Babywearing- mourning

Only other seasoned babywearers and wrap addicts will understand this post. 

Babywearing and everything it stands for has has been a part of my life since my girls were born. I have had almost a hundred wraps pass through through buying and trading across the years. We won’t be having any more children and so  I am finally having to face that the time for these bits of cloth to leave us has come. This weekend was the very first when we went out and I just carried my wrap bag around. Neither LPO nor LPI asked to go up, even when they got tired.

How to describe what wrapping has meant to me? Well, primarily, closeness. Cuddles, kisses, the Little Pickles’ breath on my neck. Secondly, at a time when I was physically exhausted and unable to think about new clothes or preening, glamour: I could wrap myself and my girls in something handmade and exclusive- in any pattern I chose. Finally, I would say it gave me a community- largely an online one, but a community nonetheless- of like-minded parents. All of us want to hold our little ones close enough to kiss. Now it is hard for me to let go, although it is a completely natural thing to happen. There are also online communities for those of us in my position – wrapping withdrawal groups! 

I was fortunate enough to have swapped a number of wraps for an absolute unicorn (wrappers’ jargon for a limited wrap where demand vastly outstrips supply) and now in my tiny collection it represents a million cuddles and kisses, and also at a time when money is tight and babies have become children, capital to be reluctantly released. 

So I write this eulogy for our exquisite raindrop wrap. This morning I sold it, and I feel… Deeply sad. It is and isn’t only fabric.

Our beautiful beautiful raindrops. You carried my monkeys to Czech castles and forests, to food markets and political protests. You kept us close in crowds and kept us chatting and sharing experiences. You are a work of art and a thing of beauty. I would keep you always if I could . Always. But you are needed in another home and for another mother and child. Now my pickles are walking, and enormous. You are not long enough to hold them and though they love cuddles, they think more about independent discovery than riding on my back. It is how it should be.

Goodbye, raindrops. Parting is such sweet sorrow.