Kangaroo care and babywearing!

Well, what can I say - I am a complete sling convert. Every day I wish that I had discovered the awesomeness of babywearing when my eldest son was born. Oh, don't get me wrong - I could see the benefits of skin to skin, keeping close to baby - but I just had so much to do. So I got thinking, 'I'm sure I've seen people wearing slings? I'll pop into mothercare and see if I can get one for myself.' I guess there was my first mistake. My first sling became the Tomy Freestyle, and I'm sad to say it put me off slings for nearly two years!

Why I hated the baby bjorn style sling:
1. There was thick padded material between me and the baby - I wanted to be close to him, not keep him seperate from my body! Duh!
2. It hung somewhere around my stomach. It pulled on my back and neck muscles. It was like wearing a 10lb necklace.
3. All the pictures showed cute babies and happy families with the baby facing outwards, so that's what I did. I thought it looked really strange though, and made me a bit self concious.
4. His legs were just dangling, flapping around in the wind. How on earth is could that have been good for his hips?

So I ebayed the sling, and fully embraced my travel system.

When my son turned one I was pregnant with my second son. I actually started to panic. I had done everything wrong the first time round. I started researching and decided to start off with a moby wrap when my son was born.

Best choice I ever made.

I guess my sling addiction started from there, my son is only 7 months (tomorrow) and I've lost count of slings I have - my stretchy, my woven wraps, my mei tais, my wrap conversion (all time favourite at the mo), my toddler SSCs! Such an expensive habit though! Lol.

So anyway - why did I feel the need to write this today? All I've done is rambled so far!

When I carry my baby, within minutes I feel his body relax, his breathing steadies, he starts softly cooing, sometimes he rests his head against my chest and puts his tiny chubby hand over my heart and I swear he's feeling, listening to the rhythm of my heart beating.

I notice a difference, on days when I'm feeling down, grumpy, tired and I don't wear him. He cries a lot more. He sleeps a lot less. I always find myself suddenly sympathising with mothers who say things like 'he doesn't stop crying!' or 'he never sleeps, I can't get a thing done!'

I've also noticed a change in my toddler. He was coming up to 2 when my baby was born, and I decided to start wearing him too. I actually found it easier in the begining to wrap with him as he was a heavyweight whereas the baby would just be floppy lol. Anyway when he gets upset or worried now, he goes 'mummy, ack! ack!' (that's back to me and you) and it means - get me on your back for cuddles, now! lol. Again, once he's on my back I feel him relax, he lays against me with his arms around me, sometimes reaches round and kisses me, strokes my hair. What can I say? I LOVE it :)

So anyway thinking about my own personal benefits of babywearing made me start thinking about newbowns, premature babies, ill babies etc - and how it must be beneficial to them. So I got googling and started reading about kangaroo care.

The more googling I did I found mothers on discussions forums talking about babies being in incubators, but not being allowed skin to skin. Or only for a couple of minutes. One person (I can't remember where I read this now) said that whenever she had him down her top cuddled up he slept and his temperature and breathing regulated and whenever she put him back in the incubator the respiration monitors started bleeping like crazy, but the staff said even so it was better he was in the incubator.

I guess the whole thing confuses me, and I need to do a lot more reading.

But then again I'm meant to be filling out forms and getting on with my workbooks for uni!