In The Times of Tuesday 5 January 2010, Anna Shepard wrote an article entitled Keep calm and carry on. It discussed the benefits of carrying your baby in a sling, especially for fathers. I certainly don’t object to this, but I did feel there were disparaging comments about mothers who put young babies in prams. Not everyone wants to carry their toddler/child or thinks that it’s beneficial to do so. So I am going to write about why I preferred to use a pram/buggy and how this did not make me a bad mother.
Shepard cites Dr Ronald Barr who says that using slings reduces crying. “In his 2005 study, he reports that when mothers increase carrying their baby from 2.7 hours to 4.4 hours daily, crying can reduce by up to 43 percent.” I’m sure it does, but does it reflect the realities of being a busy mother?
For many women, carrying their babies is liberating as they simply carrying on doing what they would do, with a baby strapped to their body – as women around the world are forced to do because they don’t have the luxury of maternity leave from their physical jobs.
My issue is that sling carrying was not for me, I didn’t feel comfortable bending and reaching with a tiny baby strapped to my tummy. I resented the implication from this article that such admissions made me a less attentive mother. “…babies are not always ready for the relative independence of their own prams. They like to hear a reassuring heartbeat as well as the motion of their parents’ bodies”.
My babies slept in their own cot from night one (okay, night two, no-one really slept on night one!) and went straight into a fantastic carry cot that clipped to pram wheels. They never complained about it and they didn’t seem discontented or lacking in body contact – I loved cuddling them (and was dedicated to breast feeding, so had a lot of intimate contact that way), I just didn’t want to carry them all the time.
The article moves on from the benefits of dads carrying babies in slings to “In the US, sling-wearing is as much a movement as it is a means of carrying your baby.” Thus we launch into the discussion of attachment parenting. I’m not anti Attachment Parenting. Whenever I read about Attachment Parenting I feel like a monster because I let my babies cry (not all day, but I didn’t always go straight to them). But I couldn’t parent in an AP way. I loved my babies but needed some physical independence to retain my sanity; my own place in my own bed and time to move freely as an individual to achieve things not directly related to baby, like emptying the dishwasher. And I used to enjoy walking with a pram or buggy, especially when we lived in Bishkek. It was therapeutic to rumble around town behind a buggy, and we both enjoyed watching what we passed.
Shepard agrees – “I believe that slings should be taken for what they are, rather than bound up in the politics of parenting…I don’t buy the attitude that to be a good mother you must fasten yourself together for every second of the day.”
Reading this article I did feel a little pang of regret that I’d missed out – maybe I should have ventured beyond the Baby Bjorn and tried a fabric sling, maybe it was the sling I used that was the problem. But I’d not warmed to slings and didn’t want to pay for something I wouldn’t use. Also, nostalgia aside, I know myself and I know that I needed those periods of independence and would have been quickly claustrophobic with too much sling wearing! The women interviewed felt freer, I would have felt more constrained: this is the key to the issue, all mothers are different.
In Saying No, Asha Phillips argues that babies actually need their own space to start learning about who they are as independent beings. “The beginnings of being on your own, of separateness, are very important…With a parent who responds quickly to any cry or communication, the baby may well believe that he is not separate at all…In trying to be the perfect parents…we sometimes interpret too early, before he has had time to taste his own feeling…By wishing to spare the child, we may in fact rob him of his own experience.”
Surely the conclusion is that there is room for many styles of transporting baby and parenting, or preferably, a healthy mix of both. Just because you prefer one or the other, shouldn’t categorise your parenting; pacing the house with a new born in a sling is not the type of parenting all babies and parents want or need.
I found a buggy easier with three children while other mothers swear by the sling. Neither option makes us bad mothers, just busy ones.
A very good post. How often you wear a baby in a sling is so dependent on your lifestyle and the personalities of the mother and baby. My second son hated being in a sling! My third baby is now seven weeks old and she loves it. I have a fabric sling to wear indoors. But the problem is my back! She was nearly 9lb at birth and is now nearly 12lb. That’s quite a lot to carry for any length of time. Like you I find bending over to do household chores difficult with her in the sling. And with two other children to get down on the floor with it’s not easy. Out and about I use a double buggy so I can get about with my toddler too. But I do wear her at home when she’s grumpy and it helps her a lot.
I don’t know how anyone can pass judgement on how much people do and don’t use a sling. It’s so dependent on circumstances.
I know what you mean about a bad back, that was my problem, I found the weight of baby pulled across my upper back. I think the Baby Bjorn design has been improved now and there is a lower back strap to help distribute the weight, but I just did not get on with sling wearing all the time.
I too loved my double buggy to go out and about. One of my favourite things was to walk when they were little. I missed that freedom once my first son was older and wanted to walk himself. I was then, and still am, confined to walking distances they can cope with, and at a very slow, distracted pace!
Great post.
I think that with my first, in running to him the moment he cried, I deprived myself of the opportunity to learn that different cries meant different things (hunger, discomfort, boredom, a burp…) And at the time, I’d never even heard of AP.
So much depends on the child too, and the age of the child. Some babies love to be snuggled up, but some are ready to look around at the world at a very early age and not bother what their body is against. My third child made it clear that she liked to be held facing outwards, and not over my shoulder. And a lot depends on how good the parent is at doing everything with one hand. It’s remarkable what you can achieve!
I agree with you, though, how the sling seems to have taken on some greater significance. Some people do seem to wear a sling like a sort of banner saying “I’m a great parent”. Then there are those hip seats…
Thanks Iota. You are so right that each child is different. I actually carried my first child more in a sling. As a first time mother there is so much experimentation, for you both, trying to work out how best to care for a child. But I don’t think I sling carried my third child at all – she liked being in a bouncy chair – as long as she could see her brothers she was happy! I feel a bit sad realising this, that maybe I missed out on something with her. But I just always needed complete freedom of movement to deal with two little boys and I think she was safest in the buggy!