Carrying when your baby came into the world via cesarean section.... is it actually possible? And what should you keep in mind? We asked Dimitry van Toorn and his wife. Their son Joep was born by Caesarean section.
"We were planning to carry well before our son was born. My wife is from China and we lived in Hong Kong for a long time. There you see a lot more baby carriers, because it is not convenient to go everywhere there with a stroller. You see a lot more baby carriers on the streets there than in the Netherlands. So we definitely wanted to use a carrier, for when we travel or for walking the dog. It just seemed very practical.
We started looking around and came across the ByKay carriers in a large baby gear store. We didn't know this brand (yet), but it looked good and we were actually excited. We chose the stretchy wrap which we bought along with the other baby items.
Before Joep was born, we practiced with the carrier system: using ByKay's online instructional videos, we put the carrier on several times to get some dexterity with it. It seems much harder than it really is and the videos helped us a lot to get the baby carrier on properly.
Joep was born by cesarean section. This was not planned and did take us by surprise for a while. When he was three weeks old, my wife carried our Joep for the first time in the stretchy wrap. She put an extra wrap around her waist to take the pressure off the cut. That went fine! It felt really good to carry him so close.
It makes you feel very safe and secure and you have direct contact. Carrying definitely contributed to a closer bond with Joep. We liked the direct connection and think this is better than just using a stroller. Our Joep felt at ease, was quiet and always fell asleep almost immediately.
In addition, as we expected, it turns out to be very convenient in practice: you can move around easily and it is very practical to go somewhere quickly. We are on the road a lot and use the carrier when we go into town or a bit further by car. It also comes in handy during air travel. It hardly takes up any space so you never have a lot of 'extra' luggage. I would recommend it to everyone because it really is a godsend."
