The Babywearing Community, Friendships and Wrap Testers

Babywearing has been such a huge part of my life the for the last two years.  Zoey just turned 2 and I am starting to feel really sad because I fear our wrapping days are about over.  She has recently been more interested in night time snuggles, but going uppy in stores is now a thing of the past.  She wants to be down to run around, but will settle for riding in the shopping cart.  I miss my shopping trips with my little snuggle buddy on my back.  Maybe she will go through a phase where she likes it again!  I haven't completely given up on it, but I am starting to try to destash down to just my favorite wraps and trying not to buy anymore.  Although I did order the The Pavo Society exclusive Penumbra Veronica.  Pavos Penumbras are still probably my all time favorite wraps and Veronica is one of my favorite colors.  It is a gorgeous shade of blue.  See pictures below.  After ordering Veronica Penumbra, I decided I could finally part with my Veronica Etini.  I loved it, but it was a size 7, which was just too much wrap for me with a toddler.  I am not sure if I would ever really love a 7 regardless of baby size.

I have mentioned The Pavo Society before, but I just can't talk about the babywearing community without mentioning how much I love The Pavo Society.  It is the fan page for Pavo textiles.  The owner's of Pavo were kind enough to let their fans vote on which wrap they would like to see made as an exclusive pre-order (i.e. NO stalking required!!)  It's not really exclusive in the sense that you must be a member of The Pavo Society to order.  It was up on their main webpage to pre-order for a about a week.  But really, why wouldn't you want to be a member of The Pavo Society??  It's a great place to share all those babywearing selfies, meet other moms who understand why you really want 5 wraps that each cost $300 and won't judge you for buying them.

I met three local ladies through our local babywearing meet up group that have become great friends over the past year.  I am so glad babywearing brought them into my life.  Our friendship started through our common interest in wraps and Tulas, but it has grown into so much more!

The babywearing community also includes lots of handwoven wrap weavers, who are occasionally looking for testers.  Don't be that person begging every weaver to let you be a tester.  I think that hurts your chances rather than helping them.  I think the best way to be selected as a tester is to find a few weavers that you love (it will probably be easier if they are newer, less established weavers).  Join their fan groups.  If you own one of their wraps, post lots of great photos of you and your little one in different carries.  Write reviews and post in the fan group and in some of the other handwoven chatter groups.  Weavers pay attention to this type of behavior.  They want their testers to be experienced and be qualified to write accurate, detailed reviews.  The more wraps you have tried, the better!

I had the honor of being a tester for the awesome Jessica from WA baby wraps.  I was a tester for one of her first hemp wraps.  It was a size 3, which is not one of my go to sizes, but Zoey and I still found some carries we loved and gave that wrap a good work out in the week or so we had it.  The colors were gorgeous.  It needed some more breaking in, which is normal as most hemp requires a good bit of breaking in, but is well worth it!  We were early in the testing group, but you could already tell that it was going to break in nicely.  It was amazingly supportive and still cushy on my shoulders.  It had good grip to keep passes in place, but was also moldable enough that doing a Poppins Hip carry wasn't a nightmare!  (Which for me Poppins can be with certain wraps.)   Zoey and I had fun doing a quick photo shoot to share spam with the WA baby wraps' fan page.