We're walking through a tunnel of coastal tea trees. The end of the tunnel is black, until sunlight pokes through, leaving the silhouette of a big wallaby, furiously jumping straight towards me. A second passes as both the wallaby and I realise what the two-headed creature we're facing is. When I do, I grab my camera out of my Ergo pocket, but it's already too late: the wallaby and her joey have jumped off our hiking path, into the bush.
We are spending a month in Australia, where my husband is working. The children and I are enjoying all of Melbourne's wildlife, zoos and child-friendly museums, the superb coffee, cakes and ethnic vegetarian food, and meeting up with friends from various places and phases in our lives. I feel right at home in this country full of marsupials, since I often feel like one. I don't think I've taken my Ergo off since the day my son was born five years ago. The baby carrier carries my most precious cargo, and I don't just mean my children. I can't think of a safer spot to keep my wallet and phone than in the Ergo pocket. Just this year I've wandered the streets of Melbourne, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Rome, Paris, Munich, Bogota, Shanghai and Beijing with my valuables safely zipped up. I don't know what I'll do when my children outgrow the Ergo. I can't yet picture myself with a Fanny pack. Maybe we'll have to reconsider having a third baby instead.
Just like I'm like a marsupial mama, my daughter is a lot like a joey (marsupial baby). When she was born at a mere 5.5lbs she settled in my
Ergo, latched on, and pretty much didn't let go until she'd gained weight. Kangaroo babies are born the size of a lima bean, climb through their mothers fur to reach their pouch, and stay latched on for the next nine months, until they're big enough to leave their mother's pouch. Just like a kangaroo mom, my milk changed as my baby grew. Like an older joey my daughter now only comes back in my pouch to nurse, nap, and to stay safe and warm. Unfortunately that's where the similarities end. Unlike a kangaroo mom I don't have a second nipple with different milk for my younger child, and my milk is not pink. I can't pause a fertilized egg from growing in my uterus while I wait for my oldest child to wean or the weather to get better, as a kangaroo can.
The kangaroo isn't the only marsupial with a fascinating story. My five year old son and I spent our month in Australia studying marsupials, and came up with some interesting facts about a few other Australian animals and their pouches:
For the macabre: A Tasmanian devil gives birth to forty little embryos, but only the four who reach one of their mother's four teats first will survive.
For the germophobe: A wombat has a backward facing pouch, so it won't get any dirt in when digging a hole.
For the poop-obsessed: At six or seven months koala joeys add "pap" to their diet, a special (diarrhea-like) type of poop produced by the mother, which the joey can eat straight from the "source" by leaning out of the (downward facing) pouch.
I would feel as lost and helpless as a pouchless kangaroo if we attempted to travel the world without the Ergo
baby carrier. From cross Atlantic flights to crossing rickety bridges in a Colombian National Park, from the High Line in New York City to the Great Wall of China, from the top of the Eiffel Tower to deep into the caves of Naracoorte to see marsupial fossils, we couldn't have done any of it without
the Ergo. No need to plan our days around naps or nursing, no need to feel restricted because of a stroller. Most importantly, I get to look deep into my baby's eyes and see the look on her face when I show her the world from the safest place she knows.
