Five Baby Wrap Basics for New or Prospective Dads

Hey Everybody!

I think I've told a fair number of people about how I came to be a baby-in-the-wrap sort of dad while watching moms walk in and out of the Laughing Goat coffee shop with sometimes snoozing, sometimes inquisitive babies strapped or slung to their torsos. The moms were relaxed and enjoying wandering around town. The babies were chill. There was one other huge perk—in my book anyway—the moms weren't carrying around tons of stuff! So, before we had kids, I talked to my partner about wraps. She agreed that as long as I was the one wearing the wrap, wraps sounded great. I was off and running, (not literally though, that'd bounce the kid too much.)

It turned out that baby wraps were so much more than a way for me to carry less stuff. There were other perks like hanging out in bars with kids and attending work happy hours with kids and networking more easily around parties with kids!

So, without further ado, let's get into how to do it, and what you can do afterwards.

Number One: Wraps are for Dads!

Say it with me dads, "I wear the wrap, not my partner. She carried that kid for nine months straight without a break. I'll be wearing the wrap thanks!"

The Rage Factor

Trust me on this one, if you want to just piss your partner off, then hand her a copy of Sears, ⊕ Mom Rage by Minna Dubin a copy of Bowlby, (I'm so not even going to give you a link to those two gems), a Moby wrap, and tell her to get to it. (Bowlby even goes so far as to say that only your partner can carry the kid in a wrap and that you shouldn't.) Then? Run. There's a book called Mom Rage. It's not wrong.

The Dad Freedom Factor

Wandering around with babies is a lot. A lot of fun! You can go out for coffee. You can go out for a beer. You can go for a walk around the park. You can go the hardware store. In short, you can have fun with the kid! That's why you became a parent right? Will they pee, poo, and holler when they get hungry or gassy? Oh yeah! Can you handle that? If you think you can, you can, but I digress. First, plop the kid in the wrap, then head out and do most of the things you've always enjoyed doing. It's that simple.

The Mom Freedom Factor

Wandering around with babies is a lot. Being expected to wander around with a baby all the time is too much. Want to know what your partner is doing while you're wandering around with the kid? Hell, I don't know either, but I'll tell you this much: for the amount of time that you and the kid are out and about, your partner's getting time to decompress, to do things they want to do, and to live a kid-free life, because sometimes that's nice too. Especially if your the person society expects to be with the kid All The Time.

Number Two: Use a Video to Learn

OK, dads, now that we know you should be the one wearing the wrap, how do you get the kid in there anyway? ⊕ Wearing a wrap the first time is not easy. Well, it wasn't easy for me, but also, I'm not imbued with incredible athletic prowess or the ability to construct intricate knots intuitively. I could however watch videos!

Over and Over and Over :)

There's a good video on how to put on a Moby wrap, the kind I preferred, in the sidebar. If you have a different sort of wrap, find videos that correspond to that one.

The person in the video winds up with the kid facing forward. While choosing a position for the kid is almostly totally a matter of your and the kid's personal comfort and preference, that posisiton almost never worked for me. ⊕ Instead, I usually had the kid sitting sideways across my chest as shown in the picture.

Dads, what's your favorite kind of wrap? What's you and the kid's favorite position within the wrap for wandering about?

Number Three: The Screaming

I was talking to a friend recently about taking the kids pretty much everywhere I went when they were little. He said, "Oh, you were one of those parents."

Confused, I asked, "Which parents?"

He continued, "You know, the ones that make it not very fun to be places. The ones that bring their screaming kids in."

"Ahhh, yeah, ummmm, no."

Allow me to explain how this works guys. This is something my partner taught me. She abjectly refused to go to restaurants the first few months that the first kid was alive. Why you ask? Because she knew the kid would scream and we'd need to leave. After a while, I figured out the solution. There are two of us! When we went out, I'd wear the wrap. If the kid started to scream, I could plop them in the wrap and head outside until they calmed down. I walked the third kid around a city block in San Francisco one evening for about twenty minutes, gently bouncing and cooing until she finally cooled out. Turned out my partner and the other two kids were still eating dinner when I ducked back into the establishment with the now quieter third kid. Everything worked out fine, I got to have a few nibbles. Everyone else got to enjoy a meal at normal auditory levels.

