Carry On
Keeping baby just a heartbeat away is healthy for parent and child

By Lisa Stein
Special to the Tribune

Ah, our beloved strollers. Prized gifts at many a baby shower, ever-ready transporters of babies and toddlers, convenient receptacles for diaper bags, coffee, snacks and keys. How would we manage without them?

Just fine, according to some childcare experts who say that relying less on strollers and more on the innate strength of our bodies to carry babies would benefit not only the little ones but also the parents. Taking their cue from indigenous cultures, advocates of alternative parenting techniques assert that babies who are carried close to mom (or dad or any caregiver) as she goes about her daily tasks are healthier, happier and calmer.

One staunch proponent of traditional baby-carrying methods, as they are called in English for lack of a better term, is Isabelle Badili, a native of Berlin who moved to Chicago in 1996. Badili first learned these techniques on a visit home to Berlin when she was pregnant her daughter Ananda, now 4. "I took a class started by a woman who had rediscovered all these different techniques and made them popular in Germany in the 1970s," Badili says. "She had twins and one of them had hip dysplasia. She carried her children in a sling, and they both started walking at the same age, even though babies with dysplasia usually take longer."

After Ananda was born, Badili liked carrying her so much that she began sharing the techniques with friends who were eager to try them out with their own babies. Word of Badili's baby holds spread quickly, and before long she was teaching classes in her Hyde Park apartment and conducting seminars for lactation consultants and parents enrolled in birthing classes. These holds, traditionally used throughout South and Central America, Africa and Asia, work with babies of all sizes, up to 30 pounds or 2 years. Parents can fashion all the holds, which number close to 100, from a single scarf and adapt them as babies grow. They differ from most brand-name baby slings, carriers and backpacks that are limited to one or two positions and are often quickly outgrown. The scarves are quite large, about 12 feet by 2 feet.

Newborns and infants up to 3 months do best with what Badili calls the cradle and the "X" holds, both of which tie babies quite close to the parent's body, always facing inward.

The slightly looser kangaroo holds work well after babies are 6 weeks old, and after several months most babies graduate to the hip seat and backpack. There are many different ways of carrying babies, depending on the needs and preferences of parents and babies, and Badili urges her students to experiment.

She suggests that parents carry babies whenever they can - around the house, on trips outside and, if they don't work in a corporate setting, on the job. Badili's assertion that babies should be carried is echoed by child-care guru William Sears, who has detailed the benefits of baby-carrying, or "baby-wearing" as he calls it, in several of his dozens of parenting books. A pediatrician and father of eight, Sears is a vocal champion of attachment parenting, an approach to child rearing that emphasizes physical and emotional closeness between parent and child.

Sears discovered the merits of baby-wearing with his seventh child, who was fussier than his others. When Sears or his wife carried him, the baby cried less and was generally much calmer. In fact, Sears was carrying his son at a parenting conference 11 years ago when he met several women from Zambia, who were also carrying their babies.

Sears asked them why mothers in other cultures wear their babies. "They gave me two very simple, profound answers," he recalls. "One, it does good things for the baby and two, it makes life easier for the mother. They summed everything up in those two phrases."

Badili found that the advantages of traditional baby holds are numerous. The first is convenience.

"Strollers are very cumbersome and can be almost as restrictive as wheelchairs when entering buildings, getting on a bus or going through revolving doors downtown," Badili says, adding that tying babies to your keeps your hands free.

Caroleen Wheeland, a dance instructor who took Badili's class last spring, has been carrying her son, Jonah, since his birth in May. "I've been cleaning the house, shopping, teaching classes, walking the dog, even brushing my teeth while carrying him," she says with a laugh.

"We live on the second floor of a walk-up, and it's a big pain for me to lug our 3-in-1 baby carrier up and down the stairs," Wheeland adds. "So this method is perfect."

Carrying babies also offers physiological and safety benefits. Sears claims there's no better way to give babies the experiences they need to develop brainpower.

"A baby learns a lot in the arms of a busy caregiver - not only a mother but a day-care provider too. They don't learn a lot lying flat on their backs staring up at the sky. In arms they go where the mother goes, see what the mother sees, hear what she hears. It's the best stimulation you can give," Sears says.

"In a flat stroller babies are seeing the world from a really strange perspective. People are looking down on them," Badili adds. "And when you go to a fair or festival with an umbrella stroller, people have their cigarettes in your baby's face. Someone once said to me that strollers are at the same level as dogs, legs and exhaust."

According to Sears, the crucial time for carrying babies is the first eight months of life, or until they begin to crawl. "The younger the baby, the more hours per day they should be carried."

Sue McNulty, a Bradley method instructor at Louis A. Weiss Memorial Hospital and other institutions, regularly brings in Badili to talk to expectant parents in her classes. Last year her students had ample opportunity to view Badili's techniques in action, because McNulty carried her fourth child while teaching. While she taught, Liam, now 14 months, slept, breastfed and observed goings-on from his safe place in the scarf.

"Babies have a physiological need to be close to us that is part of their make-up and not recognized in our culture," McNulty says. "This enables a parent to be more independent, whether doing practical things around the house, or in my case, working. I was able to do my job and still have my baby near me."

Martine Benmann, a cellist living on the North Side, has carried the younger of her two sons, a 7-month-old, while practicing, teaching and getting around her neighborhood. "The motion of the body is so much better for the baby than the motion of a stroller," she says. "Babies are bumped around in a stroller. When my son is with me it feels much more organic, that's better for him and he is less stressed."

Benmann admits, though, to using a stroller when she becomes exhausted. "At times I put him down so my body can rest. I definitely understand the theory but I compromise just for my own sake."

Of course, baby-carrying is not the exclusive domain of women. Badili's husband, Zuberi, carried Ananda for walks around the neighborhood and while grocery shopping until she was about 2. He did find that the sight of a large man with an infant tied to his chest inspired a good deal of curiosity. "I'd go for a walk with her under my coat and kind of bounce her around and people would look at me like 'What is that man doing? What is under his coat?'

"Carrying helped to shelter her and ward off all the cheek-grabbers," he continues. "If strangers came up and wanted to touch her all I had to do was turn my shoulder away."

McNulty also reports some mixed reactions in public. "One day we were at the park and a woman said, 'Isn't he too old for that?' Another one said, 'Oh, you're one of those nice moms who carry their babies.' I think some people are trying to validate their choices by reducing the importance of what someone else does."

Badili and Sears assure that carrying babies and toddlers won't make them clingy or impede their ability or desire to move about on their own when they're ready. In fact, they will be more secure and independent in the long run.

"We carried her as long as we could and as long as she wanted to be carried," Zuberi says. "Carrying her was my way of making sure I was going to be an active father and a connected parent," he says. "There's nothing like having them right next to your heartbeat, close to you."
...