How to Use a Baby Bjorn Carrier

Baby wearing is very popular these days, and a great way to get things done while keeping baby close and calm. There are a lot of different options when it comes to baby carriers, from structured carriers to wraps. One of my favorites is the Baby Bjorn.

Transcript:

Hi I'm going to talk about how you can get your baby into the Baby Bjorn. This is a good way to carry your baby around. It's a good thing to have because it allows you to keep your arms free. Some people also have slings and those can be very wonderful, too. I've never used one.

Now to me the Bjorn was a little intimidating. I got this and I thought "Oh my God all these straps and pieces and buttons. How do I get this on myself? It's totally intimidating." And I thought it kind of looked like a straight jacket. But once you figure it out, it's really just a totally fabulous thing.

The best way to put this on if you're confused by it is just lay it down on your bed and really just look at it. And what you'll see is the majority of this piece really has to do with you and your arms and your back, which makes sense because you're bigger than your baby is.

And this tiny piece here is where the baby is going to reside. So these are the pieces that you're going to put it around your arms. And the first thing you do, before you even pick up your baby, is to put these around your arms, like this.

This is the back. And one thing that's great about these Bjorn's is that they're actually really supportive of your upper and your lower back. And you sort of fit it around yourself and you take this circular piece of plastic and you just pop right in there.

Okay, and you've got your arms straps on. And all of this stuff you can adjust this here to make it tighter around, you can adjust this here to make it tighter on you, and it's easy to adjust, you just pull on these straps.

So now I've got the bottom of the Bjorn on and what I'm going to do is I'm going to pick up my baby and I'm going to put one of her legs into this hole right here. When your baby is young you'll have her facing you, and as she gets older you'll have her facing out.

So I'm going to pick up my little girl, I'm going arms like this over my arms, I'm going to put her foot through this one side of the Bjorn -- just gently sort of lowering her in. I strap the Bjorn around and then I take this piece here, you see it's sort of a half circle, and I pop that down right there so she's basically in. And the final piece is this little plastic piece which you can open and close like this but which easily slides onto this plastic button right here.

So you can see now she's all in. And her arms can be in like this, you can sort of place her arms out, you can hold her like this, you can pat her bottom, she really likes it.

One thing to think about when you're using this in the city just be careful where you walk. Some people will race by you or run by you, they won't know that you have a baby. Just hold the hand railing and make sure you're walking safely because you do not want to fall down and have your baby in a Baby Bjorn—I do think about this sometimes. When you're walking on the subway downstairs, put your hand in a protective way on the baby's head just be careful with it.

But with that aside, it's an absolutely wonderful product - very supportive of your back and very popular, it's been on the market for years and it might be something you really want to try.