Blog
June 13, 2012
This month is Gay Pride and we want to hear from our LGBT Parents! In honor of Pride this month, we are kicking off an LGBT Parents Series, as part of our "We Are Family" series. Tell us your story. How have you grown your family? Adoption, surrogacy, sperm donation, IVF, or a combination? How has babywearing helped you bond with your baby? How has it helped your partner or donor bond with your baby? Do you have one carrier and share it? Or does each partner have a carrier?
Submit your story (at least 500 words), complete with pictures (3-6 photos total and at least one should be with an Ergobaby Carrier!) to submissions@ergobaby.com. If your story is chosen to feature on the blog, we'll send you a carrier of your choice.
We'll be posting stories throughout the month, but this will be an ongoing series on the blog, part of the "We Are Family" series...so we'd love to hear from you!
Rules and other
June 05, 2012
UPDATE: COMMENTS CLOSED. 6/11/12 8:00pm PST.
Congratulations to the giveaway winner: Illnworth! (Comment #600. Winner chosen randomly.)
We are going to give one adventure seeking Dad a Performance Carrier in celebration of Father's Day this year! We will select one winner and send him a Performance Carrier in Black/Charcoal. Three lucky runners-up will receive a cool "Dad-worthy" Diaper Backpack!We love babywearing Dads over here at Ergobaby. We have received some amazing photos of babywearing Dads from you on our Facebook page: Dads picking strawberries, Dads hiking,
May 17, 2012
Shop Baby Carriers
Back wearing, also known as Back Carrying, seems to elicit both interest and a little bit of fear from babywearing parents. While Back Carrying is one of the most liberating types of carries--it enables you to be hands-free and keep the baby safe from whatever you are doing--it seems to be one of the most daunting carries for parents. Carrying your baby on your back allows the parent to perform many tasks that would otherwise be difficult with a baby on the front.
Of course, as with any carry, there are
February 01, 2012
“I want my baby to thrive.” Can it be as simple and easy as nature intends? Not every doctor integrates nature’s wisdom in their standard recommendations, so this book can be your supportive guide. Your choices and decisions are restored to their rightful, healthiest place in honoring yourself, your intuition, and your baby’s true needs. This is crucial for giving your family and your baby its best first steps towards thriving. What Your Pediatrician Doesn’t Know Can Hurt Your Child; A More Natural Approach to Parenting takes an in-depth look at the choices that are sometimes missing, as they have been removed in the sterile procedures and interferences of history, habit and some hospitals. Knowing what these choices are and the reasons behind them makes your decisions as a parent more optimally grounded in confidence and facts.
Author Pediatrician Dr. Susan Markel points out that too often babies and parents are subject to the opinions of
February 01, 2012
When I counsel adults with heart disease, many have a hard time making changes to their diet. I have often thought that it would be easier for them if they had grown up with heart healthy habits instead of having to learn them later in life. We often don’t think about children and heart health, but as parents we can start building heart healthy habits in our children that will benefit them for a life time.
Here are 7 heart healthy habits:
Don’t restrict calories but offer “real” food.
Eat heart healthy fats and oils.
Load up on fruits and vegetables.
Consume plenty of low-fat dairy products.
Use nuts, seeds, and legumes more often.
Incorporate more whole grains.
Be physically active.
Don't restrict calories but offer "real" food. Most of the time it is not a good idea to restrict children’s calories. They should be able to eat meals
February 01, 2012
Kangaroo Care describes a technique in which infants, often premature and underweight, are placed, skin-to-skin, on the chest of the mother or primary caregiver. This position ensures physiological and physical closeness and warmth. The stable body temperature of the parent can effectively regulate the infant’s temperature, and provides easy accessibility to breastfeeding. Even with the advanced technology in NICUs available in the United States, one recent study noted that 82% of neonatal intensive care units in the US include kangaroo care.
Originally devised in in 1978, the concept of Kangaroo Care was the brainchild of Dr. Edgar Rey Sanabria, Professor of Neonatology at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, as a response to increasing mortality rates of premature and low birth weight infants. Lacking the resources for technologically advanced equipment and extra nurses and doctors, Sanabria proposed that allowing mothers to remain skin-to-skin with these fragile infants might increase
January 04, 2012
“Baby carrying strengthens the bond between you and your baby.” This is a statement you often hear from baby carrying advocates, be it experienced mothers, babywearing consultants or midwives. It really only takes one look at a calm secure parent and her or his quiet, relaxed, content and alert baby in a good baby carrier to instinctively sense that this statement is probably quite true.
These are very fundamental questions: Should I give ample physical contact to my baby? Or, should I leave it more or less physically separated from me in the hope that this best fosters independence? For many parents, instincts and intuition are sufficient guidelines for their parenting choices. However, such instincts can be challenged by conflicting views, purported by some experts in the field. Some will argue that giving too much physical contact to a baby will make it clingy and dependent in the long run.
One informational resource for such vital decisions comes from the field of science, in
January 04, 2012
“As long as I wear him, he’s content,” Martha Sears, R.N., mentioned to her husband, Dr. William Sears, as they discovered babywearing with their sixth child. It is an affirmation of how life works well naturally. The healthiest choice feels good, and feels right, because it supports survival as well as thriving. Babies reflect this in how they are often calmly alert, or quieted, and relaxed into sleeping easily by the simple practice of babywearing. It is the place a baby wants to be; heart-to-heart, skin-to-skin, breath-to-breath and face-to-face; sharing in life’s activities from a soothing place of familiar rhythm, near a comforting heartbeat and easily accessed breast milk. A baby likes the closeness, the movement, and the loving touches from hands that are free, free…free. Babywearing is a win/win/win choice.
Dr. Sears shares his observations after years of advocating babywearing with his patients: Babies who are worn thrive, are calmer, smarter, make daycare easier,
January 04, 2012
Since the 1950s, more doctors have acknowledged the tremendous healing power of bonding with our young through babywearing, physical contact, breastfeeding and family beds. The physical, mental and emotional health benefits are unsurpassed by any drug or remedy known to man with the benefits lasting a lifetime. Hopefully, this article helps parents to bond with their offspring through a means that is biologically compatible with their infants’ needs because our babies are movement-starved.
Bonding is the physical, mental, emotional, and, some might add, spiritual, connection and attachment most parents make with their offspring to varying degrees. It deeply engages all the senses. “The mother is endocrinologically, sensually, as well as neurologically transformed in ways likely to serve the infant’s needs and contribute to her own posterity. The hormone oxytocin, also called the love drug, and known to be as addictive as morphine, is released while breastfeeding, snuggling, or massaging.
January 04, 2012
There is no way to dispute the advantages of carrying a baby as often as possible. Babywearing is the best way to keep both mother and baby happy, while allowing for the tasks that women (and men) need to do while still caring for an infant. Along with making life’s tasks easier, babywearing has been proven to be good for baby, and mother, on a physiological, mental and physical level. The senses are constantly being ignited in this position. Babies can smell more clearly, see, feel, hear and even taste, if they are breastfed, while still in a carrier. Keeping their senses alive and aware is a very good thing for a newborn baby.
Mothers, who carry their babies closely, release more oxytocin when carrying their infants. This helps them to bond better with their babies and breastfeed