When pregnant with my son I never thought about carrying. My in-laws generously gave us money to buy a pram and after lots of research and shopping we got one that we thought would work for us. This was brilliant until my son was born and refused to be separated from human contact for a second! My friend recommended a cheap stretchy wrap and at around 6 months I started carrying him and fell down the babywearing rabbit hole. When my daughter was born she was an attached baby as well, so refused the pram and it got relegated to the attic to live until we decided what to do with it.

Cue our summer trip to Legoland Windsor.

As you all know it’s been ridiculously hot and my husband and I are far too Scottish for hot temperatures. We’ve mostly been hiding in the colder rooms of the house with a fan for the past couple of weeks. So planning for hot weather down south, we grabbed the new Kahubaby Sunshine carrier from the library and dug out the pram from the attic. My reasoning was carrying can be a sweaty business in the heat and it would be a good idea to have a back up plan in case we were too hot.

So out we went with the wee one in the pram, the 5 year old running about looking at things, and the carrier in the bottom of the pram. As

 the day wore on my son got more and more tired and started complaining about his legs hurting, so we put the wee one into the carrier and him in the pram and continued adventuring around the park. This gave us the best of both worlds, as my son was able to get a rest (he walked for miles. I’m not surprised he was tired!) and my daughter got to see the park from another angle and interact with us in a way she can’t do in the pram.

Using the pram was also helpful for me as a parent with joint pain. As I noted above I don’t usually use a pram, but with the heat my joints have become much more painful lately and walking for hours caused me to be really quite sore. Using the pram meant I didn’t have the extra 20lbs of baby on my back making me just that wee bit heavier and giving my joints more to support.

Often people think carrying consultants are anti pram – but this is simply not true! There are huge benefits to babywearing and we champion those at every turn, but a carrier is a tool just like a pram. For me this week, it’s been an exceptionally useful tool to support my family while having a great time exploring Legoland in hot weather. The Kahubaby sunshine carrier was also brilliant, as it’s a lightweight, breathable, fast drying, UPF 50 carrier that allowed us to carry our daughter when we needed to.

So if you ever worry about heading to your local sling library thinking you’ll get a row for using a pram, know that we all use them too, we just tend to carry more! Our job is to help you find the perfect carrier for your needs, and if that’s just a week away at a theme park or if you want to carry 100% of the time we can help you meet that goal. We can also highly recommend The Pram Project as a group to reach out to for support with your pram needs.