baby-slings-msg - 12/10/16

Making and using a period baby sling to carry your baby.

NOTE: See also the files: babies-msg, baby-gifts-msg, child-wagons-msg, 
teething-toys-msg, toys-msg, Toys-in-th-MA-art, clothing-MN-msg, children-msg.

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    Mark S. Harris                  AKA:  THLord Stefan li Rous
                                          Stefan at florilegium.org
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From: mugjf at uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Gwyndlyn J Ferguson)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Babies at War...info on care??
Date: 29 Apr 1995 18:30:48 GMT
Organization: Educational Computing Network

: : plan on having some type of "period" stroller--a wooden wagon,
: : maybe--with a canope.  Will that do? 

: I used a sling and carried Amber, when Daddy didn't have her.

Those slings, if in a non-"pastel baby nightmare" design look mighty like 
the picture I have here in front of me.  First half thirteenth century, 
by Mathew Paris, St Christopher carrying the infant Christ (actually 
looks more like the toddler christ) in a shoulder sling.  I danced for 
joy when I saw that, because it's period to the persona of my friend who 
will also be bringing a small baby to War this year.
 BTW, she plans on using a "pack-n-play" playpen for a camping crib, with 
plenty of blankets in the bottom.  It's hidden in the tent, so who cares 
how it looks, there's no fear of rolling over on the baby, and no worry 
about him falling out of bed either.
--
*Gwyn Ferguson***Western Illinois University
*SCA: Lady Gwyndlyn Caer Vyrddin***Lochmorrow-Midrealm
*Internet: mugjf at bgu.edu


Date: Wed, 20 Mar 96 19:46:22 GMT 
From: SPIS & NZ Science Monthly <nzsm at spis.co.nz>
Newgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Baby slings -- construction 

For those of you who would like to construct a baby sling for transportation 
of newborns-3-yr-olds, here are the instructions. I'm posting this following 
various requests from a comment on useful things for new parents:

Baby slings are not the same as medical slings!

Baby slings are readily available here from chemists (er..drugstores in 
your vocab I think) and craft outlets -- you could check out your 
variant of Plunket (do you guys have a national agency responsible 
for helping out new parents, antenatal and postnatal? hmm, maybe 
not). Try baby sewing books at the library (you do still have 
libraries??)

Lessee, the slings are made out of any closely woven fabric. Cotton 
is fine (period style colours and patterns make it useful for SCA 
events -- fluoro pink looks OK but won't go down well in enchanted 
ground!). Something that's strong enough to bear weight without 
ripping, but soft enough to drape reasonably well.

The slings are basically a rectangle: about one metre wide and 2
metres long. Cut two and sew together for extra strength, hem. One end
is pleated and sewn flat (pleats about 5cm wide; sew it down in a
square shape at the end so it's sturdy). The other end is looped
through two rings (the ones I have are large wooden curtain rings
(internal diameter 5cm) and pulled about 30 cm. It's then laid out
flat on the main piece and sewn across.

To make things more comfortable and to help keep the rings at the 
end, you can put a rectangle/ellipse of light foam inside the space 
between the two layers of fabric (the fabric will bunch up around 
the rings, but there's usually room to manoeuvre).

That's it!

To use the sling, the pleated end is passed through, under and over
the rings. That should be enough to hold it. You then sling it
across your shoulder. Adjusting the tightness affects how much
cavity you have in front of you to fit your baby in. I've found that
it's most comfortable when you fan the material across your back so 
that your whole back and shoulder are sharing the load -- letting the 
material bunch up into a slide piece is a bit hard on the collarbone 
after a while. Experiment.

You can carry a newborn or even a three-year-old in this. The newborn 
will lie tucked right up inside, keeps them warm and makes it easy to 
breastfeed with no-one the wiser; a 12-month-old will enjoy sitting up 
facing away from you with their feet tucked in; a 3-year-old can have 
his/her bottom supported by the sling with their legs outside it.

