Questions about wearing [Part 2]

What do I wear to carry my child?

Generally speaking, the carrier or sling counts as an extra layer, so you should wear one less layer of clothing, especially on the upper body. If the child's arms are no longer in the carrier or sling when carrying because your little one has enough torso control and prefers it that way, this rule only applies to the part that is really covered by the fabric.

Further, your body heat also comes into play. From experience, most parents dress their babies too warm when wearing them. The temperature can be well controlled in the neck or even better between the shoulder blades.

The feet and head should be kept warm, especially in winter. Woolen whale shoes are especially good for the feet here. I also recommend elastic pants like tights or pants without feet. Rompers can also be used well, but here rompers in one size larger are more suitable. When wearing them, your child's clothes are pulled up a little, so that with tight, inelastic fabrics, this could pull the heel up and thus be uncomfortable for the wearer.

Can I carry my child facing forward?

The recommendation is quite clear: No. If I look at the anatomy of a newborn, this is self-evident. The spine only straightens completely with increasing motor development, so a rounded back should be made possible in a carrier, especially in the beginning. However, if a baby is tied tightly to its mother with its face facing forwards, this rounding is simply no longer possible; on the contrary, it results in a hollow back.

Furthermore, newborns do not yet have the ability to protect themselves from stimuli. They turn towards them even though they may already be overstimulated. If they are carried facing forward, they have no possibility to retreat and the many stimuli can hardly be processed. When facing the carrier, your baby can still see everything, but can also snuggle up at any time. The stimulus density is significantly lower for your child.

Are slings better for newborns?

It is difficult to give a general answer to this question. Slings, when tied correctly, fit the baby carrier perfectly and thus provide optimal support. But nowadays there are also many baby carriers that allow an ergonomic position for the baby, but also for the parents. In this case, the baby carrier must be correctly adjusted and put on, just as the sling must be correctly tied.

It is also important that the carrier fits the stature and needs of the parents, otherwise tensions could possibly form. Further, of course, it should fit with the baby. Feeling uncomfortable with a baby carrier or sling is also noticeable and may be transferred to the newborn as stress. Here it is important to find a suitable carrying option with which everyone feels comfortable.

Why does my child cry when I put it down?

First of all, not every child cries when he or she is put down, but it does happen relatively often, which is why the question is asked regularly. When a baby is born, it has ideally spent ten months in its mother's womb, where it has felt the mother's constant closeness and confinement. It has been rocked constantly, by every movement.

With human children it concerns so-called physiological premature births, what this means exactly I described in my article human children - physiological premature births more auführllicher, but briefly it means that they are not yet completely "mature" with their birth.

In addition, humans are neither nest-followers nor nest-fugitives, but actually gestational carriers as biology describes. You can read this also in my contribution of Nesthockern , Nestflüchtern and Traglingen more exactly.

Now it is not surprising that a baby complains loudly when it is not with its mother. It doesn't know she's around. Since genes don't evolve that quickly (within a few hundred years) that say, "I'm safe even if I don't see, hear, or feel mommy right now," it becomes clear why many babies can't be put down. Around the campfire, it was dangerous to be forgotten.

Here I like to refer to the book artgerecht by Nicola Schmidt and Julia Dibbern, which explains this aspect well. It is available at Amazon.

Isn't it faster to put on a baby carrier than to tie a sling?

In principle, it takes more practice to tie a sling, since there are significantly more steps and especially the tightening seems cumbersome for many at the beginning. However, once this process has become routine, tying a sling is very quick. Ultimately, however, everyone feels it a little differently. Some tell me that it is faster to tie the sling than to put on the carrier, especially on the back. Others report it the other way around.

As with everything else, practice makes perfect. The more regularly a sling is tied or a carrying aid is put on, the faster it goes. The important thing is that you feel comfortable with it.