Babywearing for Dads | How Fathers Can Support Postpartum Recovery and Bond With Baby

Ceridwen

Hello and welcome back to the Postpartum Prep Podcast. My name is Ceridwen, I'm your podcast host and your guide to preparing for a smoother start to life with your new baby. If you're new here, here on the Postpartum Prep Podcast we talk about all things life after birth.

We talk about feeding your baby, we talk about navigating sleep with a newborn, and today we are going to be talking about babywearing, specifically babywearing for dads. We have Antonio from Wawa Lifter joining us. I'm super excited for this conversation because we actually haven't had a dad on the podcast before and Antonio just has such an important perspective when it comes to fatherhood and he believes strongly in the power of supporting postpartum and the mother's recovery and we talk a little bit about how babywearing for dads can be supportive of the whole family in that postpartum period.

I also really enjoyed at the end of this episode we talk a little bit about parenting in Peru which is where Antonio lives and is from and he gives us a little bit of insight into some of the cultural practices around parenting in Peru and we talk about the differences between parenting in Peru and parenting in countries like the U.S. so that was just a really interesting conversation and I think you would really benefit from that just to hear about how raising babies is in different parts of the world.

Let's get into it! Welcome Antonio to the Postpartum Prep Podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

Would you just tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into it?

Antonio

Sure, thank you for having me here. So I'm Antonio, I'm from Peru and I'm a babywearing educator who advocates strongly for dads babywearing and people wearing traditional caries.

Ceridwen

I know, I love, I follow you on Instagram and I love learning about all the different, we're going to get, we're going to talk about it a bit later, but all the different types of caries, the traditional caries, and you're also the first dad that we've had on the podcast so that's something that I'm really excited to have you here today and one of the things that we wanted to talk about was about how dads can be more involved with postpartum recovery, how they can support it and I was wondering what you can tell us about that.

Antonio

Yes, so postpartum recovery is for all the family from my perspective, the way I see it, we all need to recover from postpartum. Dad, baby, pets and mom especially. So if we get to work as a team we can get things faster and more efficient and I think dads could really have an important role in facilitating mom's recovery and taking care of that connection in between mom and baby because we should be the providers of such safety as well.

Ceridwen

I so, I agree with you so much and I think it's amazing that you're here today because we're going to talk about how dads can be involved. We're going to record a whole Q&A episode about how they can be involved with kind of the practicalities and logistics of postpartum life but in this episode we're going to be talking about how baby wearing can support dad's involvement in postpartum recovery and support in postpartum life. When it comes to baby wearing, could you tell us a little bit about how that can support the whole family and maybe how dads can be involved with baby wearing as well?

Antonio

Yeah, so at first during the first postpartum days you want to extend your baby's exposure to like artificial womb so baby wearing facilitates that so your baby can adapt more efficiently to life outside mom and while you do that mom can have time for herself because you know we all talk about recovery for knee surgery and recovery for shoulder surgery or for any type of surgery but moms have to endure a very very strong episode when they give birth and regardless of how they do it if it's a c-section they will need recovery if it's if they just give birth naturally they will also need time to recover so we can provide that space for both the mom and the baby but also for dads because you know when all those days all those postpartum days you're sleep deprived you cannot think that much and you're stressed out mom and dad you don't know what to do at home so baby wearing takes away one very important load out of it so by having your baby close during the first days you are actually able to do a lot more than you would by holding your baby on your arms or putting the baby down on a crib or on the floor

Ceridwen

i love that it's about the you know the practicality of you know having your baby holding them it means you can do more and it's also about that transition from i love what you mentioned the baby coming into the world from the womb and how baby wearing supports it you know it kind of gives them that feeling again of being in the womb and how it's not only moms that can give

Antonio

that feeling but also dads yeah and dads have a very important role because moms and babies are already their systems are already matching but what about dad we need to adapt and we like our hormones have not adapted yet moms and babies are aligned but dads are not the way that we can find that balance is when we take care of the babies because that way our oxytocin levels can actually balance and we have this idea that we are doing a great job and baby responds well then i'm happy because i'm doing a good job and i do a better job now my baby responds well and that creates a

