First thoughts.

I was thinking the other day about motherhood and how, in the past, we lived in small communities. We probably had more physical support from the local female population and especially our mothers and families. Now we’ve spread out and away from these communities, for myself my mother lives in somerset and my sister in France so the support they offer (and extremely valuble it is) is mainly over the phone. In addition to this, the amount of products developed for parent hood has gone stellar and it’s often hard to know what we need, what’s good and what’s a big pile of crap. One thing I have realised is that you really don’t need as much as you are told you do...

So I have decided to write this list of things I have found really useful and I’ve tagged people I know are new parents, expecting or may know someone who would be interested and can pass it on. If you want to post feedback, ideas etc that’d be great and if anyone thinks it’s a good plan I may set up a page on facebook where we can discuss parenting “techniques”, have a moan and let each other know what works well for us.

To clarify- I am not setting myself up as a paragon of parenthood because I’m not! I’m making it up as I go along and I am aware that Jess is very easy going. Every parent and every child are different so although I can get quite evangelical about things they aren’t right for everyone!

Sling.

I love my sling! Jess is 4 months old and 6kg now and we still don’t have a buggy, I want to wait til I can get a really light foldy one (I’m eyeing up the maclaren volo which is good from 6 months). Anyway, we’ve got a moby stretchy sling which I use and a baby bjorn which John occasionally uses.

The moby is great; basically a long slightly strectchy piece of material that you wrap around yourself and pop your baby in, one method of wrapping is good for quite a few different ways of carrying which is good for different ages of baby. They can be carried as if in a cradle when they are tiny, facing towards you to sleep in, or out when they have the head control and want to look at the world and on your hip when they are older and might want to get out and walk.

It looks good (very important), it’s comfortable and doesn’t put very much strain on your back at all, it holds your baby really close which I love and you can use it up until they are a toddler. I have a tendency to get a sore lower back thanks to my profession and carrying Jess in the Moby hasn’t made that worse and I don’t go to bed at night in pain (which I did in the latter months of pregnancy). The cons are that you have to carry your child everywhere (obviously) and you have to take the sling off to breast feed. It’s also not so good if you go out for a meal as they have nowhere to lie and go to sleep but if you can find a spot you can use the moby to make a cosy little nest for them to kip in.

It doesn’t take very long to learn how to use and once you have the knack it’s really very easy! The baby bjorn is good as it’s really quick and easy to get on and off but I don’t like it because I don’t feel it holds Jess so close and it’s not as flexible with ways you can hold your baby. They’ll also grow out of it sooner than they would do a moby.

I also briefly had a storchenwiege woven sling which is similar to the moby but doesn't have any stretch or give. I found it harder to use as you have to wrap it round the baby and you instead of putting it on and then putting the baby into it. It really was incredibly beautiful but I just knew I wouldn’t have the patience to use it, especially as I do use my sling everytime Jess and I go out. My gorgeous sister is now using the storchenwiege for my nephew so maybe she can feed back how she goes.

The real benefit with the slings is the ease of getting around, you can get in and out of anywhere and public transport is much easier than with a buggy. I’m quite a speedy walker and I love that I can still weave through the foot traffic with ease!

I seem to have written more than I intended so I’ll post this and do the rest in bite size chunks!

Moby wrap homepage:
http://www.mobywrap.com/

Big mama slings (stock pretty much everything!)
http://www.bigmamaslings.co.uk/zen-cart/

Jess and I wrapped in the moby. She can face out and look at the world or face towards me to go to sleep, I tuck her head under one of the shoulder bits and she's as snug as a bug in a rug!

Thanks to Polly who I stole this picture off!

Thanks for reading!