Kent

Hannah Morris

Hannah grew up in Belgium and met her husband who is British in France. She has a background in pedagogics and working with children and adults with disabilities. After a few years of living in Belgium together and having her first daughter there they moved to the UK in 2010.

When her eldest daughter was born, she dipped her toes into babywearing, but didn’t really get on with it. Babywearing support was almost non-existent in Belgium.
When she was pregnant with her second baby, she wanted to give it another go, and bought a baby carrier at a baby show. Sadly her second daughter died during pregnancy.

Losing her daughter also had a profound impact on her subsequent pregnancy and the need to keep her third daughter close after she was born, made carrying her almost a necessity. It was the only way to do the school run and babywearing became a way of life. Hannah also started volunteering at sling meets in Cambridge.

Just before having her fourth daughter, she trained as a babywearing peer supporter with Born to Carry.

In 2016 Hannah completed her Slingababy consultancy course and started Hold Me Close Consultancy, so she could support parents and carers to use slings and carriers as an excellent parenting tool.

In the summer of 2017 Hannah joined the team at East Kent Slings, helping out and running sling meets and workshops in the Ashford area.

In December 2017 her fifth daughter gave her the chance of practising all her consultancy skills with a newborn all over again and 2 and half years later they are still enjoying the wonderful world of carrying.

Hannah is also a director at the Association of Carrying Educators and Sling Libraries CIC and is hoping this new organisation to be a great benefit to the whole carrying industry to improve safety standards and increasing public confidence in safe carrying.

Karen McCully

Karen has a background in Human Nutrition and Public Health and became an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant in 2015. Karen works closely with local health professionals and Children’s Centres and runs Kent Sling Library as a Community Interest Company under the umbrella of PSBreastfeeding CIC.

Having trained breastfeeding peer supporters since 2015, it seemed the perfect opportunity for Karen to become a babywearing peer supporter trainer herself in 2020.

Karen lives in West Kent but her babywearing journey began in the US in 2007 with a baby shower gift from a work colleague, friend and Lactation Consultant (Flossie) who gave her a Maya Ring Sling. When Karen’s son was a few weeks old and couldn’t be put down, Flossie showed her how to use that Ring Sling and it transformed her ability to meet his needs. Karen’s journey continued with the birth of her daughter in the UK and she had the chance to use that same Ring Sling again from day 1. Babywearing enabled Karen to stay close, keep her daughter calm, exclusively breastfeed on demand, start a business and also volunteer as a breastfeeding peer supporter. In 2015 as the volunteer coordinator for the breastfeeding support programme in Kent, Karen received grant funding in Sevenoaks to have 12 breastfeeding peer supporters trained as babywearing peer supporters and started Kent Sling Library in September 2016. A year later (2017) Karen received more funding in Dartford and more peer supporters were trained. In the same year Karen also trained with the School of Babywearing as a babywearing consultant. In 2018, Karen then completed a 5 day course with Je Porte Mon Bebe becoming a l’ecole a porter trained consultant.

Lysanne Skinner

Lysanne is mother of two children and has carried both of them exclusively, often at the same time! She runs the successful MotherRucker Carrying Consultancy in Worthing, West Sussex, UK and has done since November 2016.

Prior to having children and becoming a Carrying Consultant and Sling Library, Lysanne was a secondary school Drama Teacher teaching ages 11-18, and was a visiting GCSE Drama examiner for AQA. She made the decision that she wouldn’t return to the profession after 8 years, following the birth of our eldest as she had a new passion, babywearing.

When the previous owner, of what was then Worthing Babywearers, announced she was selling, she knew instinctively it was the right business for her. She had fallen out of love with teaching and wanted to help other parents to carry their children safely and comfortably. Having gone through antenatal and postnatal depression and anxiety twice, Lysanne is in a unique position to be able to empathise and support those for whom this also applies. She is also an advocate for responsive, gentle parenting and believes carrying underpins it all.

Lysanne completed her Slingababy Consultancy Course in February 2017 and has also taken the Slingababy Feeding in Slings course. She has attended numerous CPD events to further her knowledge and she has led a tandem carrying workshop at The Wrap Show 2019.

Lizzie Start

Lizzie is an experienced educator and mother of two living in Essex. She has a passion for supporting and empowering parents, and is an advocate for responsive parenting. Her ultimate aim is to change the way people view parenting, to improve outcomes for babies and children.

Lizzie was born in England but grew up in Belgium, Austria and Saudi Arabia, before returning to the U.K. for university. She trained as a primary school teacher with a specialism in early years, and also gained a qualification in adult learning. After settling for a few years in London and Essex, she moved to Norway when her first baby was four months old, and along with a friend, founded Oslo Sling Library in early 2015. She returned to the U.K. in September 2016 and gave birth to her second son, before establishing her own sling library and consultancy in Southend-on-Sea. She is a qualified infant feeding peer supporter, and alongside her sling library work she runs a weekly parenting support group at Do It Like A Mother HQ, where she also manages the venue.

Lizzie has trained with several babywearing schools and has been teaching peer support courses since 2017. She joined the Born to Carry team in 2018 and has trained almost 100 peer supporters to date. She enjoys attending parenting and babywearing events, and has been invited to run workshops at large-scale events in London and Norway. Most recently she organised the education programme at The Wrap Show (June 2019) and spoke to a gathering of international babywearing consultants at the Norwegian national babywearing conference, Nasjonalt Baeretreff (September 2019).

Lizzie loves to travel and is thrilled to be able to offer peer support training across Europe as required, as well as around the UK. She also hosts regular courses at Do It Like A Mother HQ. She is able to offer bespoke training to childcare and education settings, as well as to babywearing dance teachers upon request.