Seven surprises about breastfeeding an older baby


I feel privileged to be breasteeding my ten-month-old. It shouldn't be a surprise as it was for the health visitor who visited us a couple of weeks ago. After all breastfeeding, particularly if your baby is under a year, is nothing if not normal. Read more

Wearing an older baby: woven wrap vs soft structured carrier


While I know people who've worn their babies in stretchy wraps all the way into toddlerhood, I packed mine in when Talitha hit six months. Her weight by then made the fabric uncomfortably bunch up around my shoulders and the more mobile she became Read more

The breastfeeding father


I've just had my first Mother's Day and, funnily enough, it's made me think about fathers. Laurence Talitha bought me La Leche League membership. The LLL is an international charity for breastfeeding mothers and I've just begun going to its Bristol branch meetings. The Read more

Don't label my parenting: struggling with "attachment parenting"


I've recently become uncomfortable with the term "attachment parenting". It's tricky because it very much describes what we're trying to do. Though we do have a routine, we watch our baby and not the clock. We refuse to rush her independence. We respond to Read more

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Baby wearing

Seven reasons to wear your baby

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Adele Jarrett-Kerr Posted in Baby wearing | Leave a comment

I’m over at the Mums and Me blog raving about babywearing, as usual…

I didn’t start off planning to wear my baby. I researched, tested and bought an expensive buggy that my daughter cruelly rejected.

My idle dreams of parking it next to a bench where I’d gaze indulgently over her sleeping form were replaced by the reality that she just hated the thing.

Instead she spent her first six months mainly tied to my chest in a stretchy wrap. It’s been nothing like I’d imagined before she was born. It’s been oddly more beautiful than I could have imagined.

Our baby-wearing journey was born out of desperation but, nine months in, it’s become a lifestyle I’m in love with.

Here’s why.

Read more on Mums and Me…

Wearing an older baby: woven wrap vs soft structured carrier

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Adele Jarrett-Kerr Posted in Baby wearing | 7 Comments

While I know people who’ve worn their babies in stretchy wraps all the way into toddlerhood, I packed mine in when Talitha hit six months. Her weight by then made the fabric uncomfortably bunch up around my shoulders and the more mobile she became the more easily she wrestled her way out.

Having looked into all available options, I’m quite settled that seriously wearing an older baby is best done in either a soft structured carrier or a woven wrap. No other sling or carrier distributes that amount of weight evenly enough for long carries.

But which one? I’m comparing an ERGObaby carrier and a Storchenwiege wrap.

Ease of use
Either of these is potentially intimidating. There is a bit of a learning curve. Before going to a sling meet, I would have said that the ERGO was certainly easier to get your head around. Having had a face-to-face demonstration, though, I find the woven wrap every bit as easy to use.


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The sling meet: learning to wear an older baby in a woven wrap

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Adele Jarrett-Kerr Posted in Baby wearing | 10 Comments

Over five metres of intricately woven cloth have hung in my hallway for almost a year. My Storchenwiege woven wrap, a birthday present from my parents, has been draped over the banister, mocking me.

Repeatedly, I picked it up, flung it about my shoulders and cast it aside in frustration. I could put a baby in stretchy wrap with my eyes closed. What was so different about this?

I looked at YouTube videos and kind of got the gist but for some reason it just didn’t feel right. I also lacked the confidence to experiment. I’m not sure why. That’s just the way it was.

But I really wanted to be able to use it. My soft structured carrier, the Ergobaby, was comfortable and easy enough but I missed that cuddly feeling of being wrapped up with my baby.

I know some people go on using their stretchy wraps with toddlers but by the time Talitha hit around six months, my Moby was no longer as supportive. I realise this may have more to do with my physiology than the wrap itself.

Every time I mentioned my woven wrap angst on Twitter, Jax from Live Otherwise kept telling me to go to a sling meet. I meant to. I wanted to. But I kept finding reasons not to go. I hate being the novice in a room. It’s ridiculous but true.

Well, today, I finally went. A babywearing friend with a very pretty Beco carrier offered Talitha and I a lift to the Bristol Sling Meet.
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Babywearing addict tries theBabaSling

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Adele Jarrett-Kerr Posted in Baby wearing, Stuff I've tried | 15 Comments

When I bought my first baby sling the salesperson recommended it on the basis that I was planning to get into babywearing “seriously”. She neglected to tell me that the thing about slings is this: once you’ve mastered one, you want to try them all.

So, with a stretchy and a woven wrap both securely part of our lives, I was excited to give an altogether different kind of baby carrier a go. Enter theBabaSling – a hammock style carrier and the newest addition to my addiction.
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Our babywearing journey so far

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Adele Jarrett-Kerr Posted in Baby wearing, Our life is a Circus | 25 Comments

When I heard that this week was International Babywearing Week, my first thought was that some people take pieces of cloth a little too seriously. A public awareness week for slings, carriers and such things? Really?

But actually, I can’t believe how passionate I’ve become about the subject myself. What began as a mode of transport has become a lifestyle for Talitha and me. She has, quite literally, attached herself to me.

Back in April I asked for a woven wrap for my birthday merely as an alternative to the pram. When it arrived, a gift from my parents, I admired its beauty then put it aside and, characteristically, forgot all about it.

Then my tiny baby arrived. And needed to be held. All. The. Time. Like, seriously.


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Five things I’d do if I had a newborn again

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Adele Jarrett-Kerr Posted in Baby wearing, Breastfeeding, What I learned | 21 Comments

At almost sixteen weeks it finally seems official that Talitha is not a newborn. She’s passed the eleven-pound mark on most newborn disposable nappies and grown too long for all her 0-3 months’ clothing. Those first twelve weeks, that fourth trimester, was such brief time and yet living it took yonks.

Looking back with the sagely wisdom of one with a slightly less young baby, I’ve been thinking about what I’d change if I could have a do-over of the newborn thing. These aren’t regrets so much as a gentle interrogation of the experience for next time.

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The baby who sucked and sucked and sucked

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Adele Jarrett-Kerr Posted in Baby wearing, Breastfeeding, Our life is a Circus | 14 Comments

“We get so many women in here who have trouble getting their babies to latch,” said one of the assistants in Born on the Gloucester Road, “but I’ve not seen a baby refuse to do the opposite.” Well, at least we’re broadening some horizons.

Remember when I talked about how much I love breastfeeding my tiny daughter despite our issues of oversupply? That appeared to be the difficulty when Talitha would wake up every 20 minutes, sucking everything and everyone in sight, sticking her fists in her mouth, rooting around and screaming for the boob.


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