Thanks to the Baby Bjorn Carrier, You Can Have Children and a Life Too!
Written: Feb 06 '08 (Updated Apr 02 '08)
Product Rating:
Durability:
Ease of Use:
Pros: Fit and finish, Ergonomics, Comfort, Weight Distribution, Flexibility of Uses, Infants Love It
Cons: Difficult to use at extremes of infancy, provides no protection from weather elements, expensive.
The Bottom Line: Babybjorn's Carrier is a useful tool to help increase your options for mobility with infants. Despite its limitations, it may be one of the best "baby purchases" around.
bettega's Full Review: Babybjörn Original Baby Carrier
How would you like to raise a mess o' babies while still remaining as active as possible? For those without kids, the paramount lesson I have to teach you is that parenthood will provide a huge change unlike any other. For the first time in your life, the most important entity should unconditionally be someone not yourself. This means that even if you have to relieve yourself on any number of bodily functions ranging from disposing of liquid and or solid wastes to slaking your own needs for further self sustainment, these aforementioned needs of your infant will now have to come before yours no questions asked!!!
Because the task of supervising a small child can be all consuming and requires both hands, the Babybjorn Carrier offers the ability for comfortable and convenient transport of a little one while still affording its parental units use of their arms.
What is the Babybjorn Carrier
The Babybjorn Carrier is a device meant to transport hands free the most precious residents of your household if you so find yourself as being a parent. Baby Bjorn's Carrier is a clever design that allows a child to be strapped to your frontside allowing you to remain in foot transit while carrying the Little One. Being a strap-on design, you will find yourself unencumbered by the grope-crazed screechy creature allowing free use of your hands and with adjustable special pulleys that allow for proper weight distribution remain more comfortable in transit than if you were to merely hold the beastlet. Imagine the possibilities! Instead of having to entertain that little sultan of farts n' burps directly, you now can sort of hop up and down to keep the crying at a minumum while you prepare both its formula and that herbal tea for yourself simultaneously. You can go for prolonged walks around the nieghborhood, losing that materinity or paternity fat (both sexes will gain when one partner becomes gravid) or even take the occasional foray to the shopping mall to show off the most precious jewel of your life.
Why Is the Babybjorn Carrier Useful?
For those who have not had the opportunity to have your home ever blessed with future progeny, you must realize that having a small child is not only a full time job, but requires total concentration every single second you are involved in supervising their soujourn in your abode. Even brief lapses in your attention towards the little ones can cause catastrophic events such as deafening tantrums, permanent stains on expensive linens, breakage of valuable items and worst of all a life threatening event for the supervisee to the tune of electrocution, trauma or poisoning. Yes, those little buggers are smart and after about eight or so weeks after being born they start to see things and when some kind of coordination gets into ther extremities, grab them. The alternatives are few: those L.O. (Little One) units must be kept within arms reach and sight, preferrably closer to you than anything they can break or with which they can hurt themselves. The situation becomes more dire as they get slightly older and may have stranger anxiety or enough awareness to become restless, thereby complicating any trips in public with very restrictive consequences to the most active of parents. The Babybjorn Carrier provides an ingenious though imperfect stopgap to this.
Our Experience with the Babybjorn Carrier
No review of the babybjorn carrier would be complete without all the sights, smells and projectiles that become a part of a new parent's life. I must insist that most pepole's results will vary, as evidenced by other reviews here that are either quite glowing, or decidedly mediocre. Know that our son is quite curious, active and playful. He does not like to sit still, he loves boisterous play and his thirst for formula and breast milk is only exceeded by his thirst to sample and interact with the world around him.
We have found the Babybjorn most useful for a variety of uses:
1. Soothing: Sometimes infants screech more than the tires on an all wheel drive rally car taking a pendulum turn around a hairpin. One of the easiest ways to soothe them after feeding, a pursuit that is limited by stomach space, is to take them around and rock them while you walk to and fro. While they may be only a few weeks old and in their bantamweight stages, carrying them like a teddy bear is not hard because they weight little more than one. After they start weighing into the teens of pounds however, this can become quite tiring. The Babybjorn carrier was very useful to both of us to plop our son into for soothing purposes.
2. Transport: Sometimes you just have to go somewhere and you have no choice but to bring your gift from God or monster with you. Given that there is no way to predict how your little angel will react, the Babybjorn carrier provides a much more convenient way than lugging around a heavy child safety seat. Since to my knowledge even the most angelic of small children lack the wings so as to be self propelled, the babybjorn carrier succeeds admirably in helping new parents enjoy certain transits, journeys or walks that require the family to remain not only as a unit, but also sane.
