Baby Slings

Mama · 03-12-2010, 08:11 AM

There's a <a href=" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/fashion/11BABY.html?ref=style">great piece in the New York Times</a> today about the growing popularity of baby slings. Parents are reportedly ditching their strollers and taking to "wearing" their kids.

For me, the Baby Bjorn didn't work as the kids got heavier, and I could never quite figure the sling thing out. Even though a friend sent me a detailed letter and a photograph of herself wearing a sling, I just couldn't get it. I would have been lost without my stroller. Or strollers.

The sling thing, if I had been able to figure it out, would have been great. But there is a caveat to this. Just this week, the <a href=" http://www.cpsc.gov/pr/tenenbaum03092010.html">Consumer Product Safety Commission announced </a>that it is issuing a warning about certain types of slings. From the NYT:

But as carriers have grown more popular, their safety has been questioned, with particular alarm about bag-style slings, which have contributed to the suffocation deaths of several infants. On Tuesday, Inez M. Tenenbaum, the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, announced a forthcoming warning about slings, saying that “we know now the hazard scenarios for very small babies” carried in them. Many specialty stores, like Metro Minis, do not sell bag-style slings whose safety has been challenged, and instructs buyers to position babies in any sling upright and tight against the caregiver.

In 2007, the Infantino sling was recalled because the straps were breaking and babies were falling out of the slings. <a href=" http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml07/07137.html">Read this.</a>

Read More...