Contortionist

Yesterday I was reminded of one of my mothering failures.
I saw a photo of a mom baby-wearing not just one of her children, but two. One in front, one in back. Holy cow! Talk about Supermom.
This amazingly beautiful photo took me way back to my early years of motherhood. A little more than 26 years ago, my second son was born.
He was a sturdy little guy, weighing 8 lbs.13 ounces at birth. He was in the 99th percentile for height and weight all through his infancy, quite a change from my firstborn who was always 99th percentile for height but barely made it to 50th percentile for weight.
I remember dressing my second-born in his brother's hand-me-downs and not being able to snap the top snaps!
So, as the mother of a toddler (2 years old) and an infant, I figured I'd give baby-wearing a try. I bought a sling, of sorts, but couldn't get the hang of it - and Zachary hated it!
We also had a backpack-type carrier my sister had given us, so one day I decided to try it out on our daily walk to the mailboxes.
We lived in graduate student housing in Lewes, Delaware, where my husband was working on a postdoctoral fellowship.
If you've never been to the Delaware coast, be forewarned; it's hot and humid as all get-out, there are slugs everywhere, and every outdoor adventure is accompanied by clouds of mosquitoes.
At least it was that way in 1990.
So, first of all, I had to figure out how to get my 4-month-old into the carrier. I'm really tall and nothing in the house was high enough to lay him on with enough support while I lifted the contraption onto my shoulders.
Somehow, the three of us ended up in the front yard. I had a blanket on the grass and decided to lay the baby in the backpack carrier down there and from a kneeling position hoist him onto my back.
Now, Zachary wasn't a tiny little guy, as mentioned above. By his two week checkup he weighed more than 10 lbs., and by 4 months he approached 20.
I am not a particularly strong person, and while I had a lot more stamina then than now, hefting my baby onto my back was almost more than I could manage. He also was only 4 months old at the time, and I couldn't really swing him around safely.
I also had problems with back pain, which coincidentally started when he was born.
Hmm.
I know now that my ehlers danlos factored heavily into my pain and weakness, but at the time I was unaware.
All I knew was that I had this 20-pound baby on my back and we had about a quarter mile walk to the housing complex mail boxes.
That doesn't seem very far, but I also had a 2-year-old. Walking to the mailbox was one of the highlights of his day and could take 30 minutes or more as we picked every dandelion, examined every crack in the sidewalk, and were generally amazed with everything in sight.
Don't get me wrong, I loved seeing the world through his eyes, but the weight of the baby pulled heavily on my back, I was sweating, and my patience was put to the test.
Somehow we made it there and began the trek back to our unit.
Slowly.
Carefully.
And with amazement at the world.
I grew sweatier by the minute.
As we got closer to that blanket on the lawn, all I could think of was getting the baby off my aching  back.
Finally as we neared home I realized I had no idea how to get the backpack contraption off while still protecting the baby's head. I didn't have the strength to kneel and swing it off one strap at a time. What was I going to do?
Thankfully, I was the only stay-at-home mom there and no one was around during typical work hours.
I managed to get down to my knees, then carefully onto my side, and roll onto my back without jostling or squishing the baby - in a somewhat modified back bend. I then wriggled one arm out of the strap, lowering the baby carefully to the blanket on the grass.
And that, my friends, was the end of my baby-wearing experience.
Instead I became adept at the centuries old baby-on-the-hip method.

Oh, and by-the-way, that baby is now 6 feet 7 inches tall.
And my back still hurts.