3. Work Enhancing Aide: If you have something very mentally demanding to do such as writing Most Helpful reviews or rating newbie's writings on Epinions to keep your hats, there is nothing that can assist you if your offspring would rather you look at them and not the epinions dolls on the monitor. However, there are certain physical tasks such as vacuming, setting the table, cleaning certain spaces or moving items of low to moderate weight which you can do effortlessly with the low encumberance afforded you by the hands free experience that the babybjorn provides by combining transportation with direct supervision.
How It Works: Ergonomics, Comfort and Adjustability
The Babybjorn Carrier straps on with ties over your shoulders, around your core and the waist. It is designed to evenly distribute the weight of the infant, though care must be taken to properly adjust it before going on an outing as an imbalance can keep too much weight over your shoulders which is very taxing on your back. This can be done with varying degrees of easy by pulling on the respective straps though some practice is necessary before you get good at it.
Most infants will really like this carrier because it wraps them around securely. Interestingly, you can either put the little one facing you to minimize what he sees of the outside world and keep stimulation low, thereby helping mix the foot transit with naptime, such as a 1 hour neighborhood power walk. Alternatively, the top of the outside brace is flexible and you can tuck it downwards if the infant is old enough to support their own neck so that they have an unobstructed view of the outside world if you so desire your child to soak up the sights of the ride. There is even a special strap on the bottom holding junior's crotch area that you can pull depending on the infant's size and weight. The manufacturers were very thoughtful and included tick marks in measuring tape style over the flap to help you maintain its appropriate length as the little creature gets older, larger and heavier.
I would say the ergonomics of the device are quite good because once properly adjusted you will be able to more easily carry your child for a longer distance than any other way appropriate to that age, such as with a stroller, slung in a heavy car seat, or with your hands. However, the device has limitations.
The Catch: Potential Limitations and Recommendations
Though the Babybjorn Carrier is a pretty good device, several caveats come to mind. First off, it is inappropriate for newborns and lends itself most easily to being used once the infant is about 10 pounds or ~1-2 months, preferrably 3 of age. This is because at that age, newborns and young infants tend to be very rigid. This device will indeed securely wrap around the little one in question, but it is made of essentially soft materials and works best on a subject that can extend its extremities maximally while remaining flaccid inside. Furthermore, it is simply too large for any specimen under ~10 pounds and this is significant because the little creature will have its face potentially scrunched against the side. Remember that under about three to six months of age infants have poor drive to breathe and they can suffocate when their tiny little noses or mouths are pressed against soft textile surfaces such as this carrier. Once they get big enough for their breathing orifices to clear the top of the material, they will most likely be OK.
Another consideration is that this carrier offers very little protection from the elements, including but not limited to heat, cold and direct sunlight. Special precautions must be taken to shield your baby from these conditions lest they wreak havoc on their sensitive skin and extremities, which introduces a problem. Sunscreen and hats are easy to come by in moderate seasons, but for summer use your little one will be next to you and tend to get hot from your body heat. You want to expose them to cool off, but not too much. In the winter conversely they might get very chilly and so you must bundle them with care, particularly their extremities lest they suffer frostbite. However, as they grow larger, bundling them up can make them feel very, very tight as there is no adjustment for diameter in the device.
This leads into this ingenious invention's most notable limitation: it cannot be used in babies weighing more than 25 pounds. Because you cannot set the diameter, it will prove very restrictive once your precious cargo approaches that size and past that point he or she will be very unhappy at any kind of stay inside your Babybjorn Carrier. Fear not, as though the cost which approaches three figures is rather steep, this contraption is virtually indestructible and can last you through significant numbers of subsequent progeny.
Conclusions
The Babybjorn Carrier is a good thing indeed for active parents that would like to excercise, have use of their arms and preserve at least some of their lifestyle. It is not a perfect solution, may not fit certain body types perfectly and if not configured properly could get uncomfortable, but it is a high quality stopgap. It's not a total revelation of course, so I will rate it only four stars given its potential limitations, but once you work around them you will find it to be one of your top five baby products not counting the extreme essentials such as formula, diapers, a crib or
bottom butter. If you don't have any kids yourself, I should let you know that you might find a use in it as a baby shower gift because it's guaranteed to be one of the most useful presents you can possibly give an expectant couple. On that note, I would ask those members reading this who have children to think about all those baby shower gifts and what a small percentage thereof they ended up actually using; this will be one of them! For most parents, I would highly recommend it without reservation and encourage just about anyone with very little ones to at least try it.
Disclaimer
Though I am a physician, I am not a pediatrician nor am I competent, trained or board certified to care for children. The fact that I say anything positive about the product could be misconstrued. Therefore, I strongly encourage you to speak with either your personal physician or your child's pediatrician should you have any desire to use this product. However rare they may be, bad things can happen to just about anyone and by telling you I don't know poo from puke when it comes to the science of children, you buy this product at your own child's risk. Don't take my word for it and always consult with your doctor before doing anything or using new products.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 90
Age Range of Child: 0 to 12 Months
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