Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014/11/complications-in-birth-of-babywearer.html
I want to start my story focused on the resource I did have: education. In seven years of infertility I'd read more about newborn needs than most people do in a lifetime. I knew all about kangaroo care and vestibular stimulation and the anthropological evidence of alloparenting. I knew about just about every thing you can absorb from books or research papers. Plus, I'd seen babies worn in slings all the time back when I was getting my doula education before my health broke. At the point in pregnancy when other mothers were collecting baby clothes, I was tracking down three yards of gauze for a reboza and making my first ring sling. Who needs clothes when babies are born to be skin to skin? I was going to wear my baby everywhere!
Instead, I ended up carrying my baby in my arms for eighteen to twenty hours a day for much of the first year of his life.
It was when baby arrived that I found out just what you can and can't learn from books. Books kept us breastfeeding despite all odds. He had a latch that *looked** okay and I had what felt like an endless train of so-called "lactation consultants" playing cheerleader... all while I kept trying to tell them that I was *sure* this didn't feel right and my miracle baby's weight sank under five pounds. Because of my book-learning, I faced off with the pediatrician, demanded equipment my care providers didn't even know about, pumped for twenty minutes every hour and a half, and traded back and forth with my husband finger-feeding him with a threadlike tube for sixteen hours a day-- and all the while at the same time everyone we talked to, every time we left the house, we asked for help with the reboza I turned out to be unable to tie and the ring sling I couldn't even get on. Reading had taught me why to wear my baby, but it could not teach me how to-- and apparently, neither could anyone else (including my husband, who claimed he was a natural). The staff at our birth center, our doula, our childbirth educator, La Leche-- everywhere, the same reactions. Rebozas? Aren't they for labor? Ring-sling? What's to know, you put it on and put the baby in it, right? And why is this important when you're having feeding and weight troubles? [FYI-- babywearing is research-demonstrated to speed weight gain.]
No one we knew commented on the fact that, following internet instructions that just read "two and a half yards of a fabric you like", I'd made the ring-sling out of a dirt-cheap super light super grippy quilter's weave and **steel saddle rings** from a leather shop because I'd read there were issues with rings breaking. [FYI-- baaaaad ideas]. No one but me pointed out that, when my husband wore our little one, baby's head ended up at near right angles to his body and his little face pressed right against that (thank god!) super thin cloth. (My husband finally stopped because my already strained nerves couldn't handle it.). Meanwhile I made a "moby"style out of strips of a stretchy bedsheet on clearance, sitting at a sewing machine at my parents while family passed around the baby. The first few times I put it on were like playing twister for me, but soon it became second nature.
By three months the horror of the breastfeeding problems and procedures we'd behind us, but we were still carting around ring sling number two-- my best friend's own go-to Zosimos, mailed to me from states away. Still, no one could show us how to use it. When I'd try, I'd get a back spasm and a headache that would last hours. Our public health nurse offered to get me another sling or some time of carrier-- but was up front that she would not be able to teach me how to use it. Meanwhile our little baby turned out to be one of those who wanted skin contact at all times everywhere. After a few months, the "non-moby" was so stretched out, I chopped up the fabric for diaper wipes. My husband got fixated on buying a Becco Gemini after seeing another father wear one. It took an enormous amount of help from family to afford and acquire one but the Gemini was supposed to be "the only baby carrier we'd ever need from infancy through preschool."
Meanwhile we were still eking our way by inches out of a hoarding situation, trying to stay on top of the tangle of social services (we lost our power assistance due to an office error and then were denied three times in a year for paperwork problems that were never explained-- and some saint in DSHS had to work on our file for 7.5 hours nonstop to straighten out the hash that others had made of our food and medical benefits, all while SSI continued to stall recognition of my husband's disability). Of course, I was also going through a long distance graduate school program on a need-based scholarship that required I maintain an A- average or lose everything.
Several times, I reached a point of needing to call my father to come into town to pick us up so baby and I could have regular meals and a stable, clean place to be while I caught up on my schoolwork and my husband worked on our wreck of a home. The crazy combination of chaos and retreat came at a steep price; my son became unwilling to be held by anyone but me. At some point during all this, I finally found local BWI meeting information, but all the meetings I could see for two months were Eastside and West Seattle-- as far away as the moon to me. [FYI- BWI = Babywearers International, a nonprofit group dedicated to teaching babywearing skills.]
