By B
Last week, I had the opportunity to be interviewed for a local news show, Living Well, about our group and International Babywearing Week. I wore my daughter during the interview. Despite being in a strange new environment, with bright lights, strange machines and plenty of strangers, she was content, thanks to babywearing.
Here’s a clip of the interview.
If you’ve ever wondered more about our Volunteer Babywearing Educators (VBEs), about each of our babywearing journeys, this post is for you!
B’s story
Before my son was born in early 2008, I did a little reading and knew I wanted to wear him. I bought a padded sling and got a front pack from a friend. I thought we were all set! When he was born, we tried the carriers out. They really didn’t work like I expected them to. They were uncomfortable, hard to adjust, and I wasn’t always sure he was positioned correctly. Sometimes, they even felt unsafe. I did a little research online and decided to buy a pouch. We watched the videos, read the instructions. We were all set this time! No, he hated it. We could not find a comfortable position for him. I did more research, found TheBabyWearer.com, a community of passionate babywearing parents from around the world. I decided to try a wrap. Finally, babywearing clicked for us! Soon, I bought a mei tai, too. Since then, I’ve come to love every style of carrier for its own unique purpose. I’ve tried dozens and dozens of brands and researched many others. I wore my son nearly daily for the first 2.5 years of his life, well into my pregnancy with his sister. When she was born, I really was all set. I got more practice tandem wearing and perfected nursing a newborn in many styles of carriers. At 1 year old, she is worn daily and sometimes tandem worn with her brother or a friend.
I started doing babywearing education, informally, when my son was 1.5. I knew the value of trying carriers on with hands on help and how hard to find it was in our area. I did presentations to private groups, small and large, in homes, playgroups and childbirth classes and staffed booths at women’s and parenting festivals. I met our other VBEs along the way and they became involved in educating, one by one. In 2011, we decide to form a BWI group. I’m at nearly every meeting, demonstrating different carriers with my now 1 year old daughter and sometimes with her 4.5 year old brother. I love how easy babywearing has made the transition to two children and I love helping others to enjoy the closeness and ease the babywearing provides.
KSC is on babymoon with new baby girl, A. She started doing babywearing education with B in 2010 and is a founding VBE and co-leader for BWI of Peoria.
By CS
My Babywearing Journey
Before I ever had my kids, I was downtown at a Farmer’s Market and I saw a mom wearing a child. I believe it was the first time I had ever seen anyone babywearing and I remember thinking it was so cool. She was using a green woven wrap in a front carry and busily doing her shopping. She didn’t have a stroller slowing her down, she look so confident, at ease and her child looked so content. That is how I want to be a mother and I knew that I was going to have to research babywearing.
Fast forward till I am pregnant with my daughter and taking Bradley Classes in preparation for her birth. The Bradley Method is taught in a series of 12 classes. I can’t tell you how many of the classes featured the instructor or her husband wearing their youngest daughter. They used ring slings primarily and further cemented the idea of babywearing in my mind.
I started researching the topic and came across a article recommending the New Native Pouch. I ended up purchasing this carrier to try with my daughter. In retrospect, this was not the right carrier for me and I wish that I had tried other carriers before purchasing. Luckily shortly after, I did have an opportunity to see many carriers. My birth class had a reunion and our Bradley Instructor had arranged for a presentation by our very own Volunteer Babywearing Educator (VBE) B. This was the first time that I had met B and she walked our class through the different types of carriers and then gave some one-on-one help. After some email help from B as well, I ended up purchasing my first woven wrap – a storchenwiege.
I have added another child as well as many more carriers to my collection. I advocate babywearing to all of the pregnant people I know. Just recently I was certified as a VBE myself. I look forward to increasing my knowledge and to helping to spread babywearing to other parents as well.
HD’s story
I have been babywearing for over 4 years. I have two boys, ages 4 and 18 months. Before I was even pregnant with my first child, I knew that I wanted to babywear. Once I started researching babywearing and the benefits, I was completely sold. My first carrier was an Ergobaby SSC with an infant insert and I started wearing my son right away. I loved being so close to him, with all the conveniences, like having my hands free and nursing coverage. At that point in time, I knew zero people who were babywearers and I rarely saw anyone in my community wearing their child. When my son was a few months old, I met a small group of like minded mamas and my babywearing interest grew as I discovered other types of carriers such as ring slings, pouches and wraps. Soon I had a carrier for several occasions and to match my clothes! I continued to wear my older son throughout most of the pregnancy with my second son and even still occasionally wear him. By the time my second child was born, I was fully immersed in the local babywearing community and even helping promote awareness of a small local group. A few of us decided to bring our group to the next level and become part of Babywearing International. At first, I helped with paperwork and promotional things, but have since become a Volunteer Babywearing Educator. I love introducing and helping new moms and dads find a new lifestyle in babywearing. I am sad that my “baby”wearing journey had ended, but happy that I still have a few more years of “toddler”wearing to enjoy!
