We each grabbed our stainless steel water bottles and loaded up for our trip to Starbucks. I let the kids each have an occasional cup of decaf coffee, and they each chose that over iced tea. I bought a few treats to share and read a chapter from Mrs. Frisbie and the Rats of Nimh as we sat and enjoyed an outing for under $5.

As we left, we talked about Earth Day. I mentioned that I thought we should take a walk later to pick up trash in the neighborhood — they were not enthusiastic, as they just had a trash day at church. I told them I wanted to celebrate, then, by starting the spring cleanup of our yard, and they asked to plant a garden. We were just passing Home Depot — not our local nursery, but very convenient. I checked my clock — still just enough time to grab some things before my brother came. We grabbed a spring flower mix, lettuce, green beans, some plastic trowels.

I dressed the baby for the outdoors and went out in my bare feet to start the work. The kids got busy digging up the earth, setting borders for their clubhouse garden with bricks and stones. I began to clean the yard and realized the burn pile, which I neglected last summer due to having a newborn and starting the BCIA, was out of control. I started a fire in our fire pit. It was around 3:30. I called my husband and asked him to grab some veggie burgers for dinner so we could drag the portable grill into the back yard. The boys hung out on the shed roof; Morgaine finished up her gardens.

After my brother arrived and my husband got home, Orion decided it’d be a great night for a camp out. I pointed out it was going to be a very cold night (we’re in Maine) but he was still enthusiastic. I had just wrapped the baby down for a nap, and I thought — “No. It’s cold; I don’t know where the tent is; I don’t have the energy for a campout; their dad is coming at 10am to pick them up.” Instead, I said, “Honey, can you find the tent?” He finally dug it out of the back of our shed — by now, there were neighbor kids involved.

A few minutes ago, I tucked the kids into layers and layers of blankets out in the tent. They’re huddled together eating cucumbers and marshmallows, reading “Fairy Tales for Angry Little Girls” and listening to pop music. If they get cold, they’re only a few feet from the door; they can come inside to sleep. I’m going to fire the neighbor kids out by 9:30 and they can eat breakfast at their own homes, and the kids will be ready to leave with their father at 10am. And me? I’m about to snuggle up with my husband and baby in our quiet home and watch a movie.

All this from four cups of free coffee in our reusable travel mugs to celebrate Earth Day.

In fact, doctors think I was born this way, though nobody noticed until a routine school hearing test when I was six. My mom assumed I was just a kid who was a little spacey and didn’t always listen (having three of them myself whose ears are fine, I understand!). Even into my teens, my parents would forget that I am significantly deaf — even a little bit of background noise, such as the sound of paper rustling in my good ear — makes it hard to hear people talking to me or calling to me. So if I was practicing my flute or listening to the radio even at a very low volume, I couldn’t hear my name called.

When I had my first child, I refinished a cradle for her — hugely pregnant and in the hot August sun, sanding with my dust mask on, I painted it with great love and joy. But when she was born, I kept her in my bed. It felt good. It felt right. I’d wake panicky if she fell asleep in her crib and slept more than 2 or 3 hours.

When I got pregnant with my third child, the first thing we did was take down the crib to make room for a bureau. It was a piece of furniture we got because we thought we should — we expected to use it — but never had.

But it wasn’t until I was pregnant with my fourth baby — my husband’s first — that I really understood that my deafness is a major reason I cosleep.

Tonight, I am sick with a fever and restless with insomnia, so I turned away from my baby girl and listened to the rhythm of her breath, hoping it would lull me to sleep. It is not a sound I hear often when I am in bed. I have slept on my good ear my entire life; it blocks out the noise of the world. Very, very seldom will I change sides.

A baby monitor would not wake me in the night. Even with my babies snuggled right beside me, I wake not to their muffled sounds, but to their movements. I feel them stir and it rouses me. My instincts are in high gear when I am night time parenting.

My older kids are big now — 11, almost 9, almost 7. And still, when they wake at night with a bad dream or an illness, it is not the sound of them that wakes me but instinct and the feel of their footsteps.

