Never before have parents had access to so much baby STUFF. In addition to the usual department stores and baby shops carrying baby equipment, we have now witnessed the emergence of warehouse-sized “baby superstores” packed full to the ceiling with every imaginable gadget for the new parent. From a wide variety of elaborate cribs, to forty different types of bottles and nipples, to the combination stroller/car seat/cradle/carriers that do everything but give birth foryou, parents are left with the impression that there must be an awful lot of equipment that you simply ‘must have’ in order to properly welcome and care for a baby.

The companies who manufacture, market and sell these products, as well as the glossy parenting magazines which advertise them on virtually every page, have a strong interest in promoting the idea that parents should NOT carry or hold their babies excessively. Their interest lies in the promotion of detaching a parent from their child and then all the products you will need to counteract the natural resistance of this unnatural state of parent/child separation.

The fact is that human infants like most mammal babies, are happiest, most comfortable and develop best when they are close to a warm body much of the time. And parents who hold, carry, or “wear” their babies on their bodies find themselves better able to read and respond to their babies’ cues, as well as to more easily go about their own regular daily routine while staying physically close to their little one.