully-adjustable hip carry with a wraparound sling. She shows you the tips and adjustments to get a rock-solid carry; once you learn them, this carry is much quicker than the demonstration. Our friend Heather showed us this fabulous carry.

Because you can adjust the sling to fully support your baby, this carry can be done from the newborn stage on up. (If you do it with a newborn, you can make a headrest out of a burp cloth as demonstrated in this video. Or you can do the same technique using the tail of the wrap in lieu of a burp cloth.)

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Great newborn wrap video!

This is great not just because it has a cool soundtrack and text directions, but because this wrapper knows what she’s doing. Watch how she positions this newborn in the wrap (in the spread squat position with feet out) and then how she adds a headrest for excellent support:

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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!

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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!

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Wrapping vids from Wrapsody!

Woot! Lotsa wrapping vids by Kristi and crew at Wrapsody. Seriously, go learn something.

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Dreamy mei tais sometimes start with dreamy wraps

Luxurious mei tais are all the rage among babywearing devotees, and some of the most popular mei tais today start off as woven wraparound slings. These are so popular that they can often be hard to find, as the demand is very high and the supply … well, this is custom work. If you’re a DIYer, though, you can do your own wrap-to-mei tai conversion. Check out Dr. Dawn Berta’s tutorial about converting a wraparound sling into a mei tai.

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Newborn Back Wrapping Tutorial

Christine, an amazingly talented babywearer in Ontario, posted this awesome newborn back carry tutorial on TheBabyWearer.  (TheBabyWearer forums are free; sign up if you haven’t already!)

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Musings on sling safety

With the recent Beco and Ellaroo recalls, sling safety has been on my mind and the minds of many babywearers.  At Magic City Slingers meetings, and in our internet presence as well, we try to promote safe babywearing practices.  For example, we try to raise awareness about positioning newborns so that their airways remain open and unobstructed.  Now is a good time to think about what makes a particular sling more or less risky than another sling.

I think it’s helpful to think of babywearing as a skill rather than as a function of a particular baby carrier.  There are lots of parenting skills … diapering, burping, feeding, bathing … pretty much everything you do with a baby involves skill, so it’s no stretch to think of babywearing as another baby-care skill.  Thinking of it this way, to me, helps remind us that we as caregivers are the most important factor in babywearing — not the sling, which is just a tool.  Nevertheless, slings are essential tools, and we need them to work properly.  So on with some nuts-and-bolts comments about sling safety.

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Hands-free breastfeeding in a wrap

Here are some great video tutorials with slightly different takes on breastfeeding in a wraparound sling. 

Two slightly different approaches to nursing a newborn in the front wrap cross carry: 

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The torso carry: loving it and cheating on it

Want your baby’s weight off of your shoulders and distributed over your torso and hips?  Try a torso carry … or a modified torso carry. 

I’ve blogged about the simple African-style torso carry before. You can do this carry with a beach towel, short wrap, curtain, or authentic African kanga. It’s really low-tech. It’s good to know in case you’re at the pool and it’s time to leave and your toddler is not in the mood to sweetly hold your hand and go with you to gather up your pool bag and your other kid … ask me how I know. 

Here’s a cool torso carry video:

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