116. Why Baby Wearing Is About More Than Just Carrying Your Baby with Jordan

Okay.

So I was telling you before we started recording, I can specifically remember these times in my first time parenting journey that I was completely overwhelmed.

And one time it was, I was trying to use this baby wrap.

I think it was the Solly.

It was just very, very long.

And I was just twisted up in it and I could not figure it out.

And Honestly, sometimes you grab for something when your baby's already crying and you just want to help.

So I love what you're doing.

And I did want to start by talking about why is baby wearing beneficial to the mom and the baby?

Yeah, I mean, there's so many benefits.

We could talk about that.

So I'll try and just highlight some of my favorites.

One, we see up to a 43% reduction in cry time for babies because like crying is how they communicate, right? And so crying is not always a bad thing, but for new parents, a lot of times all crying just feels overwhelming.

And so the fact that we can reduce that by having our baby close to us.

We notice their nonverbal cues.

We pick up on what they need faster and more efficiently.

And so they don't need to get to the point where they're verbalizing to communicate with us.

But also because they're with us, one of the reasons they might cry, which is to be like, hey, come get me, is completely eliminated, which is great.

So we see reduction in cry time.

And with that, we see parents who feel more empowered and feel like they know their babies better because they're like oh i know like when she starts to wiggle her cheek that like she's going to be hungry in a few minutes or you know whatever it is and so we see a lot of parents who are like i learned so much about my baby i've seen parents who caught head turn preferences early because they're like she always naps facing left in the carrier that doesn't seem right you know so we're just seeing like this like powerful interaction between the dyad where they're really learning each other and responding to each other.

We get that boost in oxytocin from that.

We get the boost in oxytocin from skin to skin time, which can help then facilitate our breastfeeding journey if that's something that you know, the dyad is engaging in.

From the parent perspective, we also see a decreased risk of postpartum depression.

There was a study that was put out that where baby wearing was systematically and regularly used on a daily basis in the first six weeks, those moms had reported lower risk of postpartum depression at their six-week follow-up visit than the moms who did not engage in baby wearing.

So that's really great for the baby.