Embracing babywearing in Sonoma County

Hip moms are wearing their babies and it’s all about the wrap.

An increasing number of mothers - and dads - are parking their strollers and opting to tote their babies and toddlers in the way native cultures have conveniently done for untold generations.

And it’s not just neo-hippie and eco-conscious moms in search of ever more natural ways to raise their kids. Many young moms and dads are hoisting up their little ones in a variety of wraps and slings and ergonomic carriers so they can more easily maneuver through stores and crowds or get work done around the house with a fussy baby who finds the closeness calming.

Babywearing has become so hot that Hollywood has embraced it as a fashion trend. Celebrities like Gwen Stefani, Giselle Bundschen and Kate Hudson are routinely snapped wearing infants in various carriers and slings, some of which are considered positively chic, and can sell for hundreds of dollars.

Photos of celebrity babywearing dads are posted all over the Internet and Pinterest, with regular moms drooling over the likes of Twilight hunk Cam Gigandet and Ryan Reynolds packing their babies in carriers.

“There’s something pretty sexy about a man wearing a baby in a sling, isn’t there? We women seem to just swoon at the sight of it. Add an A-list dad like Orlando Bloom to the mix and it’s just about enough to melt your ovaries,” one mom blogger gushed.

Multiple Facebook pages have popped up where young and new mothers are connecting for information, friendship, social meet-ups, mom-talk and buying and swapping babywearing devices. They love to post photos of their favorite wraps or even ask for advice on which one would look best with which outfit. The Sonoma County BabyWearing Enthusiasts page has more than 700 members. Other pages, like the 165-member Sonoma County Tula Moms, have organized over a shared obsession for certain brands.

Among the hottest sellers are limited-edition Tula carriers. While the basic Tulas in canvas and cute prints retail for $149 on the company website, more limited-edition designs and carriers made out of beautifully colored woven fabric are so sought-after that some women will pay hundreds of dollars over retail value to buy one.

Quickly sell out

The San Diego-based Tula company releases new stock every two weeks, usually on Sundays at 3 p.m. Once the product goes live, these special wraps sell out in seconds. Aisah Alvarez of Santa Rosa, mother of a 15-month-old son, said snaring one into an online shopping cart and checking out before someone else grabs it from your cart is a remarkable feat fueled by a huge adrenaline rush.

“You have to go back week after week and try to stalk them. The time I got mine I saw something on their Facebook group saying there were 5,000 people trying to get 150 carriers. So the odds of being able to successfully cart one is very hard,” said Alvarez, who works full time for a winery and finds babywearing a good way to bond and get work done in the limited hours of the evening.

“Tula should be called Tulips because the craze is a lot like the Dutch tulip craze when people went bankrupt buying tulips,” said Rachel Snyder, a Santa Rosa nurse who has carried all four of her children aged 11 down to 1 in a variety of wearable conveyances and has watched the market just explode with multiple varieties and brands of carriers.

When the market is up, women have made tidy profits off of their carriers, sometimes selling the new ones for a pattern or fabric they like better. It’s that ability to resell that helps Snyder justify the investment in an item she concedes is a luxury. There are other brands and types of carriers that sell for far less and do the trick. Target features wrap-and-tie Mei Tai carriers for $30 and Boba Wraps in six solid colors - easy to match with different tops and outfits - for $39.99.

“They’re ridiculously expensive,” Snyder says of the Tula carriers. “When my sister-in-law was first telling me about her $800 carrier, which was one of those wrap conversions, I thought she had completely lost it, But she has probably made thousands of dollars in the buy/sell/trade market. She figures out when to buy and when to sell. It’s absolutely bizarre.”

Secret code

More bizarre is the secret communication code among Tula wearers called “Tula in the Wild.”

If goes like this. And it’s a real thing. If you see another mother out in public wearing a Tula you say “Tula in the Wild” and she calls back, ‘Caw! Caw! Caw!”

“It really happens,” said her bewildered but tolerant husband Doug Snyder, an artist, who frequently wears their two daughters aged 2 1/2 and 1 when his wife is working at the hospital. “You’ll be in a restaurant and someone will yell it out and she says ‘Caw, Caw, Caw’ back. Rachel will sometimes yell out the window of the car. They really do this.”

Snyder concedes it may seem like a crazy cult, but babywearing itself makes a lot of sense.

“I really do recommend babywearing, especially when parents are out and about and grocery shopping or walking around. It’s safer than being toted around in a car seat. In grocery carts, a lot of babies stay in their car seats and that isn’t safe,” said Tessa Stephens a nurse midwife at the Santa Rosa Women’s Health and Birth Center.

Ann Moore is credited with coming up with the first commercial, mass-produced, hands-free baby carrier called The Snugli back in the 1960s. She was inspired to create one for her own baby daughter in 1964 after serving in the Peace Corps in Togo and observing the calm closeness that African mothers had with their carried babies. By the 1980s, hands-free soft baby carriers were standard equipment in every nursery. The Wall Street Journal called The SNUGLI one of the most important inventions of the 20th century.

Attachment Parenting

This new wave of babywearing sprang from the Attachment Parenting philosophy of pediatrician Dr. Bill Sears, the new Dr. Spock, who maintains that strong bonds developed between a child and parent from birth on has positive lifelong benefits when it comes to emotional and psychological well-being.

But a lot of parents are also turning to carrying for convenience and child safety.

“I can’t push a cart and stroller at the same time,” said Megan Lawrence-Ferreira of Sebastopol. She found it helpful to carry her now nine-month-old Noah close to the chest while she is doing school work. The 30-year-old mom is studying to be a psychotherapist. She keeps a variety of slings and carriers around the house and the car, at the ready for lots of different uses or simply to take a walk down the block. She bought her Ergo wrap used for $30. She also frequents thrift shops and consignment stores in search of bargain carriers.

“It gives me the opportunity to be able to bond with my son but still try to juggle the household duties and responsibilities that I still have to get done,” said Alvarez. She also likes it when she’s in public. Her son is so active that if she set him down in a store he’d take off running or start pulling things off shelves.

Babywearing moms say the carriers and wraps are convenient for quick and discrete breastfeeding.

Grass-roots market

Laura Bunnell, a 38-year-old mother of seven kids ages 2 to 18, began babywearing with her first child after reading Dr. Sears. There were few carriers available at that time, beyond the Baby Bjorn, which serious babywearing advocates say leaves a baby’s legs hanging in a position that is not good for their hips.

But around the year 2000, a grassroots market slowly began emerging with women making their own wraps and slings, she said. That eventually spawned cottage industries that grew into big business. A small Yahoo group organized by among babywearing moms in 2003 eventually grew into Babywearer.com, with 90,000 registered users.

Bunnell, who lives at the Coast Guard Station at Two Rock, administers the site and works with Babywearing International, with chapters around the country, including Marin County, devoted to education and advocacy. Some have lending libraries so moms can to try out different styles. Bunnell also is a teacher, coaching other moms on how to carry their babies safely and upright in ways that keeps their airways clear to prevent suffocation.

“I’ve always really believed in holding my babies. That it was important that I held them,” she said.

Snyder laughs at observers who criticize moms for carrying their toddlers, as if it’s preventing them from walking. Kids let you know, she said, when they want to get down and when they’re done being carried.

“Babywearing makes my like easier,” she said. “And I don’t like babies to cry. I don’t believe you can spoil a baby. If a baby is crying, you should pick them up.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204. On Twitter @megmcconahey.