Finding the best baby sling.

I spent my ninth month of pregnancy consumed by anxiety, tormented by endless gloom-and-doom scenarios: What if my baby screams around the clock? And what about me—even if the child to-be is completely angelic, would I still have a life? Like even vaguely?

So, as my due date all too quickly approached, I did what all stress shoppers do: I started buying stuff on the Internet. Soon enough, amid all the bouncy seats and BPA-free bottles, one particular item commanded all my attention: the baby carrier. Wearing my baby 24-7 seemed the perfect means of reconciling the demands of parenthood with everyday life. With the right sling, I could attach my contented papoose to my midsection and be a modern frontier wife, whipping up hearty stews and scrubbing the kitchen floor and planting an herb garden out back (activities I seldom to never performed in my pre-partum existence, incidentally).

But before I could live out this fantasy, I first had to sort through the glut of options out there. Gone were the days when a mother could just wrap a bedsheet around her chest and resume tilling the fields. There now seem to be as many varieties of baby carriers as of actual babies. There are carriers you wear on your chest, hip, or back; carriers that tie, snap, or buckle; pouch carriers, backpack carriers, wraparound carriers, and on and on. Too much! Clearly, I had to try more than one. In the end I settled for five, which I’ve rated for you below on the basis of comfort (10 possible points), ease of use (10 possible points), and versatility (10 possible points).

Hotslings Baby Carrier, $43.66

Don’t be fooled by the dizzying array of colors and patterns it comes in: The Hotsling is minimalist in the extreme, the loincloth of the sling world. The Hotsling is worn over one shoulder, draped diagonally across the parent’s chest for maximum back pain. Unlike the other pouch-style sling I tried, the Hotsling requires some minor training to put on, has limited padding (at the baby’s legs), and isn’t adjustable. The slings are sized like pantyhose, so unless both parents are of similar heights and weights, buying two is probably unavoidable.

And despite manufacturers’ claims that the Hotsling accommodates babies up to 35 pounds, my baby—who weighed almost 10 pounds at birth—never seemed to fit securely inside it. Even all scrunched up, my little Leo was always straining against the edge of the fabric, threatening to slide out. Keeping one hand on him helped, but didn’t that also defeat half the purpose of the carrier? After using the Hotsling (by far the most portable sling in my arsenal, by the way—a big plus in a crowded diaper bag) on a few trips to the grocery store, I now stash it near the couch, for when I want a free arm but don’t plan to move around much.

Comfort: 3
Ease of Use: 7
Versatility: 6
Total: 16

Balboa Baby Adjustable Sling by Dr. Sears-Black Signature, $59

The Balboa Baby, endorsed by Dr. William Sears, the attachment-parenting guru who coined the term “baby wearing” in 1985, is an adjustable pouch-style sling that you wear diagonally, like a messenger bag or beauty pageant ribbon, across your chest. This roomy sling is my husband’s favorite, probably because it requires exactly zero expertise to put on. Sliding into the carrier and plopping in the baby takes about 30 seconds start to finish.

But like the Hotsling and other sling-style carriers, the Balboa Baby presents a symmetry problem. Though nicely padded along the shoulders, it does not permit an even distribution of the baby’s weight on both sides of the body: The baby must either be positioned on a diagonal, or upright on one hip. While the strong-backed might scoff at this criticism, I would never set out for a walk of any length in this sling.

Tags: baby slings, parenting, product testing

Laura Moser is the co-author of the Social Climber Young Adult trilogy.

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