By B
Today kicks off International Babywearing Week, which continues until the 14th. We are so so excited to be celebrating this as an official BWI group this year. Last year at this time, we were a new group, just starting out, working to build our carrier library. We celebrated with a walk at the mall to raise awareness of babywearing.
We talked to one lady about carriers. She wasn’t interested. Ha!
We’ve come soooo far since then — over 150 blog posts, dozens of meetups, dozens of members, over 40 carriers and growing,
four VBEs. Here’s what we’re doing to celebrate:
We got the mayor of Peoria to issue a proclamation, declaring it officially International Babywearing Week in Peoria.
We have tons of events
Monday- park playdate at Bicycle Safety Town. We’ll just hang out, chat about carriers, snap some pics to share on our Facebook page and on the Babywearing International page
Tuesday- Check back here to learn more about each of our VBEs and their babywearing journeys.
Also, you can participate in the blog contest Babywearing International is putting on.Write a blog post about your babywearing journey or why babywearing is important to you and submit a link to phoenix@babywearinginternational.orgto be entered in the contest. A link to your blog post will be shared on babywearinginternational.org
Wednesday- Babywearing International is partnering with The Babywearer again this year and is going to giveaway some AWESOME prizes and have lots of fun. Twitter party 1pm Central Time on Wednesday October 10th and at 9pm EST Saturday October 13th. Use hashtag #IBW2012 and start gathering your pictures to share for a chance to win some awesome prizes! (Hints for pictures: Something old, something new, something awkward, and dads on the move!)
Thursday- Make and Take Sewing Event. Come flex your sewing muscles as we make a project in honor of International Babywearing Week! Two projects offered: drool pads (for carriers) or drool scarves. Don’t have a drooling baby? Make one as a gift! Don’t know how to sew? No problem, we’ll show you!
Bring a friend- this will be fun!
Details:
*Projects will take approximately 30 minutes to make; you do not need to stay the entire 2 hours.
*Please bring or plan to purchase fabric for your project- approx. 1/4 yard of a cute print/solid and a small, old towel (or 1/4 yard terrycloth). For the drool pads, you will also need about 6 inches of hook/loop.
*Prairie Points will offer a 10% discount on fabric you purchase that night.
*Please let me know if you have a machine to bring.
*Example of a drool pad: http://www.etsy.com/
*Example of the drool scarf: http://www.etsy.com/
By B
I thought I’d take some time, telethon style, to talk about fundraising. We are a non-profit group. All of our meetings are free, all the help we offer is free. You can try on any of the thirty-something carriers in the library and get hands on help from our certified Educators at any meeting for no cost. Since all this awesomeness is available free, how, exactly do we get money?
First, let’s talk about what our money does and does not go towards. None of our funds ever go toward paying anyone involved with our group. 100% of our funds go to running the group. Our budget goes to lots of little incidental things, like our banner or name tag holders, to some important things like dues for our chapter and the domain name for our site and to carriers. Though many of our carriers have been donated, more have been purchased, generally at some sort of discount. Some vendors donate a carrier, but ask that we pay shipping. Our number one priority has been building our carrier library. We are pretty proud of it, especially for a less than one year old group, but there are a few things we have our eyes on. We would like to eventually have the funds to do larger outreach events, as well.
Part of any funds we raise goes to our parent organization, Babywearing International. These funds provide our group with liability insurance, brochures and the umbrella of a larger organization with a big name and a strong reputation, among other things.
Memberships to BWI are always available. For $30/year, you can become a member of our group, complete with the privilege to borrow carriers from our library. We also have some other great fundraisers going on now!
Between now and October 26th, you can make a purchase of fall flower bulbs through our Flower Power Fundraiser and have 50% of the proceeds go to our group! Your purchase is shipped right to you, so this is a way for people who don’t live in the Peoria area, but who maybe enjoy our blog and want to support the work we do, to help us out.
If you are in the Central IL area, you might like to buy a Peoria Dining Tour book. For $30, you get 330 coupons for 100 different restaurants and eateries, good through November 2013. These are terrific for families and make a great gift. My family loved them and we’ve found they pay for themselves in only a few dinners out. You can see a list of participating restaurants. You can pick up a book at any of our meetings through then end of the year.
Another great fundraiser for local types is the Monkey Joe’s event we have coming up! Tuesday, September 25th, from 2-5 pm, we’ll be hanging at Monkey Joe’s!
