Last week I met with a new friend, a psychologist named Jessie I met through the non-profit, Nurturely. When we talked about getting together, I was picturing a coffee date. But Jessie suggested a hike in Mission Trails, a park here in San Diego. (Even better, huh?) She came with her one-year-old, carried in an Ergo.
Apart from her being a lovely new friend, I did have an ulterior motive. Jessie had been a participant in a new research study on babywearing. Well, we all know that babywearing helps parents better respond to baby’s needs, right? Am I preaching to the choir??
Unfortunately, there has been little research or hard evidence backing this up. But this is slowly changing! Emily Little, PhD, who is also the founder of the non-profit, Nurturely, published the study this month in Infant Behavior and Development showing that babywearing has an immediate effect on maternal responsiveness.
In addition to picking Jessie’s brain, I reached out this week to the lead researcher, Emily. Her research interests align with the non-profit, which strives to balance the science and nature of nurturing. Nurturely is committed to making evidence-based, traditional practices, such as babywearing and breastfeeding, more accessible to all. For example, they are currently offering a completely free, prenatal lactation support course, “The Magic of Milk” online.
Emily explained that she appreciates long-standing cultural practices, world-wide, such as babywearing and breastfeeding, as well as the importance of documenting robust research. In other words, it may seem like a no-brainer to those of us that have worn our babies, but there is still a need for scientific study.
For example, it took a long time to document the importance of skin-to-skin contact in order to shape American public health policies. Hopefully, Emily’s research, and that of others like Lela Williams, will help mainstream American medical systems recommend babywearing for all families AND make it more accessible.
Similarly, Emily hopes her research can ultimately shape public health interventions, making babywearing even more mainstream and accessible. She would love to see more outreach on lactation and babywearing, making both more affordable, especially to people that would most benefit from them and may have fewer resources.
Imagine if your insurance paid for a baby carrier the way it now will cover a breast pump??
Emily told me, “There are so few studies on babywearing, it’s important to first document these basic things on it. In the research world we have to document these first-level correlations and relationships before experimentally manipulating or testing a new hypothesis.”
She cautioned that this month’s publication is primarily an initial, descriptive study, although there is another study under way. Full disclosure, Emily let me know that Ergobaby generously made a one-time donation to the current, ongoing study of the carriers used in the experiments, although there are no other financial relationships between the study authors and Ergobaby.
Still, Emily seemed proud to say, “The strongest part of this month’s publication is the third part of the study which did manipulate babywearing versus not babywearing. Although it was a small sample size, it produced nice introductory evidence that babywearing increases the vocal responsiveness of mothers to babies’ cues, which is important for language development.”
Want to read the cliff notes version of Emily’s latest study? Jessie summarized it for us here.
The Sacred Spaces of Women and Children
As Jessie and I walked through the park, she pointed out some of her favorite places. She led us along the Grinding Rocks trail, where the Kumeyaay women used the flat granite rocks near the river as grinding surfaces.* She nursed her littlest in the Ergo, and we felt the peaceful energy of a spot where women and children gathered for over a thousand years. Along the river, we shared our birth stories, our journeys postpartum and breastfeeding.
From 1,000 years ago to roughly one hundred years ago, the Kumeyaay people lived in the “Senyaweche” village, with sites now covered by the Mission Trails Regional Park, along with nearby housing developments and a golf course. For more information, see “The Kumeyaay Period in Mission Trails Regional Park” by Ruth Alter, Archaeologist.
In the visitor’s center, Jessie and I looked at artifacts from the Senyaweche village. She mused, “Imagine, this would’ve been our lives. Instead of being therapists, we would’ve been along the river, gathering plants and making food with our village.”
I said, “We still would’ve been the therapists! We might not have used the same term, but we still would have been checking in on the new moms and having the other women come to us to talk.”
The Takeaway?
Wear your babies and keep a village of support people close. It’s worked for parents for millenium and is even more needed now.
For more practical steps, skills and strategies for having a healthy and happy life as a new parent, click here.
Abby is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Psychotherapist at Burd Psychotherapy in San Diego, CA. She specializes in Perinatal Mental Health, which includes mood and anxiety disorders, trauma and loss. In her free time she occasionally blogs at Baby Bird’s Farm and Cocina, where she shares adventures in natural parenting, urban homesteading and seasonal cooking. She is the proud mama to two girls, born in 2013 and 2011.
