LKBaby.com

Submitted for your approval, several photos of my Onbuhimo made from table textiles:

The main panel, with a red silk pillow as the ‘baby.’

Padded head support folded down. Note the elastic triangle which allows for flexibility.

Side view. Note padding.

A look at the inner panel, aka the ’seat’. Padding, buckles, and a better look at the blue floral cloth.

Switched to a rolled up baby blanket as the body double. Carrier shown w/out adjustable shoulder pads. Not the chest strap for back carries. (It’s hard to model for oneself, so excuse the expression! ^_^)

Shown here are the removable pads for the shoulders and the chest strap.

TOO MANY BOX STITCHES!

This actually a pretty tall-bodied carrier. Even with the headrest rolled down, I can only see the crown of my baby’s head. He doesn’t like the enclosed feeling. The blanket doesn’t seem to mind.

Before.

After.

Comfy padding!

Everyone needs a matching belt pouch!  I call this the Slider Belt Pouch (cause you slide things in and out).

Belt pouch in action. Sorry for the blurry shot.

Different angles. With the versatile Mama Tie!

Me modeling the Mama Tie. (Scarf, belt, accessory, child restraint–just kidding!)

I hope you liked what you saw. This great buckle tai sold to a special great grandma as a present to her granddaughter and great-grandchild. $70.

As an expectant mother, I was excited to purchase the best things for my baby and the environment. I planned on using cloth diapers on my first and subsequent children, preventing more landfill waste and saving a lot of money. Then life intervened, and I had to reevaluate everything.

My son was born in distress. He had to be resuscitated, and we lived our first week in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The first time I got to hold him was on the third day of his life. I cradled his little body gently, trying not to tangle all the wires and sensors the hung from him.

Suddenly, my plans seemed empty. We left the hospital hooked on disposables. After being taught how to use throwaway diapers by the nurses, we trembled with the fear of new parents when faced with cloth. Even my mother advised me to use disposables to make it ‘easier’ on myself.

Time passed and I was laughingly recounting my month old son’s tendency to go pee or poop when we took the diaper off him, and instead of laughing, our midwife said that we should try ‘EC.’ My response to that was, “What’s ‘EC?’

EC stands for Elimination Communication, a system in which the parent learns how their infant communicates their need to pee or poop and helps them to go in an appropriate receptacle. The majority of the world utilizes this system of natural infant hygiene.

A parent learns the baby’s cues and responds by holding the baby over the sink, toilet, or potty. At the same time, the parent makes cuing noises e.g. the ‘s’ noise for pee and another sound for poo. The baby learns to respond to the cuing noises by eliminating if he or she needs to. With this method it is possible to use very few diapers or none at all!

Some parents I’ve spoken to dismiss this method as impossible. Some declare that it is “training the parent” instead of training the baby. Others denounce it as unhygienic, and claim that third-world countries do it because they cannot afford diapers.

Like many creatures, babies do not wish to soil themselves. Anyone who has ever cared for a new born should remember the early months when taking OFF the diaper was a dangerous prospect because of the resulting stream of pee or poop. From personal experience, helping an infant go to the toilet is definitely possible. Babies are aware of their elimination and are able to consciously release the sphincters in order to urinate and defecate.

Isn’t it best to feed your child immediately when he or she signals hunger (or even before then)? Elimination Communication is merely the other side of that coin. Instead of being ‘trained,’ you are meeting your child’s elimination needs.

ECing is very hygienic. My son’s diaper rash disappeared completely once we started ECing. We flush his waste down the toilet, never coming into contact with it. Perhaps we should consider that diaper free cultures might not be motivated by poverty, but might instead consider diapering a disgusting practice.

Helping your baby eliminate should be a gentle experience. There is no punishment or reward involved, and most EC’d babies will try to get to the potty themselves once they are mobile. A conventionally diapered infant tends to lose awareness of elimination at around six months. If you help your baby eliminate even once a week, they will maintain an awareness of elimination.

Helping our son eliminate has given our family such a strong bond even though we didn’t get to hold him until he was three days old. Give it a try; you might get hooked.

You know, peeing on a tiny test strip is actually pretty hard. Persons of the female persuasion usually don’t have practice aiming. The trick is, I suppose, to let loose and THEN place the target into the line of fire. I like doing things neatly, but God likes a good joke now and then . . . With that urinary challenge aside (and thoroughly scrubbed hands), I sat down to wait. It was probably 11 p.m., and Brad had already dropped into bed (and thereby was insensible to the world), but I had been feeling strange.

My breasts were tender, and I couldn’t bring myself to stay lying on my stomach for any amount of time. What did I need a pregnancy test for? I knew.

But I did have to KNOW (intellectually as opposed to viscerally), so there I sat in the bathroom, rereading the instructions and fine print. FYI: false negatives can occur, while false positives do not. So if it comes up as positive, you’re pregnant; Human growth hormone was found in your urine.

The inevitable result took about forever (a.k.a. a few minutes) to reveal itself in the tiny window.

Positive!

I was pregnant. It was shocking. Electrifying. It was mind-boggling and enormous. WITH CHILD! I’d been expecting it, lusting after it, and finally knowledge of conception triggered a rush of what the insanity of the biological clock steals from you: Fear.

Even though I had wanted this baby, I was sure that I had just ended my life. All my goals, my dreams were shattered by the ultimate sacrifice of my carefree youth. I was now about to be a mother.

I rushed out of the master bath and climbed into bed. Brad lay unmoving.

So I told him. “I’m pregnant.”

He replied, “Huh,” in a not very impressed manner, which elicited some hysterical response from my hormonal self (I can’t even remember what I said).

“What am I supposed to do?” he grumbled, and rolled over. So I started crying.

To be fair, I must note that some people tend to be rude and obnoxious when drunk, but Brad is rude and obnoxious when asleep . . . So don’t hold it against him. He wasn’t conscious to receive the news of impending fatherhood. (Or so he says.)

And that the the glorious start to the end and the beginning of my life as a mom. I must say I like it better now (7 months postpartum) than I did when the little peanut was inspiring daily, hourly trips to bend over the commode, but that’s another story.

How did this all end with me teaching babywearing, making baby carriers, and starting a webpage? Well, I didn’t plan on being an attached mom (referring to Attachment Parenting), but as a self motivated learner and a self-starter . . . pregnancy, motherhood, and everything to do with that subject were now my top research concerns.

So, I peed on a stick, surfed the net, read WAY too many books, hired a midwife, threw up a million-gazillion times, planned a water birth (which didn’t happen), and I became a mother.

What still surprises me is how happy I am to be blessed with my son Bailey, no matter what miseries I’ve suffered (or am suffering) as a result of parenthood.

Welcome to LKBaby.com where I, Leslie Kung, will share my experiences, my DIY how-to’s, my babywearing instruction, and my handcrafted baby carriers and more. This is my journey. These are my discoveries and my creations.

With Love and Respect,

Leslie Hing Hing Kung (Bailey’s Mom)

(Title edited because a lot of weirdos looking for urinary sexual deviations stumbled upon my blog and left disturbing comments and links.)