Born to Carry

Developing excellence in baby sling skills

Breastfeeding

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.