Baby wearing keeps your new baby close and feeling safe and secure. When do you feel at your most protected? In the arms of a loved one?
Recently I asked a wonderful Facebook group that I am part of if anyone would be interested in writing a piece about baby wearing, how to, why to or anything related to it. It’s something I’ve done with both boys, though not constantly, and more so with Toby out of ease than anything else. I can hardly count myself as an expert, but some people are genuinely experts in baby carrying or baby wearing and can help new parents understand how and why carrying is such a positive thing to do for baby and for you. I am so delighted to share this piece by Mariann Hornyák, from Baby In Sling, who is a baby wearing consultant and puts into words perfectly how important carrying can be for helping to maintain the bond built over pregnancy with baby.
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Finally you can be sure. You can exhale, relax. The second line is there: you are pregnant. This is the start of your journey with your baby. Yes, I called your fetus a baby. This baby will grow, develop, and get stronger. You carry him. You carry your baby in every second, close to your heart.
Your baby has free access to food, he can sleep anytime he feels tired and he is comforted, cuddled and loved in every moment. This is his real world. Your heartbeat is the music he listens to before falling asleep, your heartbeat is there when he awakes. He is secured, he is warm, he is fed and he is free to move and straighten his legs, turn his body. This is the perfect place for him. You can tell how happy he is.
You can feel his moves and kicks; soon he will listen to your voice and will react. He will fall asleep if his daddy tells stories to him. You already communicate in every minute. You are connected.
Your baby is there, part of your body, growing from there like the most beautiful flower from the ground.
And then something happens that your baby does not understand. He feels that something terrible is going to happen and he cannot hear your heartbeat anymore. He can only hear loud voices, see blinding lights, strange people. He has to fight with breathing, smells, cold and being separated from his heartbeat. That heartbeat meant the warmth, the safety, the food and the love; that was everything he had.
He is scared now. He is scared to death.
The only relief is if he can get that heartbeat back. Not as loud as before but the same rhythm. He can feel the warmth of your skin. He knows that he is part of your body. He does not understand what happened but does not want accept the change. His biological need is to stay close to you, close to the heartbeat that he already knows well. This is the only way he can survive, he believes.
He does not know anything else, only how life was in the womb. Every day will bring something new to learn. But he feels safe only close to you. You carried him for months, keep going now. Carry him close to your heart.
There is only one thing that can be even scarier than the noisy, crowded world: the silence in the darkness, when he is left alone without the heartbeat.
Mariann
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You can find Mariann here:
That’s lovely. Our little boy loves being carried. He loves cuddles especially when he can hear mine or my husband’s heartbeat. My Mum keeps telling me that I need to put our little boy down during the day so that he can go to sleep without me, but there is something about having him close for me too – it means that not all the chores get done but sometimes those hugs while I can are far more important than whether the washing gets done today or whether it waits until tomorrow.
Beautiful words and so true 😀 . I love my long baby cuddles and even at 9 months that is where she feels the safest. x