"We didn't need that when our children were babies"
The use of baby hammocks and why it might be a good solution for you.
Perhaps there are some of you who have heard statements such as, "So we didn't need that when our children were babies" or "it requires a lot of equipment to have children these days". Often said by the grandparent generation and certainly with the best intentions. There are also millions of healthy and happy children who have grown up and managed perfectly, without using a baby hammock. However, what can also be said with equal certainty is that all these children, both those who were born before there was anything called a sling cradle and those who have slept for many hours in the sling cradle with the engine at full speed, all have had a basic and innate need to be cradled, rocked and to be in motion, in order to find peace.
When I talk to new parents about the first time with the small child, I often guide them to think about what kind of "environment" the small child has just come from, i.e. life in the womb. Here it is dark, the sound is muffled, the child is tightly enclosed and the child has been moving almost all the time. It is these conditions that are the most familiar to the small child and perhaps what you can think about imitating a little in life outside the womb, so that the small child has the opportunity to land gently in the world. The infant does NOT need a lot of stimuli in the first weeks, it needs slow adaptation to everything new. Quite specifically, you can think about dimming the light and sound levels a little, you can swaddle your child and then you can think in motion. Back to the excerpts from the grandparents, can you try to ask them what they did when their children were small, when they had to help them fall asleep?….many of them will probably have forgotten it (repressed it) because this is how it is with much of what happens in the first time with small children, but others will probably be able to remember hour-long walks with the pram, the lift from the pram being swung and rocked in the arms or having sat in class and jumping on a yoga ball, (I personally sat there for many hours when my daughter, who is now 12, was a baby). Maybe someone will even think of plugging the lift into the Volvo and going for a ride (there was a time before car seats and seat belts were mandatory)
So what do I mean by that? That children are different, but also very similar and that children throughout all ages have needed movement in order to find peace. It is therefore largely about the means of this movement. One of the advantages of a sling cradle, which you don't get with many of the other alternatives, is the possibility of having both hands free, and this is exactly what I hear from many parents I talk to, the reason why they have chosen the baby hammock.
The most important advice for new parents will always be to practice gut feeling and find out what makes the most sense for you and your child. The older generation has certainly forgotten what it was like to be at home with a small child and then there is also something called development and good new inventions.
Eline Haugaard
Psychomotor therapist and baby therapist
Babybehandleren.dk @babybehandleren
