Cartas de Lejos: Baby bearing

This is a hanging baby. I "borrowed" this picture from one of the OG volunteer's Fbook album. Thanks, Laura!

Ever since I traveled to Morocco back when I was living abroad in Spain, I've been intrigued by the baby-carrying habits of other cultures. Particularly in developing countries, where it often still falls solely on the mother to raise the children while the men work, mothers carry their babies everywhere they go and during everything they do. There's got to be something said for that constant physical attachment between mother and baby. Baby-bearing doesn't just mean the nine months. Guatemalan women seem to bear their babies for months after they're actually born. There are no strollers, no baby bouncy chairs, oftentimes not even a crib (babies will sleep with the mother in her bed). I don't know what it is, but this type of baby-carrying has some mystical charm and beauty that just captivates me. And here, what gets me more than anything else, is the Hanging Baby method.

This is the name I have dubbed to the baby-carrying method unique to the more remote villages surrounding Campur. Women make a rustic baby hammock/sling out of an imported baby blanket which they wear suspended from a second cloth tie they anchor around their foreheads. When the women aren't in transit, and it's baby break-time, they simply remove the hanging baby-hammock from their heads and hang them up on a spare hook, roof beam--whatever is available. Thus in my women's group meetings there are usually around half a dozen babies hanging on the walls, sound asleep. I absolutely love this. It never ceases to make me smile. I don't know what it is about it exactly--how inventive it is, how no American mother would dream of doing it, how content and cozy the babies look, how it involves hanging up babies like you would a coat, or a hat...I don't know. But for whatever reason, this is my top favorite Guatemala-ism.