Were my baby sleeping in a crib — or even in a cosleeper — I would miss many of her nighttime feeding cues, waking only when she cried out plaintively. I might not notice when she begins squirming for her paci until she was wide awake and sad. Her nights — and mine — would be long ones.

I have considered more than once what it would be to parent completely deaf. Even something as simple as a telephone call means that I simply cannot hear my children well at all. Any loss to that good ear would seriously affect our lives, and I am grateful for my complete hearing on that side. But were I deaf, babywearing and cosleeping would be even more extraordinarily important. I know there must be adaptive parenting devices for the deaf, and if I had to sleep away from my children, I would investigate them. And I know that families with no hearing problems benefit from cosleeping for all the same reasons I do — but when talking about cosleeping, mamas often use the phrase “I love that I can hear him right away.” For me, it’s not true. I keep a thigh under my baby’s foot, usually. We stay connected in a tactile way.

And it was baby number 4 before I even realized it.

Mothering by instinct is an amazing thing, don’t you think?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mompreneurs Bring the Babywearing Revolution to DVD

Durham, NH – January 24, 2011 – Jan Heirtzler and Kristi Hayes-Devlin are about to turn babywearing video instruction on its ear. With their acquisition of Parenting Revolution, LLC, they bring 17 years of combined experience as baby carrying manufacturers to the only full-length instructional DVD showcasing safety and use instructions for the variety of baby carriers available to new parents. Hayes-Devlin says, “When this DVD was created 6 years ago, it was an important step for this industry. However, we have learned much more about optimum positioning in these carriers, and the DVD has not yet been updated to reflect this. Jan and I are looking forward to revising this to reflect what the industry now knows is best practice.”

Heirtzler says, “When I was approached about this project, I knew it was something I needed to do. It’s the perfect avenue for sharing my passion for babywearing and the myriad benefits it brings mothers and babies.” As part of their vision, Hayes-Devlin and Heirtzler hope to empower micro-manufacturers to provide DVDs to their own customers. “We love the idea of helping make such an important parenting tool even safer,” adds Hayes-Devlin.

Says Heirtzler, “New parents need up-to-date, clear information about baby carrying. I hope it will be a great resource for health care providers as well — those who may not have used carriers with their own children, but who wish to help their clients and patients make the most of the safest, most ergonomically-correct carriers on the market.”

“This is more than just an instructional video,” says Hayes-Devlin. “It’s a gift of two extra hands – a way to hold, nurture and care for your baby while doing the ‘stuff’ of life. We’re excited to dig into this new project!”

To learn about the DVD in its current format, visit http://www.tummy2tummy.com/.

Jan Heirtzler is the owner of Sleeping Baby Productions, LLC and has been selling handcrafted baby carriers since 2001. She also serves on the board of the Baby Carrier Industry Alliance. Heirtzler lives in Durham, NH and still occasionally carries her third child, age 3, in a sling carrier.

Kristi Hayes-Devlin is the owner of Gypsy Mama, LLC and has been selling wraparound baby carriers since 2004. She is the chairwoman of the Baby Carrier Industry Alliance. Hayes-Devlin lives in Berwick, Maine, and practices babywearing daily with her fourth child, 6 months old.

contact:
Kristi Hayes-Devlin
kristi@gypsymama.com
(603) 509-2931

# # #

Alice in her pettiskirt from Flower Fairies Online

We’ve been working for a while on a web update. There’ll be lots more small changes in the coming months, but we’re really excited to share these with you.

First, I’d like to say thank you to Flower Fairies Online.  They use the same shopping cart software we do, and it was their layout that inspired our changes.   This is our baby Alice in her adorable pettiskirt from their store (only $17.99) — I’m so glad I stumbled on their site!

So — first, check out our homepage — we’ve updated with new images, including a not-to-be-missed photo of our three office babies in their new hand-tied beanies, made from fabrics matching our wraps.

Next — check out the new accessories page. You can easily order hair scarves and baby hats (yes, they’ll fit your preschooler, too! Even my 11yo was able to jam one onto her head without the hat looking as if it would burst).