At least there was the Becco. Baby didn't like facing in. On my back, he just screamed-- and I had no way to get him down quickly and safely or check in on him. He loved facing out, but I was worried about his hips. [FYI - inadequate hip support from some styles of carrier, especially the popular Bjorns, are strongly correlated to hip dysplasia. The Gemini is a good carrier, but facing-out is the position that offers the least support]. I tried to limit his time facing out in the Becco to forty minutes a day-- which pretty much meant one outing a day, for me *or* my husband. I found out that I couldn't wrestle him in and out of the Becco on a crowded bus while keeping groceries upright/diaper bag at hand, so it became a short distance tool.
A pause here for gratitude-- In so many ways the Becco was a godsend-- it made groceries and the endless outdoor walking to soothe his evening colic *possible*. And everyone in the neighborhood loved, loved, loved it. Fellow shoppers at the store and homeless on the street would stop us to praise me for keeping my baby warm and near. No one around here had seen anything like it before-- on my block, mothers buy those cheap umbrella strollers for $12 when they go on summer sale, then come fall wrap up their babies like burritos and walk home with the groceries hanging in old plastic bags from the handlebars. I've seen mothers with a baby and toddler steal shopping carts to get their families where they need to go.
At the same time as it gave us these gifts, the Becco's limits on top of our own limitations were severe. My world dwindle to five square blocks of our neighborhood. Most days, most of the day, I simply carried him, and at night he slept naked in my naked arms or not at all. Managing this and my classwork came at the cost of my ability to feed and clean myself. By a year old our struggles to better understand and meet his high needs had only resulted in him being saddled with a formal diagnosis of "infant mental illness". Professionals kept telling us daycare would have prevented our problems and never failed to express their shock that their advice for "training" him by forcing him to be alone for increasing lengths of time only increased his agitation. Meanwhile, when we could get out, all our friends though we had the perfect baby boy [we agreed!]. He was so quiet, so sweet, so curious and focused-- so long as he was in my arms.
I cried the day I walked into my own library's meeting room and read on the white board there that there'd been a BWI meeting there the day before. Of course, no one in the library could give me any information on it-- whether it was a freak, one-time occurrence or a regular thing. That may have been when I gave up my hopes of ever becoming the kind of babywearer I'd dreamed of being. [FYI - The condition for reserving a public room at the library is that your event must be open to the public... and cannot be advertised by any kind of flyer. Meeting at the library kept the group accessible... at the cost of being able to do basic outreach. In fact, the group is almost entirely dependent on Facebook-- which is why I had such a hard time finding any information on them.]
I got my second chance when a Facebook-savvy friend had her own baby and asked me to come with her to a BWI meeting at my library. It was bittersweet for me, but I couldn't resist, even though at 18 months and walking my little guy was clearly beyond the babywearing stage, right? [FYI - NOT!]. I remember struggling to get him in and out of the Becco on our slow and halting way to the library, and letting myself really notice how his little body now went planked and rigid sliding into the carrier.
Then we reached the meeting and, pretty much, my life changed. For the first time ever I found myself in a room full of mothers who thought like I did. I'd gotten used to hanging on the outskirts of meet-ups, either listening to mothers in perfect make-up compare their new boots and exchange tips on the most distracting Baby Einstien DVDs, or watching immigrant mothers excited to find one another and speak together in their own language. Suddenly I had my own cultural home-coming. The most beautiful fabric I'd ever seen (after four years working in the industry) was flying everywhere like wings beating around me. I dared to strike up a conversation with a mother of four about separation anxiety and found myself being told almost the very words we'd said to the professionals over and over-- that he simply needed what he needed and we needed help understanding and supporting that. Even my pint-sized introvert relaxed enough to toddle after the other children. I was quick to realize that many of the kids I saw arriving and climbing into slings were much bigger than my own. In the blink of an eye, my goal changed from supporting my friend to getting help myself.
