Nurturing Benefits of a Baby Carrier

The Okkatots front baby carrier system carries your baby upright against your chest. When a mother holds her young baby, she naturally brings him up against her chest and holds him close. Many babies prefer to be held chest to chest, heart to heart. There are many documented benefits for young babies held this way including:

• calming for baby
• builds their core body strength and balance
• easier for baby to release swallowed air and keep milk down.
• enhanced visual and auditory alertness
• develops sense of self worth
• extends the womb experience
• enhanced learning through involvement in parents’ world
• helps infant's developing brain
• learns ability to listen
• stimulates growth
• pressure taken off back of baby's head

The Okkatots front baby carrier system is designed to carry your baby high enough in a natural position, fully supported against your body with your baby able to rest his head against your chest.

Extends Womb Experience

Touch and closeness are extremely important for babies and are calming. By extending the womb experience, the babywearing mother (and father) provides an external regulating system that balances the irregular and disorganized tendencies of the baby. Picture how these regulating systems work. Mother's rhythmic walk, for example, (which baby has been feeling for nine months) reminds baby of the womb experience. This familiar rhythm, imprinted on baby's mind in the womb, now reappears in the "outside womb" and calms baby. As baby places her ear against her mother's chest, mother's heartbeat, beautifully regular and familiar, reminds baby of the sounds of the womb. As another biological regulator, baby senses mother's rhythmic breathing while worn tummy- to-tummy, chest-to-chest. Simply stated, regular parental rhythms have a balancing effect on the infant's irregular rhythms. Babywearing "reminds" the baby of and continues the motion and balance he enjoyed in the womb.

Enhanced Learning through Involvement in Parents’ World

Babies get "humanized" earlier. Another reason that babywearing enhances learning is that baby is intimately involved in the caregiver's world. Baby sees what mother or father sees, hears what they hear, and in some ways feels what they feel. Carried babies become more aware of their parents' faces, walking rhythms, and scents. Baby becomes aware of, and learns from, all the subtle facial expressions, body language, voice inflections and tones, breathing patterns, and emotions of the caregiver. A parent will relate to the baby a lot more often, because baby is sitting right under her nose. Proximity increases interaction, and baby can constantly be learning how to be human. Carried babies are intimately involved in their parents' world because they participate in what mother and father are doing. He is more exposed to and involved in what is going on around him. Baby learns much in the arms of a busy person.

Helps Infant's Developing Brain

Environmental experiences stimulate nerves to branch out and connect with other nerves, which helps the brain grow and develop. Babywearing helps the infant's developing brain make the right connections. Because baby is intimately involved in the mother and father's world, she is exposed to, and participates in, the environmental stimuli that mother selects and is protected from those stimuli that bombard or overload her developing nervous system. When baby intimately participates in what her parent is doing, her developing brain stores a myriad of experiences, called patterns of behavior. These experiences can be thought of as thousands of tiny short-run movies that are filed in the infant's neurological library to be rerun when baby is exposed to a similar situation that reminds her of the making of the original "movie."

Develops Sense of Self Worth

Along with touch and closeness to your body, eye contact with you is critical for your baby's developing sense of self worth. Self worth is critical to a baby's capacity to develop to her full potential. The Okkatots front baby carrier Extend-to-Tend feature lets you chat with your baby and make eye contact if he or she gets restless. By extending these straps, you can also increase air flow around your baby when needed.

Learns Ability to Listen

Because baby is up at voice and eye level, he is more involved in conversations. He learns a valuable speech lesson - the ability to listen. Normal ambient sounds, such as the noises of daily activities, may either have learning value for the infant or disturb him. If baby is alone, sounds may frighten him. If baby is worn, these sounds have learning value. The mother filters out what she perceives as unsuitable for the baby and gives the infant an "It's okay" feeling when he is exposed to unfamiliar sounds and experiences.

Stimulates Growth

How does babywearing help babies thrive? Motion does good things for growing babies. It has a calming effect on infants. They cry less and therefore divert the energy they would have wasted on crying into growing. Also, proximity increases feeding frequency, another reason that babywearing stimulates growth.
The baby's overall biological system seems to work better when she is worn.

Pressure Taken Off Back of Baby’s Head

Babies spend much of their time lying on their backs in cribs, car seats and strollers which can cause the back of baby's head to become flat. By carrying your baby pressure is taken off the back of baby's head.