Dragelijkse praktijk

30/07/2023

04/10/2022

Keep baby close. You are their world. ❤️
*Updated with original graphic from Carrying Matters - Dr Rosie Knowles

25/09/2022

"Parents are the original baby monitors.

We are designed keep our infants close. Even while we sleep, our bodies monitor and nurture our young. Our nearness promotes bonding, facilitates brain development, and regulates the nervous system. Infants are incapable of surviving without us, so the need to be close is also a hard-wired safety mechanism.

Humans are born earlier in their gestation than other mammals. We enter the world far less developed and far more helpless. A newborn calf can stand up within the first 2 hours after birth...human babies can’t even hold their own heads up until around 3 or 4 months old.

And if we look to our closest cousins, chimpanzees, for comparison…a human baby would need a 18-21 month gestation, rather than our usual 9-10, in order to be born at a comparable cognitive and neurological stage of development to that of a newborn chimpanzee. So our young toddlers aren’t even ready to cut the cord by chimp standards…

So, once earthside, we continue our gestation with the help of our parents. We stay rooted to our parents so that our bodies and minds may continue developing, in constant communication with theirs.

That is why its so troubling when our culture’s separation-focused narrative leads us to start second-guessing the value of proximity. It seems like we get our free pass for the newborn phase, but then after that there’s a bit of distaste for cosleeping or carrying or generally embracing high needs for closeness. I hope we can start to change that.

I hope that we can view proximity as something to honour as much as we can, rather than something to extinguish as early as possible.

That, instead of being considered a kind of lagging-behind or an alt parenting style, we can celebrate the magic that it is...

That we can reconnect with our mammalian nature, and, rather than feeling sheepish about these natural things we do, we can choose instead to roar with pride about them, as our little cubs roar too, right by our sides."

Words:
Image:

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01/06/2021

13/04/2021

23/02/2021

From sleeping in separate beds to their children to transporting them in prams, Western parents have some unusual ideas about how to raise them

03/11/2019

My husband drew to my attention that Dads I am talking to about carriers probably get enough of Mums telling them what to do at home, so if I wanted to encourage them to use them, maybe I needed to use Dad words....

So here are his words and photo along with other awesome words and photos of Dads using slings, wraps and carriers with their kids. This started small, rapidly grew into a Facebook album of 100 reasons, then an group where you can keep up to date with project developments and share the love of Dads Babywearing (https://www.facebook.com/groups/whydadsbabywear/) and a real life physical book!

The printed book is a celebration of fatherhood, of Dads being my hands on and involved with their children's lives and involving them in theirs. It's made up of some of your favourites here and others unseen online, you can find it here - http://www.babywearingwithjess.com/product/why-dads-babywear/

If you have a babywearing Dad in your house who would be keen to share any other "Dad words" and/or photos of why they wear your kids, email them to us at whydadsbabywear@gmail.com (including Dad's name, child/children's names and approx age in the picture) so we can make you into a poster to share the message with other Dads and others over on our Instagram account www.instagram.com/whydadsbabywear ...

Please see safety guidelines for child carrying here - https://babywearingwithjess.wordpress.com/2016/09/19/anso-child-carrying-safety-guidelines/