Ceridwen

like a virtuous cycle it really builds that confidence i think is what i'm hearing in that yeah it's like a positive feedback loop and we can also be a safe space but we must be

Antonio

another safe space because there's not only mom but also dad we have an important role there yeah and not only are we taking care of the baby but also mom and if mom is okay then baby is going to be okay and as a consequence dad will be okay because you will have more time to be well rested so to work at home or to do some office job or whatever job you you are currently working out

Ceridwen

and i love how you mentioned this kind of it supports every member of the family and it's really about that working as a team so that mom and dad you know the more mom is well rested the more she can help dad be more well rested and vice versa and i also loved how you mentioned a little while ago about supporting bonding really for dad and the baby and this is one thing i'm a lactation counselor so i often get a lot of questions about dads who are asking about maybe can they give a baby bottles because they want to focus on bonding with the baby and there's lots of things i could say about that but one of the things that i like to say is bonding you know feeding the baby is not the only way to bond with a baby and i love you mentioned baby wearing can be so supportive and even you can do it skin to skin which and all of it like you said the oxytocin but and even like rewiring your brain as a dad it can help with that it's

Antonio

it's amazing yeah by baby wearing you get to know your baby and by knowing your baby i don't mean their interests or what they like but you know how they breathe you know how they move you get to know what their signs are their cues so it's a lot of information that both your baby receives from you but you also benefit a lot from your baby i think you bond but you also get to know your baby a lot better and your baby gets to know you a lot better because a newborn can tell how dad breathes and how mom breathes they can sense how dad smells and how mom smells so they know they are two people that are taking care of them so i mean they know there are two people because babies are not fully aware of the fact that individuality yet but they are building that capacity and through having another person who is participating actively and providing another safe space and your baby not only bonds with them i mean that is a is another care as another person who's taking care of the baby but also it could be your sister your mom or your brother your or any sibling or any other adult that's helping you

Ceridwen

taking care of the baby yeah baby wearing becomes a way for anyone to really become involved in helping to take care of the baby i actually i got goosebumps when you talked about how it helps dad to like learn about the baby because it made me think you know learning about the baby's breathing and it just made me think it's it's really like helping to switch on that father's intuition which i always talk about mother's intuition about how because you just have that then you just you just know exactly everything about your baby and then this is really helping to develop that father's intuition where you just know instinctively how they breathe and how their how they how their heart rate is and um i just love i love that you mentioned that so thank you for sharing that for anybody who is interested in getting started with baby wearing especially for dads would you give us some tips so maybe like when can they start baby wearing and how

Antonio

can they choose a carrier yeah i think it's a great idea to start learning how to baby wear before your baby is born because as i mentioned before you're sleep deprived sometimes you barely have time to shower you're not gonna have a lot of a brain availability to learn the skills you need to baby wear so you can actually start doing it before i like providing guidance through pregnancy then the first days where the baby's born and then a follow-up later for example a very close friends of us started taking baby wearing lessons with me while they were pregnant and now we recently saw them yesterday they were using a buckle carrier like perfectly and i didn't teach them about the buckle carrier i had taught them about all their carriers during our lessons but i knew everything they had to know to figure that out on their own and and they did it because they started earlier and of course they were very very involved with it so for dads wanting to baby wear so we need to accept that some things do not really come so naturally to fathers but we can learn for example our father's intuition it may not be as strong as a mom's but we can develop that by doing some work and the same way we can learn how to baby wear before we can learn maybe the theoretical part how it works why we want to do it and maybe you just learn to use one carrier one carry at a time and you're fine with it because you don't need to know a lot of carries a lot of carriers just the one that your baby wearing consultant would advise you to so during postpartum we can kind of predict how the baby the baby's weight and the baby's size when the baby do so you have a lot of information as to decide beforehand so that your baby's born you already have your carrier and you know how to use it and then that's where it starts for example we started baby wearing like as soon as the baby was born she left the hospital being carried by me on a stretchy wrap which was the one that we had at that time and and we haven't stopped ever since so i'm not only telling you because of my experience but of other people i've worked with

