Babywearing with Morrie

This article was first published in the Natural Parent Magazine, Issue 57, 2025. This beautiful artwork of a babywearing dad is by Stu McLellan - and here with permission.

Trigger warning: This article contains reference to infertility, terminal illness, death and dying.

Forgive me for this indulgent piece. Perhaps someone going through a similar journey may find this useful, perhaps someone may appreciate a perspective on a different journey. Perhaps it challenges someone or affirms someone. Perhaps sharing my story serves merely as a personal release and reassurance that we’re doing okay. I am grateful to you for allowing me this and for reading my story.

I appreciate this opportunity for open reflection. In the hustle, bustle, and busyness of parenting, many of us lack the chance to reflect upon our early parenting journey and how things went. We only get one crack at it and possibly the reflection may be painful, if we have made decisions that are not in alignment with our ideal or values. Maybe this is what grandparents do when their grandbabies arrive? They get a chance to do things differently, with the freedom granted by the generational moniker allowing them to do all the things they wished they’d done with their own children? Chocolate for breakfast anyone?!

The most important thing

I always imagined I’d birth two babies. A pigeon pair. After several years of fertility challenges, I was blessed by the arrival of my precious son. The second baby in my heart never came. During further fertility treatment, my husband received a diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease (MND). This came as a complete shock for us. He is descended from long-lived people, grandparents who lived well into their nineties and parents approaching eighty. He was otherwise fit, well, and healthy; we had no reason to suspect he might not make fifty.

MND is a degenerative neuromuscular condition, where motor nerves are damaged and die, causing muscle weakness and wastage. The cause of MND is unknown, there is no cure, and it is life-shortening. The symptoms experienced, speed at which the condition progresses, and survival times vary for each person (2).

In a cruel twist of irony, our son is named after the protagonist from the book ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ (1), about a man who dies from MND. I always admired the character Morrie’s approach to living, and named my son after him, in the hopes of gifting him with the wise man’s philosophy to a fulfilling life. I guess our boy is now completing on-the-job training in applying that philosophy to real life.

According to Morrie, “the most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in" (1, p. 52). For me, babywearing offers us a way to manifest that love in all directions, in a way with little inconvenience and that enhances family life.

Closeness to last a lifetime

Babywearing has been part of my life for nearly seven years, since my beautiful bouncing boy was born. It has been some years since he last came up in a carrier and yet the closeness we enjoy today I believe has been in some part strengthened by those days where I held him close.

We live in a world full of distractions, which makes it hard to stay present, connected, and conscious within our families. Everywhere we look there are things that seem to want to separate us from our children - work, chores, devices, stuff, cots, feeders, prams, bottom patters, technology, social media, mainstream advice advocating self-settling….. The list is endless. Could babywearing be an antidote to this outside interference, bringing us back to what is most important?

As he approaches death, Morrie’s reflection on the impact of parents is stark: “The truth is, when our mothers held us, rocked us, stroked our heads – none of us ever got enough of that. We all yearn in some way to return to those days when we were completely taken care of – unconditional love, unconditional attention. Most of us didn’t get enough” (1, p. 116). If this is the case, then babywearing is surely a tool to help address that need for our children and attempt to fill them up with enough closeness to last a lifetime.

Our kids need us, turns out we need them too

We are blessed with a blended family and our older children may attest to a very different parenting style. I have such gratitude for our son, whose arrival taught us all how we could approach parenthood differently. I am a better person for having him in my life. He has been raised in what I suppose is a conscious parenting style. For us, this means being aware of each other’s needs and informing ourselves on how best to meet these needs.

To live a fulfilling life, Morrie advises us to “invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you” (1, p.156). We consider ourselves to be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams, surrounded by our family and community who show up for us in ways we never thought possible. Gratitude is inadequate to describe what we feel.

As our family watches our husband, father, friend and companion slowly die before us, we are forced to remember our shared past and embrace what little is left. Morrie posits that “death ends a life, not a relationship” (1, p. 174).  As we navigate the unthinkable, we are smugly satisfied that we made the most of the opportunities we had to be together and make an indelible imprint on our family as life goes on. The relationships we have with each other live out beyond the ripples of our influence.  

We are so pleased that we chose to keep our child close, especially now my husband’s time to do so is limited. Babywearing and bed-sharing, our life-changing parenting tools, now become the mainstay of our day-to-day, holding us together. We snuggle on the couch, hug frequently, hold hands often, we all sleep together in a companion bed – one side hospital bed, one side regular bed. Each night, the three of us sigh contentedly and smile, falling asleep knowing we are all together and we are safe. Our dreams are filled with the sounds of our breathing and the comfort of our presence beside each other. Our kids need us, turns out we need them too.

Memories for life

Our son is six and knows his dad is dying. We have access to a wonderful resource for kids about MND, called Luki and the Lights (3). He’s probably ready to watch it, although I’m not sure I am ready to watch it with him, so emotional was I when I first viewed the film. He also knows that his dad did everything he could to hold him close as a baby and now a child. He has photos of being in a carrier on his dad’s chest and of being held on his dad’s shoulders. He sleeps each night between us, with a hand on each of his parents. He feels connected and secure, returning to us as his safe space, topping up his tank overnight and enabling him to face the next day with courage and humour (4).

We have welcomed a lot of new equipment into our home, to make life easier as MND takes hold of my husband’s body. Chairs, recliners, beds, commodes, hoists, slings. We’ve bid farewell to all the baby stuff that we held onto awaiting the second baby in my heart. What we have kept includes a rainbow patterned woven ring sling – my son shrieking in alarm at the thought of it being discarded, claiming ownership over a scrap of fabric, and all that it represents. Connection, safety, togetherness, belonging.

Hold each other close

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are traumatic things that happen in childhood. Family connection, where relationships are safe, stable, and nurturing, is a known protective factor against ACEs (5). I hold my child close in the hope it may in some small way ease the impact of his dad’s illness on his health and wellbeing.

Life can be so unfair. Even in the darkest times, we have each other. When we look back, at the end what matters most is our family and the memories we made. Hold each other close.

And if reading this has raised flags for you about how you are living and changes you might like to make, reach out to someone who can help you manage that. As Morrie says, “there is no such thing as ‘too late’ in life” (1, p 190), so take the action now. Create the magic while you can and live on in your children.

Kato x

References

1.       Albom, M 1997, Tuesdays with Morrie, Hachette Australia, Sydney.

2.       Motor Neurone Disease Association of Western Australia 2024, https://www.mndawa.asn.au/

3.       Global Neuro Ycare 2024, Luki and the Lights, https://globalneuroycare.org/luki-the-lights/

4.       Circle of Security International 2022, https://www.circleofsecurityinternational.com/circle-of-security-model/what-is-the-circle-of-security/

5.       Adverse Childhood Experiences, National Centre for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Violence Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/index.html