One of my memories from my mother’s photo album was of my Mum at about my age carrying my little brother in a back pack. I never thought this was weird but my mother tells me that she never actually owned a pram. The majority of mothers in New Zealand in the 1970s were told by their health experts to put the baby in a pram and leave it outside in the sun and fresh air for their morning nap. Oh, how times have changed. Here we have very little ozone layer so we have very harsh UV. My midwife even suggested that I not take my baby outside for photo-therapy when he had jaundice, because sunburn was a much higher risk.
When my boy was still in utero we had many care packages and hand-me-downs from family. I guess it helped that my husband was the first of his generation in his family, and that his family is quite young, because we have doting great-grandparents in the mix. My boy is so lucky. One of the things that we were gifted was a baby stroller. When my son was about 6 weeks old, my husband and I clipped him into the stroller and we wandered down to the local café or perhaps the library with my boy in what felt like his own personal SUV. The contraption was so large and he was so small that we had to put a cushion under his bum so he would fit properly into the restraint… in 20/20 hindsight he was probably far to young.
I remember with shame the night that my husband took the boy out for a walk in the stroller to calm his nerves (the boy would normally fall fast asleep in transit) and I welcomed, in from the cold, a frazzled Daddy and a howling baby. My darling son had started crying again about 10 minutes walk from home and was inconsolable, so Daddy had taken him out of the stroller to carry him. Struggling in vain to steer the stroller and carry and soothe the baby all at once, while hurrying desperately home to me, the boy had come unwrapped from his blankets and he had become quite chilly. I felt so sorry for both of them! If only we had known another way.
As a new mother I had never heard of “baby wearing”. When I first heard the term my son was about 5 weeks old. It seemed like really good sense but I had no idea how it was done. There seemed like a lot of things to learn, and gear to make or buy. My Mum was brought up in Fiji and she said that the women there just tie their baby up in a sulu (like a lava-lava from Samoa; the cloth sheet/skirt-like a sarong wrap that both men and women wear in Fiji). I had no idea how to do this. Wearing my boy in a cradled position in an unpadded sling was quite hard on my back and shoulders, and I was recovering from a C-section.
We decided to go to a baby store that specialised in carriers and cloth nappies, and ask the people there what they thought. My husband didn’t like the idea of getting a ring-sling because it didn’t look manly enough for him, so we decided that a meitai asian-style carrier was the way to go, because it was versatile and could be worn easily by different people.
After getting my carrier things got so much easier! I could do hands-free laundry, fix a snack, go to the library, carry my boy with the weight across my back rather than on one shoulder, and possibly most importantly, when my baby wouldn’t settle I could tie him to me and he would be snuggled up to me and asleep in minutes. I started to be able to go out for walks. I was getting fit again after my hell pregnancy, and at the same time I could get out of the house with my husband and we could just have quiet time, away from the TV and computers and house work that we seemed to be inextricable from.
When I think back to our “convenience” device, the stroller, that we found so useful for Christmas shopping in the mall, I think about what was wrong with that picture. I remember spending ages trying to lengthen and shorten straps, I remember parking and waiting with the baby while my husband went into a store that had isles too narrow to navigate with all the Christmas foot traffic, and I remember waiting and waiting for a gap big enough to push the stroller through to get through an electronics store… but these were only my inconveniences. I was continually popping around the front of the stroller to see if my little darling was asleep or awake, and if he was happy, or just annoyed by the seatbelt strapping.
I remember walking to a parenting class on a mild summer day and having to find a “park” in the yard of the health centre, amongst various other buggies, strollers and pram-alikes. Recently my husband and I went to a musical activity hour for babies, to which about 30 other parents showed up, and my husband commented smugly that we no longer have to find a park just to get in the door. Add to the convenience that travelling on the bus is made so much easier when you don’t have to muscle a little old lady out of the front seat so you can park a baby there.
When I am walking with my son I am stopped by smiling grandmothers who all say how “contented” he looks. He grins at them with security from the comfort of Mum’s chest. When it rains I wrap an extra-large, comfy jacket around the both of us and we can brave the elements together, keeping each other warm. Some mothers ask, “Where do I get a carrier like that?”… and I’ve been told that eventually people will ask, “Isn’t he getting a bit heavy for that?” Another mother I have spoken to said her answer to the nay-sayers was: “I will consider stopping carrying my baby when our combined weight gets back to my weight before he was born.” Now, I was overweight before my pregnancy and I was very sick during it so I have lost a LOT of weight. I keep getting fitter and healthier, so at this rate, assuming I stop carrying my boy when I reach my pre-pregnancy weight, I will still be carrying my son when he’s 4!
But what of my parking issues at home? What IS that dinosaur living in my kitchen? The stroller that seemed like such a good idea in the mall at Christmas time is now parked in my kitchen covered in unfolded laundry, like some disused piece of exercise equipment you bought off an infomercial when it seemed like a good idea at the time.
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