Babywearing is useful for so many more things than just going for walks or getting housework done.

This carrier is soooo pretty. It’s even better in person. And look! I’m still in my pajamas, and posed in my picturesque backyard, right in front of our mess of pool floating devices, and further back you can see our tent drying off from a recent rainy weekend.

Anyway, I have restocked Onbus. I have only three right now, with two or three more to come on Monday.

Wallypop Ring Slings

A bit about ring slings in general.

Ring slings are often thought of as a pefect beginning carrier, easy to use, etc. While I wouldn’t say that ring slings are HARD to use, they do have a learning curve, and some people just simply don’t get them. I can honestly say that I’ve seen more people have difficulty with a ring sling than with a wrap – not that ring slings are all that difficult, but they’re not as simple as some want you to believe.

A bit about safety.

The rings used in ring slings are of UTMOST importance. The best ring slings are made with rings manufactured by Sling Rings. Their rings are very safe, tested to 250 lbs, and abused in every way possible. Note that some major brand names of ring slings do not use these rings and have had ring-related recalls. Not good.

Now, about Wallypop ring slings.

We make our ring slings from a variety of midweight cotton fabrics – we try to choose fun or understated prints that look good from both sides (front and back). We also make deluxe slings from silk or other high-end fabrics.  You can make a ring sling out of other weights of fabric, but we’ve found that much lighter weight, and the sling tends to cut in to the wearer’s shoulder and the baby’s legs. Much heavier, and it’s just, well, heavy.

We use nylon rings for our cotton slings. In our experience, the nylon rings grip the fabric better than metal, so they’re less prone to slipping.

For the Deluxe slings, we use aluminum rings. Not because they’re prettier or more deluxe, but because the higher-end fabrics we use (silk, satin, etc) tend to be thinner fabrics, and they are more easily gripped by the aluminum.

Wallypop ring slings are unpadded. In our experience, the padding in padded ring slings tends to just make the slings less adjustable, as the padding gets tangled up in the rings. Most people who start out using a padded ring sling, believing they need the padding for comfort, find that switching to an unpadded ring sling is actually more comfortable – they don’t need the padding, after all, and the lack of padding allows a better fit.

The shoulder of our ring slings are made with an inverse double pleat. Um, what? All that means is that it’s SUPER COMFORTABLE! Just wide enough on your shoulder to be comfortable without unduly restricting arm movement, but readily spreads out across your back with minimal bulk. I’ve also found that this type of pleat seems less likely to twist up than others I’ve tried.

Wearing

When you wear your ring sling, always make sure to keep the rings near your armpit. If you find the rings tend to travel down as you adjust the sling, first – start with the sling adjusted a bit shorter to start with, and second, pull OUT not DOWN.

Always keep fabric between you and baby, so that the baby has a secure place to sit. You never want to rely on friction to keep your baby in the sling!

Out for a walk on a breezy, chilly day.

and I promise a return to the All About series in a week or so.

She was NOT asleep, which is bizarrely why I’m holding her head. If she were asleep, I could’ve tucked it into the wrap, but she was awake and having NOTHING to do with that. But every time I leaned over to use the screwdriver, she leaned her head waaaaay back to see what I was doing, and I was afraid I’d drip sawdust in her eyes.

And she is asleep here but still wouldn’t cope with tucking in her head. Whatever.

I made myself a narrow body Pod while I was pregnant. The body’s only about 20 or so inches wide, but as long as my usual podegi pattern. The straps are more wrap-like, they’re very wide, and they’re made of twill.

I’m not sure yet what I think of it. Some people at The Babywearer have reported they find a narrow body pod to be easier and faster than a wrap, but just as supportive. I’m not sure I think that’s true for me. I have definitely LIKED the carrier – it’s comfortable and easy to use. I’m just not certain that it’s any better than a wrap.

Thought I’d share a few pictures of wearing Genna while constructing our chicken coop. Genna was fussy and tired and just wanted to be held, but I needed to work on the coop while it was still light out, so the MT really saved the day.

Note, doing construction with a baby on your front is not easy, but it is doable. If you decide to do any sort of construction while wearing your baby, please take reasonable safety precautions. I didn’t, for example, use the table saw while wearing Genna, or anything else that might cause sawdust or small pieces of wood to come flying at her face.

More here: http://wallypop.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/more-babywearing-while-building-pictures/

This is a question I get all the time and, like most questions regarding diapering and babywearing, I feel like I’m dodging the answer when giving my most honest and complete response.

How long can I carry a child in this carrier?

Whether you are asking in terms of how old of a child you can carry, or whether you’re asking how many hours in a row you can carry a child, there is no real definitive answer.

It really depends on you. I know people who stop wearing their babies at about 6 months, because they are too heavy after that. I still wore 4.5 year old Wally when I was 6 months pregnant and he weighed over 45 lbs.

It just really depends on YOU.

Some things to consider are your own bodyweight and what kind of condition you’re in. My husband and I go hiking on a fairly regular basis in the summer. We have worn Wally since the first summer we had him, and this year (his fifth) will be the first that we won’t wear him at all on any hikes.  (Since he could walk, he’s been expected to walk at least part of the way, to the best of his ability.) So carrying somewhat heavy loads is  something we are accustomed to.

That said, it’s never a good idea to carry more than about 1/3 of your own bodyweight. Currently at just over 50 lbs, Wally’s nearing half of my bodyweight. While I can still put him on, I can’t wear him for long. (And, seriously people, he does not generally WANT to be worn, either. We do a lot of crazy things around here for experimentation. I still try to stuff him into diapers, for example, just to see if they would still fit if we needed them to.)

One thing that I urge you to keep in mind when wearing older kids, though, is that 45 lbs is a LOT of weight. The most common reaction I receive from people trying out carriers to wear their older kids in is that it pulls at the shoulders. Yeah. I mean, it will. There’s no way to make 45 lbs feel light as a feather.

We have somewhat better luck in backpacking with making the load seem lighter – backpacks have load lifters, load stabilizers, and plus, the loads themselves are compact and stable.

Wearing a toddler or older is nothing like that. Their weight is not ideally centered on your back, they’re not exactly compact, and they’re far from stable. If your kids are anything like mine, they think nothing of throwing themselves to one side or another to look around or just to annoy you. (I think I spent the whole hike down from the top of Mt Timpanogos in Utah when Wally was 2 saying “Wally! Sit up! Wally! Stop leaning! Wally! Stop Leaning!!”)

So, the weight limit depends more on YOU than anything else.

This is how it looks when you nurse in a MT. Just untie, lower the baby so her mouth is at the right height, latch her on, and you can usually let go. You can tell what I’m doing, but you can’t see the details. If I were wearing a nursing shirt, it would be less obvious.