Ceridwen

as well oh i love that and i think i mean that's i obviously i'm very aligned with the idea of trying to learn about this before you give birth um that's exactly why we have you on the podcast here today um because i do think so much about these things it's like exactly like you said you think that you'll have time after you give birth but actually your baby's born as soon as you give birth like you need it as soon as you've given birth and learning about how to take care of your baby before you've given birth just sets you up right from the start so you're better off um are there any tips that you have about choosing a carrier for a newborn

Antonio

yeah the best advice that you give is to get a baby wearing consultant because people are always looking for the best carrier for a newborn or the the most affordable one or one that i can get the most popular but the thing is that it may not always work what worked for me may not work for you because first we need to consider our bodies our baby's size and developmental stage it's not the same wearing a 38 month uh a baby that was born at 38 weeks that would work almost similarly to baby that was born at 40 weeks but what about babies that are born earlier you cannot wear any type of carriers with them so you may need some specific strategies there are ways in which we can adapt our carriers to our babies and what's more um we have different learning styles and different learning curves so maybe you may not have the ideal carrier for a newborn but that's the one you can use best and as a consequence it's better if you use a carrier that you can somehow adapt to your baby and you use it well and safely than using a carrier that's ideal for newborns but you don't know how to so that's why i always i always recommend getting a baby wearing consultation especially for smaller kids not only because of that because also by watching youtube videos you can definitely learn but how much can you take in when you are so stressed and when you need to take care of a lot of things and you have little time to learn something online true i've had um this is a

Ceridwen

little bit of like a not exact metaphor but like a parallel is i've been working with a fitness coach recently and the um it's crazy when you're working with a coach who just really knows what they're talking about because your progress is so much faster and you learn things that you didn't even realize that you would need to know does that make sense and i think um i had you know jacqueline from your baby wearing bestie yeah yeah that's the same thing i tell her you're my baby wearing bestie um so she was on the podcast a few weeks ago i don't know if you saw yeah and yeah you did um and you know in the episode she talks about how how people will just really struggle through baby wearing and really all you need to do is just ask for help and i think once you do ask for help it becomes so much easier and do you see that real she also posted recently where it was talking about people being kind of like well a baby wearing consultant that sounds like a fake job and like did you see that real she posted i saw that and i've heard that a lot and it's it's just crazy to me because i just think of actually once you nail baby wearing your entire life with your baby can change i really believe that like um and it's it i love having you guys on the podcast because i want people to see like why getting support for baby wearing matters so much um i'm curious you said that you started baby wearing as soon as you kind of your baby was born leaving the hospital how kind of what got you started with baby wearing how did

Antonio

you learn about baby wearing well um in south american countries there's a very um wide tradition of baby wearing and but it's so natural to us that we don't even have a name for baby wear we just call it carrying your baby okay because it's understood that if you carry a baby you cannot do it with your bare hands because you need to do some some things so the only logical thing to do is to put your baby on your back and it doesn't mean that baby wearing is natural and intuitive you need to learn it but usually through oral tradition you learn from your mom from your grandma and other women around you um kids also learn to baby wear for a from a very young age both boys and girls but i i need to ask how but somehow at some specific point in traditional baby wearing it's not okay for men to baby wear you know we have this uh male chauvinistic thoughts that persist uh today uh but anyways boys have probably learned to baby wear their little siblings when they were younger and when they started doing manual labor they quit baby wearing so women could um take care of the baby and well men work outside so that that's somehow how traditional baby wearing works and we have a lot of traditional baby wearing here and i grew up seeing those women i didn't learn directly until my daughter was born how to traditional baby wear because we have a lot of detachment and disconnection from our roots baby wearing is a natural practice we find it all around the world uh but there's a generation gap of people who have not learned to baby wear in the capital i live in lima where we have people from all over peru living here and some of them brought their traditions but some of them left them behind so baby wearing is natural um i would say most people would actually recognize how peruvian or bolivian baby wearing works they have we have all seen women carrying childs on their backs but we don't know how to perform it but we know what it is we are very familiar with it it won't be a surprise for someone to see a baby on someone's back but that's traditional baby wearing regarding more uh ergonomic baby wearing with a more like modern perspective and we don't really know much about it here uh i heard about baby wearing when i was at physical therapy school it was only mentioned briefly during a class and that got me curious and that actually brought back an avalanche of ideas that i have seen when i was a kid and i said yeah i remember when i was a kid and i saw those women carrying their childs that's what i wanted to do um in the future with my baby so i started digging in i had some friends who had baby worn before me and the one that actually got me into baby wearing is a is a friend of mine who is from denmark and her husband is peruvian and he told me everything about baby wearing and her experience there and how it helped her be socially successful when she came to peru and i said okay yeah i really need to learn about this then my wife and i during pregnancy attended a antenatal course where they mentioned baby wearing i was already convinced i was going to baby wear i didn't know how yet because i had not much information it's not easy to get information about baby wearing here in peru at least it wasn't last year now more people are open to talk about it there are more platforms that are sharing baby wearing both traditionally and modern baby wearing so in that lesson they asked for a volunteer who is going to baby wear there were no volunteers with me like hey i mean i want to baby wear all right so the teacher said okay javier you're gonna use a stretcher wrap i learned how to use it with a demo doll which by the way was not a baby wearing demo doll that was a another type of doll for a physical therapy but it worked well enough and i learned i took notes and i said okay let's start with the stretcher wrap because it's something i've already done i will get a jitja later but i still need to figure out how to use it not because i don't know how to i may need to go outside to the streets and ask women who baby wear to teach me what was

