Best baby carrying method for wheelchair user?

[beep]

I am expecting my first this winter, and am a manual wheelchair user with limited use of one arm and full use of the other. My plan is to use some sort of sling and/or wrap for carrying the baby in the house and on outside excursions. Does anyone have advice on which one(s) or style(s) might be best? Some considerations are:

- baby's weight needs to be pretty evenly distributed across my two sides
- some of baby's weight can be in my lap (in fact this is preferable)
- my arms need to be free with a good range of motion
- knots, extensive padding, hard buckles, etc. on my back won't work well
- it needs to be pretty easy to wrap the device and insert the baby with one strong and one weak arm

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

[midnightwriter]

I was in a wheelchair for 3 months when DS was 0-3 m. I used a moby wrap (or any soft jersy wrap would be great). I mostly had him either in the cradle position, half sitting, facing sideways, or sitting crosslegged, leaning his back on my tummy, facing outwards.

Though facing outwards is generally not recommended, and I wore DD1 and DD2 facing inwards almost always, when in the wheelchair, I found the outward facing was the safest and most comfortable for me and DS.

I had to be careful to have the upper edge of the sling to be tight enough so that he wouldn't flip out.

I was mostly wheeled, so I didn't have to use my upper body as much, but if you do, you will need to have the upper edge very secure.

I think ideally what would work best and be the safest is a custom made "vest" with a pouch made in, something like the Inuit wear. with a zipper at the front. Not the amauti, but the one where you can have your baby at the front. Check out this site, Susie is super helpful! :
http://www.amautibaby.com

Good luck!

[pixiepunk]

i think a chunei might work for you. some are made with an infant insert so baby would be nice and secure in it, and you could put baby in first. after slipping it over your arms sort of like a vest, it would connect in back via overlaping velcro pieces. there is a waist belt, and it would normally click together behind you if you were wearing the baby on the front, but it is free-moving and threaded through belt loops, so i don't see why you couldn't slide it to one side instead so it doesn't push into your back. it is considered a torso carrier, which means that even though there are shoulder straps, they don't bear any weight - so they shouldn't interfere with your arm mobility at all.

i think if you had someone who could assist you in putting a carrier on in the morning that you'd wear all day, a stretchy wrap would work very nicely with a newborn/small infant because you could keep it on all day and just pop the baby in and out. you can tie the knot anywhere, so it wouldn't need to be anywhere near your back, and the fabric is spread out across the back nicely. you'd probably need to bunch or fold the fabric at the shoulders, though, since otherwise it would likely restricty our arm movement.

i think a ring sling with a teeny baby would be really good too, i would think you'd want to put it on the weaker arm's shoulder so that your totally free arm would be your stronger arm. super easy to pop baby in and out, really easy to breastfeed in too.

i think a mei tai or typical buckle carrier probably wouldn't work for you because of the knots/buckles and a woven wrap that you'd need to redo each time would be too fiddly and too much work to handle alone.

[beep]

Thanks so much--these ideas are very helpful.

[beep]

Does anyone with experience with the Belle carrier think these might work for me? They look relatively easy to load baby into, and smooth on the back.

[thtr4me]

I think the issue you might run in to with the Belle carrier, is that the baby's legs tend to dangle straight down, so might get in your way. Something that creates a seat for the baby the way a mei tai does would be better. I will post something on your thread on the other site that might get some ideas rolling!

[HarperCait]

How about a Blue Celery or Baby Buddha? Or maybe a k-tan. Does what a moby does but with much simpler on & off method, that seems compatible with your level of mobility in the arms/back. Check em out:

www.bluecelery.com

www.babybuddha.ca

www.babyktan.com