Babies and bats: Surviving Academia with a Baby in Tow

Baby’s first bat meeting. With M, then 3.5 months old, in a mei tai ready to hear more talks at a conference in Portland, Oregon. (Note name tag clipped to mei tai.)

When my first child was born in 2009, I was deep in the throes of graduate school. I quickly found babywearing to be an asset for, among so many other things, getting work done while meeting the needs of my baby (not the mention the free snuggles). While my new son napped in a carrier, I had hands free for typing and data analysis.  When he was about seven weeks old, I resumed attending lab meetings, with the baby tucked snuggly into a ring sling. 

While these activities were made easier by babywearing, I felt the benefits of wearing quite acutely when it came to attending academic conferences. Since becoming a parent 6.5 years ago, I have traveled to and given presentations at about half a dozen conferences, and in all but one instance, I had at least one of my children with me at the conference.

When my first baby was 3.5 months old, I flew alone with him across the country carrying no more than two small bags and two carriers, to attend and give a presentation at a meeting on bat biology in Oregon. Babywearing first came in handy during the travel portion of this adventure--  he stayed in the sling in the airport, on the airplane, and while taking public transit to the hotel. Then, because he still napped a lot and wasn’t mobile yet, it was relatively easy to keep him contained in a mei tai while I listened to presentations, viewed posters, and shared meals and conversations with colleagues.

1-year-old M is worn by his grandmother while I attend a conference nearby in Williamsburg, VA.

While I was fortunate enough to have a family member with me to help with childcare for later conferences, babywearing—by both myself and those caring for the baby while I attended sessions—made life much easier. My mother wore my then one-year-old son in a sling while she watched him at an animal behavior meeting, and I strapped him on when it was time for meals or crowded poster sessions.

In between sessions at the animal behavior conference in Princeton, New Jersey with 7-month-old E asleep in the SSC.

My mother wearing 7-month-old E in an SSC while caring for her at a conference in Princeton, New Jersey.

At a conference when my daughter was seven months old, our hotel was situated on the opposite side of a college campus from the meeting proceedings, almost a mile away. Using an SSC, I easily transported my daughter back and forth from the conference site to my mother, who was watching my son and sometimes the baby back at the hotel. Most recently, I attended a conference in Florida with my nearly-two-year-old daughter. Both my brother, who came along to watch her, and I carted her around on our backs through airports, at the conference, and on a couple of post-conference outings.

22-month-old E on her uncle’s back outside the conference center in Jacksonville, Florida.

As with so many other things, baby- (and toddler-) wearing has made the experience of attending meetings and caring for my children immensely more doable.  As many parents have learned, being able to continue to pursue other avenues of one’s life—whether it is a career, volunteer work, education, or caring for other family members— while spending time with and meeting the needs of your child—is a large part of what makes babywearing such a wonderful and valuable resource.

Posted by: Genevieve

Traditional Babywearing and the Babywearing Museum

This post is going to be mostly pictures.  Jen Wadleigh and Lindsay Ross of Babes in Arms taught about the various traditional carriers and demonstrated using them when appropriate.  The library also had displays of traditional carriers as well as a display of the evolution of modern carriers.  There were several pieces that were part of the collection of the Miao Baby Carrier collection.  Most of the others were loaned by Jen Wadleigh or Corrine Mahar-Sylvestre.


  Native American cradle boards and a carrying "net" from New Guinea.

The Miao Carriers:

Amauti:

Modern takes on traditional carriers:

A display of vintage modern carriers including the original Snugli, the HipSeat, etc:

The most remarkable thing about this is that we learned that all peoples have found a need to carry their young, and most have used a similar method to how they carry other items.  As a modern North American society, we lean towards things that resemble backpacks or bags.  Sadly, the bag-sling has been proven to be a dangerous design, but hopefully the backpack concept will prevail, and we can borrow from the traditions of other cultures to carry our young in safe, comfortable ways.

IBC 2010: Part 2

Day 3

I started the morning going for a walk with the other babywearing moms. This is Susie Spence (the founding president of Babywearing International) and I outside the Rigby Museum.

After the walk I went to my first class of the morning.  Babywearing Safety with Beate Fromme of the Babywearing Institute.  She discussed the German school ideas of spinal development and wearing as well as some of the other issues to be aware of when wearing a baby.  These include the obstructed airway concerns as well as simpler problems such as bumping baby on doorways, etc.  The German schools push the spread squat position from birth.  They feel that the spine best develops when it is in a J position, straight neck and then curved lower back.  They don't recommend the cradle carry or forward facing carries at all.  This class was an interesting perspective on safety issues in babywearing.  Beate has several children and my favorite moment was seeing her older daughter (I'd say she was about 10) wrap her little brother on her back without any help.