I didn't stretch myself out of my comfort zone, I threw myself out of it as if from a moving train. "Please Gd," I thought, "If there is one time in my life I can make like an extrovert, let it be now!" I made eye contact with the nearest attentive face and spilled out that fact that I didn't even know what to ask. With a few questions, we'd zeroed in on my most pressing need as some way to get my new explorer up and down easily, and I found myself sent over to the "best teacher" for... drumroll, please... a crash course on ring-slings! As I walked up, she had her hands full demonstrating a long woven wrap on a fellow newbie with a much smaller child, and missing hardly a beat, she started wrapping me up, too. It was obviously way too complicated for me to pick up and useless with a baby who couldn't stand facing in, but since I did need her help, I was hardly going to complain. We scooped my baby boy up into the mass of loops around me--
And he pressed his little head sideways against my breastbone, and I felt his little body absolutely melt against mine, letting go of every last bit of tension for the first time. "You just chill out in your mama's arms, don't you?" my new teacher cooed. "You're just where you need to be."
Then she showed me how to put on a ring sling, and how to put him in it, and how to adjust it-- and it actually worked for me!
So I rushed home and got out the Zosimos and did everything I'd been shown--
and ended up with a spamming back and a killer headache. I touched base with my friend, who rushed over the pleated-shoulder wrap conversion she'd borrowed at the meeting. I tried it-- and got a perfect fit.
There followed the tale of two babywearers-- both successful, but very different.
My friend had read about the group before getting to a meeting, enough to have already branched out into the DIY support group and the swaps. She had a few for the basics of the world of babywearing. She understood what was in the library and how it worked, and she had $30 to spare for the dues for access to the lending library of all different styles of baby carrier. She could drive.
My friend made it to three meetings in two weeks and connected with people besides. Within a month, she knew which styles of ring-sling worked for her, which didn't, and why. She'd gotten some jacquard tablecloth and very detailed instructions on how to sew it with a shoulder style she knew would work for her; she was shopping for her first woven wrap. In the end, she would get what she needed (as opposed to what she wanted, which never ends :) for about half as much money as I would spend trying to meet my needs, become a far more advanced babywearer than I, and meet her goals quicker with far less frustrations.
I fumbled my way on to the local BWI Facebook group, which seemed to be written in another language, and spent hours canvassing the thrift store and consignment shop looking for the kind of super-soft pleated shoulder ring sling that seemed to work for me. Yes, I was innocently looking around for a SBP-style WCRS to be sitting on a shelf, waiting for me. [FYI - what I didn't know at the time is that this is a $80-$180 custom-made item.]. I'd ever scraped together $35 to pay for it when I found it! When it became very clear that was not going to happen, I moved towards my hopes of a long woven wrap to duplicate our experience at the meeting. I dropped that money into the clearanced cotton curtain fabric that I would spend months trying to beat into the kind of softness I was looking for. On the group, I asked hard questions that got gentle answers... and I slowly started to come to grips with the price tag of my needs. [FYI - the type of ring sling a person is most comfortable with depends on the exact shape of their shoulders and neck musculature. The weaves or "wraps" that are soft, cushioned, and flexible enough from a really conforming fit and strong enough to do the work are enormously expensive; $200 - $400 are typical, and higher prices common. $60 -$80 jacquard tablecloths are the next step down, but it is a big step.]
I studied that Facebook group harder than my classes. For the first time, I actually had access to a community of other mothers I was in sync with. I learned names-- or at least acronyms-- for things I'd been doing all along. [FYI - "BLW" = encouraging your baby to mooch off your plate.] I learned that severe separation anxiety was much more common than "the professionals" who pathologized my child knew, that it had at least as much to do with natural personality as insecure environment, and that daycare not only would not have magically prevented it but most likely would not have been possible for our particular child. I learned why the most beautiful wraps also tended to be most durable, comfortable, and functional. I learned there was nothing strange or defective about my difficulty learning from pictures and videos, my need to be shown in person and to do it hands-on and then do it again. Like my baby, I just needed what I needed.
Then, abruptly, our time with the Becco was over. There was no more possibility of disregarding either his discomfort or mine. Suddenly, I needed that SNP-style WCRS ASAP to get our groceries home. There were hideous days of haunting the budget swap [$100 or less!] while everything went to pot. I scored ring sling #3 minutes after it had been posted, barely before the next wouldbe buyer. The shoulder *looked* right in the small photo. It wasn't, but it hardly mattered-- that sling got lost in the mail.
It was time for another retreat to my parents, and while I was there, an SBP WCRS came up on the local group. With my family aghast (I'd gone into debt over #3, and wouldn't get that money back until the post office finished their search) I told the seller that if she could bring it and it fit, I would buy it. That night, I finally danced my son to sleep in a sling... ring-sling #4.
