Our baby is about 6 months and we have tried 4 different baby carriers, so I guess it's time to review them. In the shopping spree, before our baby was born, we'd picked the Baby-Bag of Premaxx of the shelves. We had the choice between that and the traditional baby sling cloth. Since the traditional way of carrying the baby looked harder to learn, we opted for the Baby-Bag.

But we soon found out that the Baby-Bag wasn't that easy either. The first time we put her in the bag was relative successful (well, after the second try), but after that we just couldn't get our baby in a good lying position in the bag. And our little girl didn't give us the time to experiment a bit. Even try-outs with a doll weren't that successful. The doll as well as the baby were almost locked up in the bag. You almost could not see her and that was different from that what we had seen on the pictures. Furthermore: our baby was rolled up like a hedgehog. One time I decided to walk with the Baby-Bag although the position of the baby wasn't perfect. I ended up still holding the baby to make her back more straight. If I didn't do that, I could hear her breathing, which indicated that she wasn't in a good position to breathe freely.

Maybe we are just ignorant consumers, but we just could not handle the Baby-Bag. So that's when our search for other alternatives started. But now that our baby is 6 months we may try to use the Baby-Bag again. After about 5 months you can do the sitting position (by the way: that's not me on that picture).

What we didn't know at the time, but what we learned fast was that babies in general don't like to be put in a carrier. But when everything is put in place, you have to WALK. Walking makes the baby quiet and many times eventually makes her go to sleep.

Labels: baby carriers, premaxx, product reviews

This may sound silly, but I get my parenting inspiration from Japanese anime. To be more precise: Card Captor Sakura (in short: CCS). For those who don't know the series: CCS is about Sakura, a little Japanese girl, that has to collect all kinds of magical cards. And those cards are not easy to catch. She has to complete that quest while her ordinary life at home and at school goes on.

So what is the inspiration aspect of it then? Well, although Sakura's certainly doesn't live in a perfect world, she is doing the best she can to make it so. She's always energetic, polite and helpful. She and many other characters in the series share that positive attitude one way or another. The ones that seem to have a more negative attitude (like her brother) also reveal their good character traits sooner or later.

I know that cartoons and certainly CCS does not even remotely reflect real life. But after seeing a few episodes (and I've seen all 70!), you get that infectious positive vibe. That vibe inspires me to create what I see: a positive community. To be more specific: a positive, vibrant family. By having an ideal image in my head, I can draw the inspiration to achieve at least a little bit of the utopian image I get when watching CCS.

Labels: inspiration

Before our baby was born I already read about co-sleeping; letting your child sleep in the parents (in this case: our) bed. This is part of the attachment parenting philosophy, which states that you have to keep your baby as close as possible.

Co-sleeping isn't just applicable for kids, but also for babies. At first we were scared about the possibility of rolling over the baby at sleep. Mainstream Western pediatrics point out to that danger, while in the non-Western world co-sleeping is the standard. To be on the safe side, I didn't want to let the baby sleep in our bed. But in the last month we tried to take a different approach.

We already have our baby in a crib alongside the bed to keep our baby as close as possible. We think that this greatly helps in the bonding. Furthermore: my wife can react fast when our baby starts to cry. But sometimes our little girl just doesn't want to be alone in the crib. Or at least: it seems. Sometimes we can stop her fussing by giving milk, but on some times we seem to have no other option but to put her between us in bed. It will not calm her in an instant, but she will eventually get sleepy and go to Slumberland.

The first time she slept between us, I presumed that my wife would eventually pick up the baby and put her back in the crib. That seems naive, but she has a hard time to go to sleep before the baby does. Well, my wife figured that everything was just fine and didn't re-locate the baby. So you can imagine how surprised I was, when I saw our little girl still in our bed, when I opened my eyes on 4:00h.

Although nothing happened and our baby wasn't squashed by one of us, it didn't feel right. That was a feeling I didn't expect, because co-sleeping still feels like a very tempting thing to do. My wife reassured me about the safety of the situation by telling I was noticeably more aware of the fact that there was a baby next to me. Well, I must say: i can't remember rolling over my wife or slapping her in my sleep, so why would it be different with a baby although it sleeps a bit nearer to me than my wife.

I'm still not sure what's best, but for now I will take the middle way: we will only have our little girl in bed, if there's no other efficient way to make her go to sleep. That is: if singing lullabies and giving breast milk doesn't make her go to sleep, we'll put her in our bed. We will put her back in the crib if we should wake up in the middle of the night, but it's also ok if the three of us keep on sleeping until morning.

So we're not making a habit of it. yet. Our baby is getting older so everyday co-sleeping is getting less and less an issue of safety and more an issue of preference/privacy.

Labels: babies, co-sleeping, newborn, sleeping