Babywearing

Little R in her carrier: awake for once

I bought the a Mei Tai carrier over the internet when preparing for little R's arrival. I thought it would be easier to carry her this way, rather than wrestling with a stroller (especially since we live on the third floor and have no elevator).

It is indeed much, much easier, and now I don't understand why everyone doesn't use baby carriers, at least for small babies (wearing a toddler seems like it might be extremely unpleasant). It means I have my hands free (to carry groceries for instance), and am much more mobile (I don't have to worry about curbs or stairs): important in hilly San Francisco. The Mei Tai carrier is really comfortable to wear, and smushes up small so it fits in my diaper bag when I'm not wearing it.

My main concern with babywearing is that little R finds it incredibly soothing, so much so that she will almost instantly fall asleep whenever she is in it, and stays asleep until I take it off for the most part, even if I wear it for several hours. This is good because I can go out to dinner or to museums (went to the Cantor Art Center at Stanford today for 2.5 hours), and she won't make a peep.

But I worry that she is then sleeping too much during the day (since obviously I don't wear it at night), and isn't interacting with the world at all. So I don't wear it around the house, or for more than 4 hours outside. Am I being paranoid and/or crazy? Maybe it would be better if she slept for long periods in the day too: then she'd be well rested?

I know that the attachment parenting people think you should babywear all day long, but I don't know if their carriers have such a soporific effect on their children. (Also the attachment parenting people are a little bit scary, at least here in the Bay Area, and aren't necessarily the most reliable source for common sense advice).

At least I have a good solution for brief trips outside, even if I don't feel secure about using it to get house chores done too.