With a ring-sling, we could get groceries again. With a ring-sling, we could ride the bus again. We could get back to the functions of the religious community I'd once been a central part of. We could dare to go farther to the bigger park, or tour the neighborhood, without fear of ending up stranded with him too tired to walk and me too tired to carry him. With a ring-sling, we had more meals, more often. We were able to join the local Buy Nothing group, to trek out to neighborhood houses and haul home what was clutter to others and treasure to us-- phones that didn't crackle, sturdy toys, a hand blender for powdered medicine, and, ironically, a stroller. And ultimately, with a ring-sling, my husband was able to sway our howling, heartbroken boy to sleep against his chest while I studied or showered.
These days we are on ringslings.#5-- big enough for my super-sized husband to wear, and #6, a tablecloth special with a tail short enough for safety when I'm pushing my husband's wheelchair, custom-made as a gift for me by my friend. After I read Facebook advice offered to another new wrapper-- that to overcome the challenges of first learning to wrap, you must love the wrap, want to touch it, want to use it, want to share it with your beloved-- I finally could let go of the money and time (three months!) I'd sunk into trying to soften up that curtain fabric. That beloved "first" working ring-sling (#4) was sold to fund a Lenny Lamb, the softest wrap on the market.
Baby's still got separation anxiety through the roof and a very low tolerance of strangers. Life still has more than its share of both blessings and limitations. I still hurt over the first year and a half of losses to my baby, my family, and myself that could have been helped if anyone, anywhere in our lives could have connected us to the local BWI group. I still have babywearing ambitions that I simply don't have the resources and support to make happen. Sometimes our FB group feels like home to me and sometimes I am a stranger in a strange land, helpless to join the conversations that are happening or to formulate questions in a way that gets answers I can use. We all have challenges, and in a very large group it can be difficult to explain why/how things are hard for you without some exhausted mother reading in an implication that things are easy for them.
From the outside, it is easy to forget that poverty isn't just about a lack of money, but a profound and complicated lack of various resources. In my home, we live at what I call a multiplicity of four. $5 is like $20 to us. For me, buying and selling slings in the swap was as stomach-clenching as being as a new broker jumping into the stock market with no net. Distances are greater. it takes me and my neighbor the same amount of time and effort to reach the store that's on the corner from my home and two miles from hers. Out of town might as well be out of state. I've made it to a grand total of four babywearing events, counting the one we needed to leave due to meltdown. I'm still on the fence about membership-- I'd love to see if I could master a high back carry with a mei tai, and go hiking!-- but, realistically I just can't make it to enough meetings to be sure of returning materials, and we can't afford to sink money into something that may not earn its keep. Simple tasks take longer with disabilities; a dinner of chopped veggies with stir-fried noodles is a dedicated two hour marathon for my husband, after which he is too tired to clean up. The time for me to practice the back wrapping I'd love to learn gets swallowed by the time it takes to survive. There is a strange expectation that living in chronic crisis makes us tougher, but the reality is chronic crisis of any kind leaves all of us more fragile, and much more wary of risks. To date, babywearing has cost us a full 5% of a year's cash income (separate from food benefits). It's been worth every penny, but if we'd known what it would take going in, it would have seemed impossible.
Babywearing comes with two great barriers-- quality carriers and quality teachers. The hardest thing of all about longterm poverty is the way it strips away your people skills. When you're not eating well, you're not thinking well, and you know it. You never look your best when you're making do with what people pass along or the thrift store has left, when having your hair cut professionally is a silly pipe dream to you. In our society, people meet around money-- coffee shops, restaurants, movie outings... and you can't do that; they invite you to their homes and you are scared to reciprocate because of all the differences in how you live and what (if anything) you have to offer. You have to constantly weigh everything you share about yourself-- will this revelation that invite people closer or scare them away? And then there's the issues of shame, and trauma, and depression-- and there is no one at our level of income without shame, and trauma, and depression. Poverty strips away your people-skills... and babywearing is people-powered. Our whole group of hundreds depends on the efforts of less than half a dozen teachers... including the one who finally got me slinging... the very teacher who had volunteered her services to the very center where I get my WIC benefits, only to be turned down flat by someone who decided babywearing wouldn't be of interest to people like me.