Ceridwen

that you said a what kind of jitja i wouldn't even be able to say that but what is that is that

Antonio

the jitja is our one of our traditional uh carriers here okay it's also called manta and the word jitja is a Quechua word Quechua is a group of native languages in south america it's a Quechua word that stands for mantle or a blanket is this the one i've seen that

Ceridwen

where she's on your back and it's like a triangle shape once you've folded it is it that one

Antonio

yeah okay that's the one and i was wondering how to use it since a very young age because it looks as a triangle but it's actually a square not a perfect square but you fold it in half the inner layer is the one creating the seat for your baby and keeping it there but then there's the outer layer that looks like a flap so you get wondering how are babies floating on someone's back yeah if the fabric is not even uh tightened it's totally loose um and there was no one to learn from so i decided to enroll uh with my teacher and i started learning with her and then i said ah well i need to do a lot of things here because people don't know about baby wearing people are not aware that we have a carrier that we should be using uh so i need to do something about it and then i started studying to become a baby wearing consultant at that time wow what a

Ceridwen

journey and yeah not only are you the only um now you know you're sharing all your journey and all your info on instagram and um you're the only baby wearing dad account that i know of at the moment unless you have others but um are there others a few maybe yeah there are a few dads who baby

Antonio

were actively but they're not consultants okay but they're like terrific uh rappers some of them do things that are amazing and but not not all of them are baby wearing consultants they don't pursue a career there but they do baby wear a lot and so i grew on especially in tiktok where i drop a lot of content in spanish about the traditional carriers and the carriers that are available here in peru i got to know a lot of fathers who were wearing their kids using a jitja but because of those male chauvinistic ideas i mentioned before most of the comments i got is okay my husband wears my baby inside my home but he really doesn't feel secure enough to go outside carry the baby because we live in a place where that's kind of frowned upon and here is a very mean comment from family and family can be your your best allies but they can also be the your worst enemy sometimes um so i wanted to become because of what you mentioned there are no no many men baby wearing or showing that online i thought men needed someone to relate to you know how men always want to feel that we do things without much help or more help than necessary like yeah we did it by ourselves somehow like little kids but men also need to feel represented as well so i'm glad i i'm becoming that figure for some of them yeah that i oftentimes i received messages telling me hey thanks a lot for what you're teaching us and now you know they send me a couple of pictures telling me this is how i wore my baby today i'm so grateful thanks a lot i'm not afraid anymore of baby wearing because as soon as they tell me something i say hey you know this is a guy from peru and he's an educator and he baby wears traditionally so so i can do it as well and yeah if not many men are baby wearing if you compare them to how many women are yeah

