Babywearing is the practice of wearing or carrying a baby or child in a sling or other form of carrier. Babywearing is far from new and has been practised for centuries around the world. In the industrialized world babywearing has gained popularity, partly under influence of advocates of attachment parenting, however, not all parents who babywear consider themselves attachment parents. Babywearing is a form of baby transport.
Claimed benefits of babywearing include:
- Mothers' progesterone (mothering hormone) is increased through physical contact with the infant, leading to a more intimate maternal bond, easier breastfeeding and better care, thus lowering the incidence of postpartum depression and psychosomatic illness.
- Infants who are carried are calmer because all of their primal/survival needs are met. The caregiver can be seen, heard, smelled, touched, tasted, provide feeding and the motion necessary for continuing neural development, gastrointestinal and respiratory health and to establish balance (inner ear development) and muscle tone is constant.
- Infants are more organized. Parental rhythms (walking, heartbeat, etc.) have balancing and soothing effects on infants.
- Infants are "humanized" earlier by developing socially. Babies are closer to people and can study facial expressions, learn languages faster and be familiar with body language.
- Contrary to western cultural myths, independence is established earlier.
- Attachment between child and caregiver is more secure.
- Decreases risk of positional plagiocephaly ("flat head syndrome") caused by extended time spent in a car seat and by sleeping on the back. Sleeping on the back is recommended to decrease the risk of SIDS. Cranial distortion resulting from non-vehicular time in car seats has shown to be more severe than in children who develop plagiocephaly from back-lying on a mattress. Concern over plagiocephaly has also led the American Academy of Pediatrics to recommend that infants “should spend minimal time in car seats (when not a passenger in a vehicle) or other seating that maintains supine positioning. None of the babywearing positions require infants to lie supine while being carried. Infants can even be worn while they sleep, also decreasing sleeping time spent in a supine position.
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