Acorn Treasures

Acorn Treasures provides babywearing consults to expectant parents, new parents, and caregivers. Babywearing Consultant Sarah Bailey teaches people to use baby carriers, ring slings, or baby wraps through in person private one on one consultations and small group classes in the Huntsville, Alabama area and beyond.

One on one consultations take place in the families’ home. This tends to work really well for newborns, babies, and toddlers because they are in a familiar environment. Schedules and routines experience less of a disruption for children and parents with a visit in the home versus an appointment in a community setting. The consultant travels up to 30 minutes from downtown Huntsville.

For those who live elsewhere, we offer one on one consultations and classes via zoom. Video based classes started in response to the pandemic, and we’ve found these to be very successful for families whose location, schedule, health, or preference prohibits them from finding in person assistance.

One on one consults usually last 90-120 minutes. Parents can expect to answer lots of questions about needs, the baby, preferences, and any previous carrying experiences. Generally, there is time to show you how to wear 2 different types of babywearing items, depending on the demands of your baby’s care needs during a consultation.

Group classes offered include an Introduction to Babywearing, How to Use a Buckle Baby Carrier, How to Use a Ring Sling, How to Wrap your Newborn, How to Wrap using a Woven, and Back Wearing Toddlers in Baby Carriers. If you would like to host a class for your clients, patients, or yourself and a group of friends, please send an email with your needs for information on pricing.

Often tiimes, learning to use carriers, wraps and slings during the transition into parenthood or when adding siblings to family can be a challenge. Being unfamiliar with babywearing and uncertain about how to use an item optimally can be discouraging, causing you to miss out on the benefits of using babywearing as a tool in your daily life. This is when a parent needs a consultation! Working with someone who is familiar with a vast variety of babywearing items, who has training, and who has years of experience working with families can teach you how to use the items proficiently much faster than the trial and error method.

In person teaching begins with a tool of the trade – babywearing demonstration dolls. Although it may seem a little odd at first, practicing using babywearng demonstration dolls decreases learning time for caregivers and babies. Once the carrier is on and fit to your body, adding a baby is a bit easier.

Caregivers can offer babies the advantages babywearing provides from birth through age 4 and beyond. Many standard carriers on the market today work for babies up to 45 pounds and toddler carriers often have a weight limit up to 60 pounds. Should you need help deciding what type of babywearing items would be most ideal for your babywearing journey, our teaching collection of carriers, wraps and slings can provide an opportunity to see and feel a wide variety of options.

Babywearing items should be a priority on a baby registry. There are few other baby accessories that provide the benefits a baby carrier, wrap, or sling can. These benefits include recreates a womb like environment, regulation of temperature, heart rate, and breathing, reduced crying, increase in the production of the hormone oxytocin (and a decrease in cortisol), supported feeding positions, decrease in reflux, freeing up hands to take care of daily tasks, supports babies meeting milestones in language, social, fine motor skills, and gross motor skills, and promotes healthy bonding between children and caregivers.

Sarah Bailey has been helping caregivers use baby carriers, wraps, and slings for over a decade. She ran a babywearing retail storefront for 8 years, from 2014 until 2022. She initially trained with the Center for Babywearing Studies in 2016. Working through dozens of interview questions during each one on one consult, she listens to needs and preferences shared by parents, and tries to help find workable, accessible solutions. As a previous special education teacher with a Master’s degree in early childhood special education, she has a special interest and keen sense for babywearing children with special needs.

To schedule an appointment, sign up for a class, or give a gift certificate for babywearing services, please visit acorntreasures.com.