Here's the concise point. You can still do things. You can have a blast. The kid's a person too though, and sometimes they're going to do what they're going to do. When that happens, you can be responsible and take the hit. For me, doing this wound up being way more than a net win.

Number Four: Babies in Bars...and other places

And that brings us to the next thing. Now that we know for a fact that you're not harshing anyone's mellow, let's start to branch out dads. Did you enjoy meeting your buddies for a drink before you had kids? Me too! ⊕

You still can! Just take the kid with you. Doing that turns out to be super-easy with the kid in a wrap. Lots of times, people didn't even realize the kid, who was frequently asleep, was there. You have to be a little bit careful lest the kid winds up being mistaken for a bomb, but I'm sure that's fairly rare. Right? In any event, I've written about it before.

I use bars as an example, but there are other places you can hang out with kids, of course. Places like coffee shopos, libraries, museums, and feed stores. Take the kid with you to the places that you enjoy! All these places are great places to see and to explore. As the kid gets bigger and more mobile, they're going to want to actually explore. What should you do then?

When the kid is able, and when you're both comfortable with it, plop the kid out of the wrap! Let the kid see the world. Supervise of course, but let the kid get out and about when it suits your fancy and the kid's.

A Brief Clarification

Let me take this chance to make a clarification about wraps as they relate to something called attachment parenting.

While the wrap is a tool that attachment parenting parents make use of, it is not in fact the same thing as attachment parenting. ⊕
I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Baby by Janet Lansbury Depending on who you read, (I made brief allusions to Sears and Bowlby above), attachment parenting is framed as something that can/should only be done by moms. Those same auuthors tend to be interpreted as saying the kid shouldn't really come out of the wrap... kind of ever. This has led to some pushback on the concept of babywearing including the linked article by Janet Lansbury, (yes she is related to Angela Lansbury), in the sidebar. I absolutely agree that terms like babywearing make the kid a peripheral object rather than an already fully formed human being. So, just to point out the, (to me obvious), things one more time:

Dad's should wear the wrap.

I had a blast as a dad bringing the kid with me to do things the kid and I both enjoyed doing.

Number Five: Kids Make Excellent Networking Partners

This one might seem counter-inutitive, but I've had the best time networking with other grownups when one or more of the gang came with me, (frquently in a wrap.) I believe it's good for the kid in that they get to see the world, meet people, and expand their sphere of experience. Those are huge careabouts for me as a parent. I'd like the kids to feel comfortable in as many different envrionments as possible before they grow up and head out into the world. By purposely going to all sorts of different occasions with them, the kids got to see a variety of spaces and meet a variety of people. For us, it worked. It was pretty cool.

Another salient point to make is that I said kids, (emphasizing the plural here), in the last paragraph. It's totally possible ⊕
and also a lot of fun for a dad to hang out with a kid in a wrap with toddlers wanderring about as well.

Now, let's talk about the benefits for me. The kid was a great conversation starter. How many men have you ever met with a baby riding up front? I'll give you that I'm kind of gregarious all on my own though.

Babies or—even better—the combination of a baby and a toddler are also great conversational transition helpers. I had a built in reason to thank whoever I'd met and move onto the next thing. I needed to step away and check in on the kids. Check in on what aspect? Who knows? Maybe they peed, maybe they pooed. No one ever asked. The point here is that I could say, very pleasantly, "It's been very nice to meet you. I better go check in on ..." And off I'd go to some other part of the gathering.

Once or twice the kids even created networking opportunities for me. At one university we loved visiting the architecture department to see all the models of buildings and because it was, of course, a very well thought out, comfortable space to be in.

One day when we poked our heads in, we found ourselves right in the middle of a career fair. ⊕
All three of the kids were there. You can't see the youngest because she was in a wrap on the front of me below the camera. We were noticed an instant later. I tried to bow out, but the organizers were having none of it. They whisked us away to the speakers' and employers' green rooom for snacks and to meet the movers and shakers of the career fair! We had a blast.

So dads! Take the kids with you as often as you can and to as many places as you're both interested in going, (so everywhere actually.) You'll be surprised at how easy it becomes and at how much your whole world wraps up around you.

And! I'd love to hear your stories about getting out and about with the kids! Please post below, or email me at hamilton.carter@cootermaroos.com