DO: In-Depth Babywearing Tutorial of Free-to-Grow by Tula

Review of Tula Free to Grow Babywearing

[TRANSCRIPT OF ANSWER]

“Hi Britt Beason here today with Birthpedia. We are doing a full review and tutorial of the tool of free to grow for you today, but Tula free to grow is a soft structured carrier, a full buckle carrier, which means it’s one of those backpack style carriers and it falls into the category of easy carriers. For a lot of people, 

The big selling feature for the Tula free to grow is that it is the carrier that will carry your baby from seven pounds to 45 pounds. It’s a huge question in the consumer world, what can I buy that will allow me to carry my baby from the beginning of carrying them until I’m done carrying them and until recently there’s not a lot of products that do that. Tula has absolutely hit the mark with this product. We’re very impressed by what they’ve brought us.

Detachable Hood

Let’s check it out. So the first thing we notice about this carrier out of the package is that it does include a hood and it does come off. And for the purposes of the tutorial, I’m just going to very quickly get rid of this hood because it just kinda makes things a little messy when I’m trying to show you all the other cool stuff that the carrier has to offer. So goodbye hood. 

First of all, Tula straps do not come disconnected, but they have a lot of webbing and all their straps now are coming with a really wonderful handy-dandy elastic. So when you roll it up, you can store it and keep it smaller. There are snaps on the webbing on the straps for your hood to snap onto. So if you’re wearing a carrier, you can snap the hood up very easily. 

The thing that makes this a Tula free to grow versus a standard Tula is right here.

The Narrowest Setting for the NewBorn 

This is the money shot, guys. So the standard seat is an all the way out tool. I needed a way to make the seats smaller so that it could accommodate smaller babies. They took a piece of webbing and so did that right across the inside of the waistband and inside of there are three little cam snaps. Right now the carrier comes pulled all the way out to standard width, which is far too wide for a newborn baby to be sitting in. So they have developed this little system with cam snaps on the inside and in order to adjust it, we’re just going to unsnap it from the wide setting. 

We’re going to move it past the middle setting and we’re going to bring it all the way in here to the smallest or the narrowest setting. And we’re going to do that on both sides.

We just snap that in so it is on the narrowest setting so you can immediately see how that’s going to be much more newborn friendly, seven to 14 pounds, no infant insert required. Everything you need is right here in my hands. 

Adjust The Carrier Height

All right, so the other feature that makes this carrier work for smaller babies up to bigger babies, they have what is called the perfect fit adjuster here at the top of the strap. It’s a good idea to adjust this before you go to put your baby in it. Once the weight of the baby is inside the carrier, this is a harder adjustment to make. On this side, you can see that I’ve got this strap all the way out and the carrier is all the way tall. On this side, You can see that I actually have this adjusted all the way tight and it’s folded over the height of the carrier.

To prepare the carrier for a newborn baby, we would tighten these down, making the body panel of the carrier shorter. So this would accommodate a much shorter baby and then this side would accommodate a taller baby or an older baby. Again up to 45 pounds. We love that about this carrier.

Adjust the Carrier Before You Get Your Baby in It

So let’s get started. Let’s put it on. I mentioned before we’re going to be using a newborn with our carrier demo today. We are using a doll, but it is a newborn weighted doll. So our baby is about six pounds and about 18 inches long. So I’m going to tighten this up. I love that. That was a little difficult for me to show you. This is a new carrier and when your carrier is new, this webbing is firm. I like that because it makes me feel safe. Give yourself an extra minute to adjust your carrier before you’re standing in the parking lot, trying to get your baby in it and figure it out. You’ll thank me later for that. 

Adjust the Waistband and Elasticity of Straps

So to put the carrier on, we’re going to put the waistband against her body. I’m actually gonna do this so you can see what I’m doing. I’m gonna undo this elastic. I’ve got the full amount of webbing there. Tula has a wonderful feature built-in. It is a safety elastic. We highly recommend that you use them. Should this buckle get broken or become compromised, the elastic will hold the strap together and hold your baby. So now we know that’s safe. 

I’m in a position, the carrier where I would like it to be. I know that my newborn baby is going to sit with the bottom right about here. So that’s exactly where I’m going to put the top of this waistband on the carrier and give that a nice little snug. So we want the carrier to be tight.

Protect Your Back and Give Support to Baby

It is a little higher than feels natural for a lot of people. If you wear the carrier too low, the baby’s weight will be lower on your center of gravity. Their head may not be close enough for you to kiss and it will pull your body down. So we recommend that you keep the baby up with your center of gravity so that you can protect your own back and spine while you’re wearing your baby. 

Now we have our carrier, I’ve made the adjustments and it is snapped in. I have made both of these adjustments here. So the carrier is as short as it can possibly be. The carrier is now set up for a newborn baby approximately seven pounds. Okay, so now you can pick up your baby. We’re going to bring baby right into the middle and very easily and simply set them exactly where we want them to be.

So if you just support the baby on the bottom and you make sure that you have one leg safely on one side of the carrier, and one leg safely over here and that no feet were trapped or twisted while picking the baby up. And of course, make sure that you have their head close enough to kiss right where they’re supposed to be.

Adjust the Straps and Join the Clips

So once we’re ready, we can hold the baby with one hand and the other hand goes along the front of the carrier so that we can just smooth this straight up. And now the baby’s weight shifts into this hand so that I can put my strap on with that hand, shift the baby’s weight again and put the other strap on. While I have this hand, I’m going to grab a hold of this clip and hold it up, which means I can support this strap and I’m now going to basically keep my, hold the baby by tracing my hand back here to grab this other clip and I can click them together.

Tighten The Straps

So once that’s clipped, the baby is secure. I can let that go. And then I’m just going to grab these straps. You can see even here that they’re new and it is a little challenging when they’re brand new to pull them. The more you use them, that will soften up and be a little bit easier. When you tighten a soft structured carrier, you want to lift up on the baby just a little bit while you tighten and then you want to check both sides and it’s a little bit of each side at a time. All right, and we’re going to go up here. I really want to check on baby’s airway, make sure that I can see baby’s airway and make sure that she is still kissable before I get it all the way finished. I want to reach right in here. 

Protect Baby’s Airway, Adjust Hips

Roll the baby’s hips under, push up on the calves so we make sure that we’ve got a really nice angle from the knee to the hip joint, so those knees are actually gonna come up right underneath my breast, tucking under and it makes the baby’s hips fold under. It pops the curvature of the spine and it puts them in that wonderful curved fetal position that we love so much.

Final Adjustments

And then I’m also going to finally check and make sure my doll’s hands are a little bit stiffer than a baby, but baby’s hands need to be beside their face. This helps them start balancing, and most babies really prefer to have their hands where they can chew on them anyway, so it generally is the best place to put them. All right, So now we have a wonderful happy wrapped baby. 

Did you like it?

So this is the free to grow by baby Tula. Awesome carrier for newborn, seven to 45 pounds. It really goes all the way. We here at Birthpedia and tropical babywearing absolutely love it. Check out our other demo videos and tutorials at birthpedia.net and you can always find me @tropicalbabywearing.com. Thanks for watching.”