Finally — and here is what I’m most proud of — check out the easy-to navigate breeze and stretch pages. First — you’ll see that it’s easy to order your wrap without having to browse through to the product page. Next, you’ll notice you can scroll through all the photos on that same main page — so it’s easy to compare the colorways without a lot of clicking back and forth! Finally, we have rewitten all of our product descriptions, leaving the essential information in bullet points, with each wrap’s story inset for those of you who love to read those stories. Additionally, we’ve added testimonials from our customers at the bottom of each page.

Lastly, you can now shop our wraps by color! So fun! What color is YOUR Wrapsody?

Check it out! If you feel so moved, comment with your thoughts on the new layout, or with your favorite of our wrap stories/descriptions. Also, I’d love to know what other articles or features you’d like to see.

Their father and I had never been wealthy — one year we did Christmas with a $30 budget for the entire family. Although he kept up with child support, our custody battle drained any extra money I had. I ate less, showered in cold water, and read Hip Mama for tons of great ideas for being a kickass mama with zero dollars.

You all supported me by buying my products. I found our Balinese manufacturer. I took on my first four wholesale clients. I sewed each night after my children were in bed until I began to nod off and became in danger of sewing into my fingers. (Got my nails a few times — but luckily never the flesh!)

At Christmas those first few years, I was blessed with abundance. A friend gave me $300 one year to shop for my children. Another year the church showered my family with beautiful gifts — so many gifts that I passed some on to 2 other families in need. My own family always made sure my children have never wanted for anything at all; even in the times I was so broke that I skipped meals, making beans and rice for my own children, or soup from produce discarded at the end of Farmer’s Market — even in those times, even when I was embarrassed to ask for help — we lived a life of abundant love, with a home, with warm clothes and oil for our tank. Even when people didn’t know exactly *what* we needed, they gave. I even got a check from the Boston Babywearers, who took up a collection on my behalf.

I am so grateful to now be in a position where I can begin to give back; to pay forward the myriad blessings of those years of difficult choices.

Which is why this blog article: http://thebloggess.com/?p=9474 — touched me so deeply at my core. One particular comment inspired me to write this post — someone wrote about how grateful they were, and how their goal was to work at being able to pay it forward next year.

And I thought, “That. Yes, that.” The years of people believing in me, of loving me, of supporting our family financially and emotionally in every way they could think of — including perfect strangers — it gave me hope. It drove me to be successful. It allowed me to believe in myself, and in a future I could hardly imagine.

So take a moment to pass it forward. What gifts have you received in your life, and how can you pass it on this year? To a neighbor in need, to your child’s school, to a member of your church congregation, to a stranger in the street or on someone’s blog?

An important thing you may not realize is that infant slings and carriers are named as part of section 104 as “durable nursery products.” And, by end December 2010, the requirements for product registration cards goes into effect in our category.

Though the cards themselves will not be extremely costly, and the BCIA is working to reduce our costs by helping us implement portions of this requirement, this will certainly add to the cost of our carriers.

Aside from the cost of the registration cards themselves, there is the cost of marking each card. Each card must be marked individually with a product model number and manufacture date code. The CPSC does not believe that consumers can be trusted to transcribe this basic information from the product itself.

Additionally, the cards must be attached to our products in such a way as to required they be handled and removed prior to use — so, either pinned, tied on with ribbon, or attached via tagging gun.

The cards must have return postage paid, even though return rate on such cards is historically low, and manufacturers must also provide an online registration form.

I agree, in principle, with the idea of product registration cards. And if implementation involved including cards (that the consumer would fill out and add a stamp to) and an online registration system, it would not affect our costs much.

However, the many steps, requirements, and expenses involved in implementation and the additional recordkeeping is going to add significant expense.

At first, I had thought that perhaps I could offset the costs by an increased mailing list, which, in theory, would increase sales. You are probably familiar with the box on most registration cards, “Check here to sign up for our mailing list.” However, the final rule seems to explicitly prohibit this, so even that small ray of hope of not passing along these costs to you is not going to happen.

Additionally, the cost of cotton has just risen dramatically, and our costs have just gone up by 30%.

At Wrapsody, we continually strive for a balance between the cost of new regulations, our commitment to fair trade practices, and our commitment to keep our prices affordable. We will be making adjustments to help reduce the cost increase, but wanted to explain to our customers why these increases are necessary.