Ceridwen

i think it's inspiring and i think sometimes you exactly like you said you need that someone that you can relate to someone i know you're also really into fitness which is just kind of things that guys are into and they can kind of see themselves in you and see oh yeah it's it's okay to um baby wear in public and it can be like a thing that men do um i wanted to ask one more thing before we wrapped up because one of the things that we had connected over in the dms is both of us were not from the u.s whereas most of the people that we um you know i think the majority people that have been on my podcast are from the u.s and the majority of the baby wearing consultants i'm pretty sure all the baby wearing consultants i know other than you are from the u.s um and it's really interesting because i think i got the impression from you that u.s culture can be quite different to peruvian culture when it comes to raising babies would you tell us a little bit about the differences that you've noticed

Antonio

yeah it's very different first starting with baby wearing uh so i've talked to a lot of consultants in the u.s and one of their recommendations is to have baby very high in your back so that you can uh know how they're doing you it's it's safer it's a very safe position to have baby high up on your back resting here because you can feel how they breathe you can look at your baby just you can just raise a phone or a small mirror and you can um turn around and see your baby but that's something we don't do here actually babies are totally covered you don't get to see their faces ever unless moms put the babies uh in front to breastfeed and then they put them back there because it's um we learn how to listen to our babies with our whole body okay and our senses not only visually but you if you practice that and that's something i worked with my clients i asked them hey we can relax a little bit you can breathe and you can start feeling your baby can you feel your baby yeah can you feel where your baby is facing uh what cheek is close to you is it the left one or the right one can you feel your baby's breathing yeah can you her uh hands moving? And yeah, you get to feel a lot of it. If you relax enough and you're calm and you open your senses, you can feel your baby's heartbeat. And you can even, oh I have, you can even feel their gut movement.

So you have a lot of information about babywearing. So that's about babywearing. We kind of trust our instincts a little bit more than regular babywearing recommendations because we don't get to see babies.

We guarantee safety through other means in ergonomic babywearing, that's tension. But the carriers we use here are usually not actually carriers. They are just pieces of fabric that we had adapted to babies.

So we compensate the lack of tension with volume. Babies are usually wrapped and straddled like little tacos and that prevents postural asphyxiation. And babies are safe like that.

But that's something you learn directly from your mom, your grandma, your father, or someone in your family or your community. Which leads me to the next one, is that we have a very participatory parenting from all the community. Not only mom and dad, but also families are very involved.

For example, for me, our parents, both my wife's and mine, and our families take care of us so that we can take care of the baby. They don't take care of the baby directly unless it's necessary because sometimes they do. But they take care of us.

They make sure we are okay. They make sure that we are doing well, that we have everything we need so that we can take care of our baby. And that's one thing that is very common here.

If we don't have such thing as babies need to be at daycare three months, you need to take them, you need to potty train your kid, you need to sleep train your kid. If you actually ask people in some communities, they laugh at that. Like, hey, what's the other option?

What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to put my baby on the floor? What are you talking about when you tell them about putting babies on the floor and playing independently?

So we have such things. We don't have those concepts. And somehow it's very helpful for us to think like that because babies get to spend more time with a relative or with someone close.

For example, if my friend needs to work and they don't have anyone to look after their baby, they are totally welcome to come here. And we as a family will take care of both the babies as if they were our own. And when I was a baby, my mom would breastfeed my cousin and me at the same time because my aunt was not able to breastfeed.

So that's very common as well. Even there's something that we call, the Spanish word is recetar, but in English that would be something like to re-lactate. Yes, re-lactate.

Mothers do that here or aunts do that here.

Ceridwen

Wow.

Antonio

In some communities that's a thing that happens. Not as the main source of feeding the baby, but because sometimes moms have to leave to work temporarily and babies can stay with grandma or with a cousin that has recently had a baby or maybe has a five-year-old kid, but they can re-lactate again. So we have that a lot.

So sometimes you see women breastfeeding babies, you say, but there's no way she's the mom. And they're actually grandmas that are breastfeeding and re-lactating. That's a very common thing.

And I didn't know there was a name for that because it was very common sight in some places here.

Ceridwen

And like you said, even with baby wearing, it's just so natural and normal that you don't have that same name for baby wearing. It's just carrying baby.

