little feet, big sky

Bear in mind that I have three babywearing apparatuses: a Mamma’s Milk pouch sling, a custom Oh My Mommy Clementine mei tai and a brown Moby wrap. Spice was fine in the Moby for the first couple of weeks, but the Moby is a crazy piece of work to quickly throw on and go, since it’s so incredibly long and drags on the ground. Plus, I’m sure I could get the hang of it with time, but unless I had someone to straighten the wrap on my back so it wasn’t bunched up, it was seriously uncomfortable to wear more than an hour – a huge negative for a sling that’s so much work to get on and off.

The pouch sling is pretty good all around. Mamma’s Milk makes one of the few adjustable pouch slings, with hidden velcro so that there’s no rings, buckles, etc. Again, Spice was okay in it the first few weeks in the cradle hold, but fights it like a mad woman now. I’ve tried her in the tummy-to-tummy position, but she screams and claws at my chest and neck until I take her out. Finally, yesterday we had some degree of success with a careful facing-out position. I know you’re not supposed to have a newborn facing out, but she was half sideways, has good head control and was tucked in bum-first, with her feet lotus up. She could lean against me, and it worked well enough to get her from the breastfeeding support group to the car with one hand free. I’ll keep trying her in it, because it’s by far the fastest to grab and put on. And I’m holding out for using it for hip carries when she gets bigger.

My newest addition is a custom mei tai I bought on Etsy. A mei tai is an ABC (Asian-style Baby Carrier), generally a square/rectangle of cloth with four straps sewn on. Two straps tie around your waist and the other two go over your shoulders, cross at the back, come forward and tied around the baby’s back (newborn) or under their bum (toddler). Basically, it’s like an Ergo without all the bling. I bought the spouse the Ergo and it’s gotten virtually no use because a) he doesn’t remember/want to use it and b) it’s got too much bling. I hate things with buckles and stuff, so I wanted a mei tai. By far, BabyHawk has some of the coolest fabrics and some of the best reviews, but I wasn’t about to drop $115 on Yet Another Carrier that Spice would scream at. Thankfully, there’s Etsy, home of Lots of Cool Things made by SAHMs at Low Prices. I browsed around and settled on a cute custom mei tai with a pink/white/brown stripe pattern and black straps. After some confusion on my part in regards to how many mailboxes I have outside my house, it arrived and Spice screamed each time I put her in. Joy. Until it occurred to me to make it a little shorter by folding up the bottom and putting her in again facing out, bum in first. Success! I carried her around for about 10 minutes like that until she started to fuss. No point in pushing my luck, right?

But the swing. *sigh*

I want to carry her, my precious little bundle o’ joy, but she just won’t stand it! Bleah. And there’s only so much in-arms I can do without having at least a hand free, so.. we got a swing a couple of weeks ago. I felt super guilty about it, until I accepted the fact that this is not a battle – it’s about her being happy and comfortable. I almost always try to soothe her to sleep in my arms, but sometimes she’s just too cranky and tired and keeps fussing. I tuck her into the swing, pop it on the fastest speed and put some lullabies or white noise on, and she’s asleep faster than a drunken me passing out on the bed. She’s not going to be 10-years-old and needing to swing herself to sleep, right? And I keep trying the different slings every week since she seems to go through phases of what she likes.

But in the meantime, I still hate the swing.