Me and My Moby

Kids are a bit of a learning curve, to say the least, and at 3:00, all good intentions go out the window when your primary goal (only goal) is to get the little whiner to shut up and sleep already.  Cloth diapers ended up being a no-go for Rijntje--they were too bulky and he couldn't bend his legs at the hips properly, bringing on a screaming fit for the ages.

The Moby Wrap  was one of those things that I honestly never really thought I'd use.  It's basically a long sheet of fabric that you tie around yourself and somehow stick a baby into.  Somehow the baby doesn't fall out.  Advantages of baby-wearing?  Well, supposedly it's what's "in" these days--what with the whole attachment parenting thing and what-all.  The Moby Wrap website provides a bunch of other reasons why wearing your baby is a good thing--note the prominent placement of the "43% less crying" graphic.

If I must be completely honest, the whole thing stank of an au-naturel-hippie-love vibe that I really don't have the patience to indulge.  Still, when Karel saw the Moby Wrap videos and websites, he was instantly smitten with the idea of wearing Rijntje and getting groceries and cooking (the one thing they say not to do when wearing your baby) and just generally bonding with the little guy.  And so, in our Amazon-binge, we purchased one.  

And...it just sat in our baby-supplies closet for a while.  I'd occasionally take it out to try to get Rijntje used to being cradled in it, but he hated it--most probably because I hadn't quite mastered the art of getting a squirmy baby into a confined space--and for the first few weeks it seemed like the biggest waste of €50 we'd ever run up.  Karel, who had been so enthusiastic about wearing Rijntje, could hardly figure out how to tie the thing (and, needless to say, never did quite get the hang of putting the baby into it).  

Until one day, it clicked: One especially fussy afternoon, the kind where I was dreading spending the entire 5 hours coddling a little screaming beast and not getting anything done, I put him into it and started doing the stuff that I needed to get done--and he passed right out, barely bothering to open an eye when a pot clanged to the floor (I was unloading the dishwasher, not cooking).  Not only did he sleep, but it was a quiet sleep, uninterrupted by the occasional yelps that for some reason he's prone to make.

I don't use it all the time, but in the afternoons, when he tends to be especially difficult, the Moby has been a godsend:  I can do laundry!  Run a short errand across the street! Make myself a sandwich!  Type up a post using both hands!  Which I'm doing right now!  I can get stuff done and make sure he sleeps!

Despite the 1000% increase in my ability to get stuff done in the afternoons, though, I have to confess that I'm still not entirely comfortable with the idea of babywearing:  my mother's voice in the back of my head keeps insisting that babies should sleep in their bassinet (in our case), and that carrying him around with me all the time is going to somehow irreparably spoil him.  I still haven't found a device or method that shuts that voice up.