Carolee said about the criticism of using "baby buckets": There are times when women who are past the infant/toddler years give advice/criticism to the mothers of young children and it sounds like they are out of touch with what parenting a small baby is like. I think as people in service to said mothers, it is important that we don't over simplify the demands of caring for a baby and to not be so quick to criticized the way in which some choose to manage. I agree that people whose children are older forget what it's like. (Mine are 13, 8 and 22 months.) But I also think that the baby carriers are overused in this country in general. When my second child (9.5 lbs at birth so he was not delicate looking) was a week old my husband and I took him in for a check-up. Afterwards, we got on the elevator with a man. I was carrying Nicholas, who was asleep, facing me on my chest with both of my hands on him. The man on the elevator said "How old is your baby?" I said "He's one week old." The man hesitated a minute, then said "Shouldn't he be in something?" It took me a minute to realize what he meant. He was uncomfortable seeing a baby being held in its mother's arms! I assured him that I wouldn't drop him and he was safe. This was one of the incidents that got me interested in baby seats and swings and other paraphernalia that we seem to think babies should be kept in. -Lucy Towbin, MSW,IBCLC Still carrying #3 a lot in Little Rock *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html