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Save the 8s

nooscorner
Jan 31, 2017
2 min read

Recently I have noticed more and more brands releasing size 8 and 9 woven wraps, Moondani and Ankalia are two well known Australian brands doing this, allowing babywearing using a woven wrap to become accessible to many more care givers. Ankalia are now stocking size 9s as a part of their budget range, with a size 9 plus postage coming in at around $120. Many other international brands also now come with the options to buy up to a size 9 and they are affordable and in stock , such as little frog wraps at Frangipani baby.

But does this mean that babywearing really is accessible to all caregivers? Worryingly, no. There is an increasing trend for people to buy up the larger sizes in limited wraps to convert or chop and sell to make a profit, so whilst there are more larger wraps being put into circulation there are few staying in circulation. A recent discussion in a large forum started 'wow *brand* are releasing a size 9, can you imagine how much you could make from that?!' Thankfully most comments were either supportive of plus size babywearers needing these longer wraps to stay in circulation or were open to education. There were a few that stuck out to me 'just buy it first' and 'oh well vote with your money and tell brands to make longer wraps'. These two things are incredibly difficult; firstly many brands stock wraps on a draw to purchase system so there is no 'getting in there first' it's a random chance. Secondly, producing that amount of material continuously without any flaws that may make it unsafe for wearing is a pretty difficult feat, which is why so few go into circulation in the first place.

What does this mean for new wearers? Plus sized wearers may feel isolated that there are very few options for them readily available, they may decide that they do not want to wrap and instead choose a Soft Structured Carrier(SSC). There are difficulties of course with SSCs but I will touch on that at another time. A plus sized wearer joining the community and seeing a thread such as the one described may feel incredibly excluded; who wouldn't, reading that they should just suck it up and deal with it and wait till they get lucky? It may turn them off of wearing completely and

in turn a sweet babe and their care giver are going to miss out on all the awesomeness babywearing brings.

So, what can we the consumer do? We can try to only buy the sizes we need, as opposed to buying longer and chopping. If we do get a size longer than required during a draw purchase trades for a shorter size are nearly always possible. There are dedicated selling and trading groups to save the long wraps