There are a lot of ways to haul a baby around, many of them are perfectly safe for the child, although I do not recommend a leash and collar for an infant under 20 lbs. If you are among the two to three dozen people that my research indicates can not afford a full time flying nanny who communicates largely in song, then chances are you’ll have to perform this task yourself.
Fortunately for you, there are approximately six consumer products available for every safe infant carrying method. Many of these products are comfortable, safe, and will not burst in to flame when exposed to sunlight, moonlight, water, or nitrogen in greater concentrations than 100 parts per million. I would not recommend those products that do. In a later installment I will give precise and easy to understand instruction on how to identify these dangerous products that could maim you and your baby.
For now though, I’m simply going to tell you about the Baby K’Tan. I’ll start of by saying that we received the Baby K’Tan three days ago, have used it a few times, and not once has it burst into flame. It has not even smoldered or emitted smoke. This is a good sign.
The Baby K’Tan is an all cotton contraption in the shape of a figure 8. It drapes around the shoulders and crosses the chest in front. The straps are really wide soft strips of cotton that can be folded and twisted to form deep pockets. While you could use these deep soft pockets to store melons, or protect your hoard of walnuts from scavengers through the winter, it works best as an easy way to tote your baby around. Once safely injected into the wrap (instructions are included) your arms are then free to wash dishes, write blog updates or fight off marauding crows looking to steal your walnuts.
The Baby K’Tan is similar to a few other popular products that do virtually the same thing, truss up infants, but features a unique set of something or other that has allowed the manufacturer to apply for patent protection. This is likely not surprising to a patent lawyer, but would probably come as a surprise to the millions of mothers who have used nearly identical baby wraps for thousands of years. I’m not saying the Baby K’Tan has ripped off other designs, I’m just saying that there’s a lot of prior art, some of it established by the Mycenaeans.
Which isn’t to say that the Baby K’Tan doesn’t work, because it does what it claims to do rather brilliantly and easily. Toss it around your shoulders, pop in the baby, and off they tend to go to la la land, happily gurgling and snoring away. The Baby K’Tan is easy to don, easy to maintain, and vitally, wraps over both shoulders with wide straps providing even load and relieving back strain considerably. Field reports in the Hawkins family have been positive from both mother and son. I won’t be using it, so I can’t speak empirically. I have no aversion to it, It’s simply too small. The Baby K’Tan comes in 5 sizes. My wife is dainty. This thing would fit on my like a balaclava. For me we have something different, but similar, of which I will speak later.
