The "brilliance" at work here is the same as that which warned me that if I
carried my second baby in the original Snugli,  her legs wouldn't develop
and she wouldn't walk.  She walked at 7 months!

I was also warned that my first child would have misshapen feet because I
had "Pedibares" for her shoes. The were soft leather and the "brilliant"
ones said that her ankles would be weak because of lack of the hard
high-top ankle shoes that were the fashion of the day.

The popular book about the "First Year", which is a sequel to the popular
book on "Expecting" (am I cryptic enough?) warns parents to not use slings
because babies sleep too much in them, robbing them of adequate mental
stimulation.  This warning is a few pages away from the insistence that
these same babies' sleep in their cribs for long periods each day because
they need such [isolated] sleep to grow on, along with the goal of sleeping
through the night at some ideal age.

I had a client whose baby wasn't a sleeper and wanted to be carried all
day.  I did my best to get her to use a sling, even loaning one so that she
could see how great it was.  Baby loved it, and slept between feedings
allowing mom to do some things around the apartment.  But she gave it back
to me, finally admitting that the above book had scared her away from using
it.

I am always amazed at Americans who see only what *we* do, and what we've
done in the last 50 years, as the only healthy way to live with babies.
There is a constant effort to make science out of our anti-child behaviors,
and not to see the rest of the world and their history *at all.*

All of these practices are programmed to foster the sense of isolation and
detachment that pervades our American culture. Again and again I hear my
clients saying that their HCPs warned them against getting too attached to
their babies. And again and again the mothers heed the warning, against
their natural instincts.

I see the growing prevalence of slings (and even those expensive, imported
jobbers) as a most important turn of events. Parents are carrying their
babies and are liking it. It keeps me hoping that women, like the one that
Susan K-H wrote about, will keep asking questions when such distorted
opinions are passed off as science or health.

Perhaps you could steer her to Dr. Sears' The Baby Book.  His chapter on
baby-wearing is very covincing--and I have seen some of his children and
they aren't misshapen of body.

Pat Gima, IBCLC
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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