If you print off the flier (from the Facebook event) and show it to them at the door, we get a 40% of your admission! Babywearing can be a lifesaver at this place. We first took my son, then 3, when my daughter was only a few months old. Since I was wearing her, I was able to safely help my son climb into bouncers and catch him at the bottom of slides without worrying about dropping a tiny baby. We’ve been a number of times since and I’ve worn her each time.
Feel free to pop in and stay for as long as you please. Also, please share the link to the flier. Anyone can help our group raise funds during this event; they don’t have to come over and visit it they’d rather not.
We have one more pretty exciting fundraiser coming up as well, but I’ll save that for my post on International Babywearing Week events.
By B
We posted this info on our Facebook page, but, in case you missed it, I’ll talk about it again.
We are so very excited to be involved with the Olives and Applesauce promotional photo shoot. This is something I was personally involved with last year. All of the pics on the main page are local parents.
O&A isn’t in the Peoria area, but the photographer that they use, Treasured Images by Sara, is.
She’s super talented and this is so much fun to be a part of! Olives and Applesauce carriers are near and dear to me. It was the very first soft structured carrier I bought to use with my son.
I still own it and wear him in it from time to time, at 4 1/2. Caren of O&A provided one of the first carrier donations when we were starting up BWI of Peoria. So, I’m very jazzed to be invited to participate again!
This year, they are having a contest to help find models for the shoot. To enter, follow this link. You’ll need to write a short essay about how babywearing has impacted your life and submit a photo of you and your child in an O&A carrier. If you do not own an Olives and Applesauce carrier, you are welcome to borrow a friend’s, come to a meeting and try on one from the lending library or meet up with Anna Hubbard of Once Upon A Sling. Applicants are encouraged to come try on a carrier and take a snapshot of yourselves.
If you choose this route, please also bring someone along with you to take the photo for submission as we can’t be trusted to take your pic for this submission.
If you’re chosen, you’ll be a part of the Olives and Applesauce promotional photo shoot. Your photo will grace the website, their Facebook page, maybe their printed material. You could be a famous babywearing model! You’ll get to choose a photo from your shoot to keep. You’ll WIN a FREE Olives and Applesauce carrier!!! And, you’ll get to have an awesome “authentic Peoria” lunch with all us gals. The photo shoot is Saturday, October 13th, 2012 from approximately noon – 5p.m, in Peoria. Sessions will last 60-90 minutes, so no need to be there the whole day. You will need to travel here at your expense if you are chosen.
The contest is open until midnight on September 15th. BWI of Peoria has 2 meeting before then if you need to try on an O&A, one on the 10th and one on the 15th. Obviously, the O&A will not be available for lending until after the contest deadline.
I can’t wait to meet the winner!
By B
We’re so excited about a big event coming up, the World Breastfeeding Week Celebration!
This event is near and dear to me. This will be the fifth year for me to attend this event, the fourth as a babywearing educator. (Well, last year, someone got carsick on the way there, so I had to miss out, but anyway.) This is one of the first events I attended as an educator, when my son was just a toddler. As a nursing mama, I love this event. I know how babywearing can make nursing soooo much easier, so it’s awesome for me to be able to share that with mamas who need the help. Being able to nurse hands free, especially when you have older children, is fantastic. Being able to nurse discreetly in public, when you are nervous about being overexposed, is invaluable.
If you’d like more info about nursing in a carrier, nursing not in a carrier, using a carrier while not nursing, if you are a breastfeeding mom, were a breastfeeding mom, are a partner to a breastfeeding mom, even if you just want to support breastfeeding moms, come out to this great event!
See the part in the flier that mentions “babywearing style show”? That’s us! In addition to having a booth with all the carriers in our library, plus great info and our fabulous certified Volunteer Babywearing Educators, we’ll be putting on the Babywearing Style Show. Come see some of our beautiful carriers in action. We’ll also be providing some great items for the giveaways, including a few terrific items donated by Olives and Applesauce!
By CS
Traditional, Attachment, Authoritative, Unconditional, Simplictiy, Authoritarian…It is enough to make your head spin and there are diehard proponents and opponents of both. Parenting is a individual choice and varies widely between families. Babywearing reaches across all different types of parenting. A lot of people do associate babywearing with some of the more alternative methods of parenting but it doesn’t have to be. Babywearing International of Peoria is not associated with any parenting groups and we don’t tell you how to parent your child. We help you learn to safely carry your child and we show you the different carrier options.
There are lots of benefits to babywearing. Among others, it can help you calm a fussy child, get your vacuuming done,
play games with an older child or coax a child to fall asleep.
Babywearing is a tool, a way to help any parent be a better parent and what it means to be a better parent is up to you. It can also be a tool other caregivers can use. I’ve seen grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, babysitters and friends wearing babies. You can wear your baby anytime and anywhere, I’ve worn my kids at my house, shopping, sporting events, concerts, church, hiking, etc.