Antonio

It's just carrying the baby. There's no word for that.

Ceridwen

And I think one thing that really, right at the beginning, how you were kind of talking about, or sorry, at the beginning of this question, how you had been talking about developing that kind of intuitive sense for your baby, really being able to feel into your baby and what they're feeling, even if you can't see them. I mean, even going back that just, I think there's this foundation of intuition and just kind of tuning in to your baby that I think is really discouraged in other, you know, in kind of, you know, in like the US culture and kind of hearing things about, again, like about sleep training your baby and disconnecting from, you know, just what is more natural. And I think it creates like there's, it means that there's lots more ways that people can make money off of telling you how you should be with your baby and of the problems that can come about when we don't just kind of learn how to tune into our baby.

And it's just, it's fascinating to hear what a different perception people have when it comes to raising babies and the community around raising babies, which is not even just about the baby, but it's just the general sense of community. It sounds like, wow, thank you so much for sharing. Yeah.

Antonio

Yeah. Detachment is a very rich industry.

Ceridwen

And a great way to say it. Yeah.

Antonio

It hasn't reached like South American grounds, of course, in some upper class circles, people are very detached from their babies. And that's very common because somehow they don't want to do what people in the USA are doing, because we have this thought that we, it's something that some people desperately aspire to. Oh, if they're wearing this device, they're using this device, it's okay for me to use it.

But those are, I don't like calling them like that, but that's what they get at the end. I call them detachment devices, like things that will pat on your baby's back. Like even if you didn't have hands, you have feet, you can tap your baby's back with your foot.

And that will work because they are trying to replace contact. They are telling you that contact has to be perceived as lack of progress, as lack of sophistication. And there are a lot of concepts that are, I would say, toxic to our communities.

And they were sold the idea that breastfeeding was only for the poor people, because formula was better, and it was more nurturing for your baby, that babies need to try it out, because then they get used to depending on you. You want independent babies, so you let them try there. They can figure that out.

And those ideas kind of persist in some places in South America. However, they have this barrier for worldview, or worldview somehow prevents that from happening, because I have never met a single mom or a dad that is convinced that letting their baby cry was the best option. Even if they wanted to do it at first, they would be like, okay, let them try, because our pediatrician told us that they need to learn how to get to bed by themselves.

But then they start getting anxious, and they say, okay, you know, that's it. I'm going to grab the baby, the baby's going to come with me. I don't care what my pediatrician or my mom or my aunt says, I'm doing what feels best for me.

So we still trust our instincts, and people don't usually give in to social pressure in some contexts.

Ceridwen

Yeah, and it sounds like that really is that, again, kind of how you were talking about before, that really just trusting instinct and intuition as a parent is prioritized more.

Antonio

Yeah, it is, it is prioritized.

Ceridwen

Maybe not, maybe that's not even the right way to say it, but it's more like, I think in like US culture, it's like beaten out of you a little bit. Whereas it sounds like in Peru, it's more just something you naturally would just assume that you of course would trust your intuition. Is that?

Antonio

Yeah, there are some things I learned now on social media, and a lot of friends in the US tell me that they kind of struggle socially when they do things that should be perceived as natural. Like for example, no one would tell you anything here if you breastfeed like in your office. Yeah, your baby can be taken to you to your office, you can breastfeed, there are not even private places to do so, you do it publicly, and no one really cares about that.

They might say some comments like making jokes about that, but they don't really mean any harm. So no one would really care if someone is breastfeeding a baby. And if one person does, the other group, the rest of the group would say, hey, hold on, the baby needs to breastfeed, so calm down.

So there's someone putting boundaries and setting boundaries like that. And a lot of my friends in the US have told me that they struggled with those ideas. Like they felt the pressure to, hey, you know, my baby is already three months old, she should be socializing with other kids of other age.

And I said, you know, give it a thought, give it a thought, is a three month old we're talking about? And they say, no, but I've been advised that they should socialize with other kids about their age. And they repeat the same tantrum over and over again.

And then after one year, they said, you know, I don't know how I got to believe that idea. I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I stayed at home with my baby.