My second class of the day was Asian Baby Carriers and Soft Structured Carriers taught by Kelley Mason of Kozy and Melissa Radcliffe of TogetherBe.  They demonstrated some of the benefits of these types of carriers.  Then Kelley impressed us all with some tandem wearing.  She showed a handy trick of threading the straps of the back carried child through the straps of the front carried child.  I thought that was rather ingenious.  I wish you could see the Kozy on her back... it says "Nobody Pushes Me Around"  because of course the child isn't being pushed in a stroller. I loved that one.

Then came lunch at Me N' Stans.  The folks there were completely confused by the invasion of hippies, but they seemed to take it with grace.  The food was pretty good, although we had to recall the first rule of small towns which is that meals are anything but fast food.

After lunch I went to the Traditional Babywearing class.  Since it was in the museum and the museum and the class deserve a post of their own, I'm going to stop for now.

3rd International Babywearing Conference - Idaho 2010

This past week, I had the opportunity to attend the 3rd International Babywearing Conference. I'm going to try to cover the conference in detail, so it may take a few posts. :)

Day 1
The first day of the conference consisted of going to Yellowstone National Park.    It is amazing and gorgeous.  It definitely merits the hype.  And it's the perfect place to babywear.  There are signs warning about not wandering onto the thermal plain, and there is uneven ground to navigate.  Keeping a baby or toddler out of the dangerous parts is important!  That pool of water is stunning, but hot, definitely not a place for a loose baby or toddler.  I even caught Old Faithful erupting!  I went back on the last day, but I'll get to that later. 

 Day 2

The first day of actual conference classes!  My first class was Wrapping 3 with Kristi!  In this class, Kristi Hayes-Devlin of Wrapsody Baby taught a class that focused on the 3 basic styles of carries: rucksack, rebozo, and torso.  Then each named "wrap style" that we talk about is just a variation of those.  She pointed out that once you learn basic wrap carry safety, you can adjust carries in any way you want to suit your needs and comfort.  This class was a lot of fun, and it was very interesting to see an approach to wrapping that didn't obsess on when the wrap goes over or under baby's legs and instead focused on the flexibility of wrapping.  I also discovered a super cool way of tying off that I need to play with.  Kelly demoed tying each end into a slip knot on her ruck shoulders.  Another wearer demoed a pretty way of twisting the wrap across your chest to tie at the opposite shoulder. 

That afternoon I took another class with Kristi and Sam Tower of the Rigby Police Department.  We discussed the value of being able to use non-carrier items as carriers in emergency situations.  Those emergencies can be both real emergencies like floods, fires, or injuries; but they could also be minor emergencies like being a mile from the car when your toddler runs out of steam on the beach and you need to use a beach towel to torso carry him back.  We discussed using found items like blankets, towels, scarves, or clothing to carry baby in an emergency.  Then Officer Tower demonstrated the uses of a carrier in an emergency that aren't carrying a baby. As he pointed out, some of us often have a few carriers with us and they can be used for a variety of things.  Carrying an injured adult - while not the intended use, most good carriers could probably do it.  Making a tourniquet, making a splint, making an arm sling (like a triangle bandage), tying a child in place if needed (flood situations), creating a grip line to cross water, lowering child from a window in a fire situation, the uses go on!  This was a really great class.  I encourage everyone to master a torso carry and a shawl carry for use in emergencies.

That afternoon there was the keynote address by Kelley Davis Mason of Kozy.  Kelley talked about her journey into natural parenting choices.  She talked about how she always expected that she would parent like she was parented.  She expected she would spank, use time outs, diaper, stroller, use swings, exersaucers, etc.  Then after the birth of her oldest she found she slowly started to change based on his needs.  She told of the amazing story when she needed to get wood for the wood stove and kept trying to put her baby in the car seat on the porch.  But the baby kept crying, she didn't want to leave him cry, but she needed to get wood or the whole family would be cold.  She went searching online, saw some pictures of a traditional Asian style carrier and went to her fabric pile and made her first mei tai.  Kelley said at the time she didn't even know the term mei tai.  She made a few more, making changes along the way, until she decided it was perfect.  Thus the birth of the Kozy Mei Tai.