There are lots of reason to look further at babywearing and thinking that babywearing makes you a certain type of parent is not a good reason to reject it. Most people find that babywearing is easy and beneficial. We invite you to attend a babywearing event and see for yourself.
By B
Before I show you all the pics of our fantastic carriers, I want to talk about how we got them (yes, telethon style.) Some of these carriers are donated by their manufacturer or by a retailer. If you decide to buy something you learned about here, feel free to let the vendor know that you learned about them from BWI of Peoria. We don’t get any further kickbacks, but it lets vendors know that donating to us was a good move for them. Maybe the next time they have a product to donate, it will help them think of us. Or maybe all the vendors will tell each other how wonderful we are and they’ll all want to donate. Right? That could happen, right?
Some carriers were donated to us by individuals. These were carriers that they used to use with their own kids. When the kids outgrew them, the parents donated to us instead of reselling the carrier. Since BWI is a non-profit organization, they can write off the donation. If you’re interested in donating your gently used carrier to our lending library, let us know! We loving growing our library, though not every carrier meets our criteria. You can message a VBE for more about this: info@bwiofpeoria.org
Still more carriers were bought by our group for the lending library. All of the funds we have come from memberships, fundraisers and donations. Group memberships are $30/year, half of which goes to our group. The major perk of membership is that you can check out any carrier in our lending library. BUT, even if you don’t intend to check out a carrier, you still might want to consider purchasing a membership, participating in a fundraiser or making a tax deductible donation. Why? Well, maybe you like having these carriers available, to try on, to help you make your purchasing decision. Consider the cost of doing a carrier rental program with all of these carriers! The cost of shipping them back and forth! But, thanks to the generosity of the Peoria area babywearing community, we have so many carriers on hand for you to try out. We have trained, certifed Educators to help you to safely use the carriers or even carriers you already own. Consider the value of having hands on help with any carrier, with any age baby.
Alright, enough of my sales pitch, check out all our awesome carriers! (A few woven wraps are missing from these pics; they were checked out when these were taken.)
Some soft structured carriers
Some mei tais
Stretchy and hybrid wraps
Wovens and ring slings (3 missing here)
Aren’t they beautiful? Up next, a pic of me swimming through them like Scrooge McDuck…
By TP
Why go to a Meet Up? Because there’s no shame in not having all the answers. Sure, I like to be right all of the time, but sometimes I fall short; we all do. The most important thing to me is my family and our safety. So, there’s no time like the present to ensure you’re safely wearing your kiddo(s). I purchased the Boba Wrap (used to be the Sleepy Wrap) after attending my first Monday night meeting prior to the newborn’s arrival. I got it out of the package, tried it out and plopped in the new babe when she arrived. She liked it most of the time, but every now and then, she’d start crying when I placed her inside. Initial thought was – hmmmm, why isn’t this wrap calming down my daughter like I had envisioned?
Fast forward a month when I took my 8 week old with me to the next Saturday Meet Up and asked for help (yes ladies, we all can benefit every now and then!). I learned I was wrapping the Boba perfectly, but was placing my daughter in in ENTIRELY WRONG! EEEEK!
By TP
Thank goodness only a few weeks went by after the purchase to the meeting, because I quickly learned why I needed to place her in the wrap differently. Immediately she calmed down and napped while I looked around at other wraps. Now, that was the reality I was hoping for: pure serenity with my sweet peach napping away on me (LOVE!).
Another great benefit of attending a meeting is seeing for yourself how the carriers fit. I’m not a petite or average sized person. I’m a plus size gal, and I worry about all of my ‘extra love’ hanging out of the carriers or the need to purchase extensions. By going to a meeting, you can try them on before you purchase and see just how they feel, look, and most importantly, support your lil bundle. I am impressed with how the experts take the time to share their knowledge in a very relaxed, professional way without making you feel the slightest bit of ignorant. Love going to meetings and love the support and information I receive when going to a meeting. You should give it a try!
BWI of Peoria is doing a spring bulb fundraiser! This is great for anyone, not just local folk. You order through the website, using our link http://www.flowerpowerfundraising.com/campaign?campaign_id=11397 , and they ship directly to your home. You don’t have to deal with us in person at all on this. So, maybe you don’t live in the Peoria area, but you’ve enjoyed our blog, learned some things and you’d like to support us? This is a great way to do so. We use the vast majority of funds raised to buy new carriers for our lending library. No one in our group is paid for the work we do. You can feel assured, knowing that your funds will be going right where you want them to: promoting babywearing in the Peoria area! If you haven’t already picked up some bulbs for spring planting, please consider helping us out with this. The fundraiser runs until the 27th of this month.
Adorable spring time baby pic (that’s the lending library’s new Dolcino wrap, purchased with donated funds)