Because that was not necessary for me.

Ceridwen

Rather than maybe sending them to daycare, is that what you're saying?

Antonio

Yeah, exactly. Because that, as I told you before, that daycare concept is not a thing here. It exists.

But that's probably the last resource. If you are new in the city, you have no friends, no family, and no neighbor is willing to look after your baby, you would probably take your baby to a daycare facility. But that's very, very unusual.

Honestly, I've heard of people taking their babies to daycare, but I have never met a person doing so.

Ceridwen

Oh, wow. So it's very rare. I'm wondering, I know in the US, probably part of the reason why so many people have to go, it is so normal, is because people don't really get much maternity leave after birth.

Is there maternity leave in Peru?

Antonio

Or paternity? It's not enough, either way. But some people are more understanding of that.

I have friends who have had their maternity leave, and they've been told, you know, you don't need to come to the office, just stay at home. You may need to come once a week, or maybe twice a week for some hours, but then you do everything at home. Because people are very respectful of maternity.

And actually, places may have some infrastructural problems sometimes. But you are completely allowed to take your baby, or I mean, your baby is completely allowed to be taken to your office, stay there for some hours, like it's the toughest two hours a day. But most employers would say, okay, it's fine, just stay with your baby.

There's a special room for you to breastfeed. Go there, and you can take your baby as many times as you can. For example, that happened to me when I was a baby.

My mom went back to work, and so my grandma used to take me like three or four times a day during her working schedule. But she worked part time, I guess, at that time. And yeah, I could, I was able to continue breastfeeding until, well, then my mom quit.

She quit. And she went back to my grandparents' house. And they said, okay, don't worry, we're going to take care of you, and the baby don't worry, and stay with your baby.

So that's usually what happens. Most people would say just, okay, I'll quit the job. However, there's a lot of pressure because there's this idea that happiness and success can only be obtained through having a successful job and a successful career.

And somehow maternity and paternity are disregarded as not being successful sometimes. So people also struggle with that a lot.

Ceridwen

So there are some pressures to kind of stay in the workplace. But at the same time, some people would just choose to not continue with work and stay home with the kids. And it sounds like in general, there's, you know, from the employer to, you know, the grandparents involvement, and just being able to take the baby to work or being more flexible to be able to stay home with the baby if you need it sounds just, there's a just a awareness that it a bit more of awareness of what it takes for a family to be raising a baby and supporting them with that.

Antonio

Yeah, there's a lot of awareness about that. We are very respectful of babies and, and moms.

Ceridwen

That's amazing.

Antonio

And I can make things easier for them.

Ceridwen

Yeah. And I think that I don't know if it is your perspective, or your cultural perspective, or a combination of the two. But I really hear that in what you say about how you know, the role of dads and supporting moms and then and, and how baby wearing can be a part of that.

And I think we've had such a great conversation today. And I'm really, really grateful for you sharing with us, you know, your experience as a baby wearing educator and as a dad, and how baby wearing can support families. And also, thank you for just telling us a little bit more about what life is like in Peru, when it comes to raising babies, I think it's going to be really interesting, especially for the listeners who maybe do live in somewhere like the US or the UK, where it's quite different.

I think it's, it's nice to hear. And I think there's a lot that we can learn by sharing these stories. So thank you so much for sharing your experience with us.

Antonio

Thank you for having me here. That will also help my, my people in Peru, to have more awareness of how we behave, and how we parent in comparison to other cultures. Because sometimes we take some things for granted.

And we complain a lot, we complain a lot. And I've seen that here. But we're blessed, actually, that we are able to take care of our kids in a community.

Even if we say we don't have a community, like my wife and I, it's just the both of us taking care of the baby. My baby doesn't have like a huge amount of people surrounding her. But we do.

I have my whole family, and she's got her whole family taking care of us. And that's how community works. As I said before, not taking care of the baby directly, but taking care of mom and dad.

Ceridwen

Yeah, that is, I mean, I'm a postpartum doula. And like, that's always my role is to support the mom, because I know that if a mom is supported, her baby will thrive. And that's even what research shows us as well.

So yes, thank you so much. We're actually going to be recording. Actually, I have two more questions for you.

