In the wealth of advice and the endless possibilities of baby gadgets, it helps to remember what is essential for both baby and parents regardless of how a baby enters the family.

Over the past century, industry has developed a wide range of infant products, from heartbeat teddy bears to infant swings, that can promote separation rather than closeness; that can substitute for direct care. While these products can be helpful for short periods of time from the parents perspective, from the baby’s perspective, there is no substitute for caring, loving and direct contact with those most important in their new life – mother and father. Babywearing – carrying and holding the baby in direct body contact for extended periods of time – fulfills the needs for closeness.

At birth, a baby is already attuned to rhythms, sounds and scents. Adoptive parents need to spend time in close contact to help the baby transition to a new comfort zone – to identify with and find security in new rhythms, sounds and scents. Adoptive parents are faced with new roles and new responsibilities often with little or no preparation. Babywearing may help adoptive parents by having the baby in close contact while leaving hands free for the tasks associated with caring for a newborn.

The idea of babywearing, although practised down through the ages and around the world, is in direct contrast with the western civilization concern of ‘spoiling’ the baby or belief in the need to ‘teach’ the baby to be independent from early on. Parents are not spoiling their baby when they respond to the baby’s need to be held and carried. Rather, they are tuning in to biological needs for extensive human contact and motion – for both parent and baby. Many important benefits occur when baby and parent are in consistent close contact through babywearing.

Wearing your baby provides three familiar elements for the newborn – steady heartbeat, motion and closeness, helping the baby to feel safe and secure.

Babies accumulate energy from nourishment and sunshine and cannot effectively discharge this energy until they are moving about on their own. When carried, the baby shares in walking, rocking, talking, working, and is able to discharge this energy without fussing.

The rhythm of the parent’s breathing helps stabilize baby’s breathing.

Being carried stimulates the baby’s brain development and cognitive learning. Carried babies spend more time in the quiet, alert state – the optimum state for learning – and show increased visual alertness and awareness of their environment.