People really do a double-take when they see a sling, but they can 
see how comfy the baby is and how convenient it is to have both hands 
free.

katherine kerr from the far-off southern reaches of Caid
==============================================================================
     Vicki Hyde, South Pacific Information Services Ltd, Christchurch, NZ


From: Margaret Griffith <peggieg at u.washington.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Baby slings -- construction
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 10:40:49 -0800
Organization: University of Washington

On Wed, 20 Mar 1996, SPIS & NZ Science Monthly wrote:
> For those of you who would like to construct a baby sling for transportation 
> of newborns-3-yr-olds, here are the instructions. I'm posting this following 
> various requests from a comment on useful things for new parents:

Just one word of warning on an otherwise excellent post - don't wait 
until you get to an SCA event to try out the sling for the first time.  
Also, if you intend to use a sling for your toddler, start when he/she is 
a baby - otherwise the child may very well rebel against this unfamiliar 
form of transportation.

Meg


From: Wayne Anderson <wander at hooked.net>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period Toys (Re: babies and smalls at events)
Date: 15 May 1996 02:31:01 GMT

For parents of small babies, the best piece of equipment is a sling
type carrier.  You can buy one at a baby store for about $40, or, as
I did, go to the store, try one on, see how it's made and go home and
make one in SCA appropriate fabric.
     A sling has a more period feel to it than a back pack, and is 
more comfortable for parents and babies.  It's also very easy to nurse 
discreetly in the sling, at least with a very small baby.  One baby
book claims that a sling is useful till the child is three, but
they haven't met my 40 pound two-year-old.

Maudelyn of Bryn Aur


From: savaskan <savaskan at sd.znet.com>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Garb suggestions for nursing mother (long response)
Date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 21:57:23 -0800
Organization: Savaskan Anatolians

koala at bright.net wrote: 
> A Very Highly Recommended item which I found immensely useful, whether I was
> breastfeeding at the moment or not, is a sling.  Find one in a not-too-modern
> fabric and it serves very nicely as baby carrier and breastfeeding cover-up. 

I made one out of a sheer cotton gauze. I just knotted the ends of the
fabric to size and it worked great on hot days. Most of the commercial
slings are too many layers of material for hot summer days, IMHO.

Juliana


Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 07:59:07 +0100
From: "Melanie Wilson" <MelanieWilson at bigfoot.com>
To: <sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject: Re: baby sling/holder

I used a large piece of cloth which when the babies were small I put one end
over my shoulder , the other round my waist  tied at the back, this held
them until they could hold their heads up. Then I changed it so they sat on
my bum tied the cloth under their bum & round my waist then either over or
under my bust, used up to 4 years old so far

Mel


From the fb "SCA Garb" group:
Ahmie Polak Yeung 
Don't forget, slings are period and extremely handy for breastfeeding but take some practice. I make my own summer slings out of 2.5 yards of half-width gauze (too much width gets in the way when trying to get baby to breast quickly & discretely in my experience). I use metal rings from the curtain rings that have the little clips held on with a bit of wire (just bend the wire and it comes off with the clip), they sell them at Target and Walmart, don't by the "easy glide" ones just go for straight metal. With gauze even the smallest metal O-rings I could find at the local hardware stores and chains were so big that they were providing too much slipage, and I didn't trust macrame rings. I've used the same set of rings through four kids, wearing them in the same gauze pretty much daily from birth through about 5 months when they get too heavy for my spine to tolerate the weight being lopsided like that (even with the fabric well spread on my shoulder and back). Tail works well for a cover. Also very handy because babies should not be wearing sunscreen before they're 6mo, so you can cover the baby with the tail of a lightweight fabric sling while having sun exposure to prevent sunburn.

For older babies, I'm nearly positive the "Asian-Style Baby Carriers" aka Mei Tai (I think that's how some folks spell it) that were the inspiration for carriers like Ergo Baby Carrier were in use in period - just tied on instead of buckled most likely. Those are also breastfeeding friendly (and also more daddy-friendly since they're not so dependent on boobs for positioning baby upright if you wind up with a little one who tends to spit up after a feed - keeping them as vertical as possible after feeds by supporting them in a firm & tight sling immediately after helps keeps stuff traveling in a downward direction), but work better when baby is past the wanting-to-be-squished-up-as-if-still-in-womb phase. 

I believe there are publicly viewable videos on my profile of my demonstrating how to make a no-sew ring sling and then how to wear it with a small baby - I made them years ago (before I needed the wheelchair quite so much, so I was standing in the video) and I think the friend's baby that I was borrowing for the video was around 6 weeks old.

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Edited by Mark S. Harris	baby-slings-msg	Page 5 of 5