Before I ask you the last two questions, to everyone who's listening, we are going to be recording a Q&A episode about how to organize postpartum chores and cleaning for new dads. So stick around for that Q&A episode. The last two questions that I have for you today, Antonio, for this episode.

First of all, can you just tell us where, for all the listeners, where can they find you if they want to learn more about you and maybe book a babywearing consultation with you?

Antonio

Sure, you can contact me at Instagram at Wawa lifter. Wawa is spelled W-A-W-A, lifter, like weightlifter or powerlifter. That's mine.

Wawa lifter.

Ceridwen

And everything will be linked in the show notes and episode description as well.

Antonio

And if you speak Spanish and are willing to find some low resolution content, you can go to TikTok, which is where I post a lot of things related to traditional babywearing as well, but mostly in Spanish. So if you are a Spanish speaker or you are proficient in Spanish, you can check my TikTok because there are a lot of videos as well.

Ceridwen

Are you the same? Is it Wawa lifter on TikTok as well?

Antonio

Oh yeah, same. It's the same. Wawa lifter.

Ceridwen

Okay, great. Now, the very last question we have for this episode, I like to ask to everyone, usually I'm asking if, because I have never had a dad on before, so usually I'm asking the moms who would come on if they could think back to when they were pregnant with their first baby, what advice they would give to themselves back then. Obviously, you have not been pregnant with your first baby, but when your wife was pregnant with your first baby, what advice would you give to yourself back then?

Does this make sense what I'm asking?

Antonio

Yeah, to trust my instincts and don't let noise around me interfere with what I believe in.

Ceridwen

I love that.

Antonio

That's the best advice I could give people, but that will require for you to be informed and for you to have read and made your research before and having contacted professionals. That's when your informed decision is heavier than the noise outside. There were many things that I wish we...

I don't wish we had done them differently, but if I had a second baby, there are some things we may definitely do differently. For example, we sleep on the floor. Not on the floor, but we have a tatami mat for martial arts and we have futons there.

That's how we sleep, but my wife agreed on that many months after the baby was born because I was insisting on pregnancy because she said, oh no, I really like my bed. Can we just give it a try first? Let's try the bed and then if we change our minds, then we can go to the futons.

And she, in fact, changed her mind. So speaking for her, she has told me, you know, that's something I would have done differently. I would have done that the very first day because that's how you can get to sleep, by co-sleeping.

Co-sleeping in a safe place, it's the best thing we can do now.

Ceridwen

Is co-sleeping in Peru, is it common or is it uncommon? What is more normal?

Antonio

It's common and very beneficial, but most people are under the impression that we do it because we know it's beneficial, but that's not always true. We do it because of necessity and I'm glad it has a good outcome, but we do it because we have no space. There's no room for more beds in very small apartments.

We are a country where there's a lot of poverty, so if we are all sleeping under the same roof, I mean the same room, there's no way we are going to sleep on separate beds. We need to co-sleep. It's not because people want to, because they believe that's the best for the baby, but because they have no other options.

That's why most people co-sleep with their babies.

Ceridwen

Thank you for that very last question. All right, we're going to wrap up this episode now. Like I said, if you're listening to this one, you're definitely going to want to listen to our next one about organizing postpartum chores and cleaning for dads.

Thank you so much Antonio for recording this episode with you and I will see you in a sec for the Q&A. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening today.

If you're new here, please be sure to follow and subscribe. You can also leave a review, which is the best way to help me keep producing the podcast, because the more reviews we have, the more people can find the podcast and that helps the podcast to grow, which helps me to keep sharing this information and support completely for free for you guys. And that is my complete dream.

So if you want to support the podcast, leaving a review really is the best way to do that. You can also share this episode with someone, maybe share it with your husband, because that could be a really great way. If you are a husband, maybe share it with your wife and you guys can talk together about postpartum planning.

Be sure to also check out our Q&A episode because we talk in there a lot more about planning specifically for postpartum in terms of balancing responsibilities and cooking, cleaning, all the things like that. So be sure to check out the Q&A episode with Antonio next. I'll see you there.

Bye for now.