About

Jeni and Gwenyth (2004)

Site Founders - Jennifer Norton and Denby Angus

TheBabyWearer.com was founded in 2003 by Australians Jennifer Norton and Denby Angus. Jeni and Denby are parents to Benjamin (21 Feb 2000) and Gwenyth (30 July 2002). Strongly influenced by what we have learned about attachment parenting, the Continuum Concept, positive discipline and non-violent communication, they've strived to implement what they've learned with varying degrees of success!

Benjamin was carried in-arms, without benefit of a sling, and Jeni ended up with severe tenosynovitis in both elbows. It wasn't until she read The Baby Book (by Dr William and Martha Sears) that she realised there was a simple solution! So Ben was the toddler 'guinea pig' and Gwenyth had the benefit of being 'sling-carried' since she was tiny. Life with a worn baby seemed much less daunting, as Gwenyth was happy, Ben got lots of attention, and they could get other things done too. Jeni's "parenting anxiety" was reduced by about 90%!

Denby with Gwenyth and
Benjamin (2003)

Jeni completed Honours study in Developmental Psychology and is now a PhD student at the Australian National University. She is interested in parenting per se, and in interventions or strategies that make parenting easier and less anxiety-ridden for parents and therefore better for children (just like babywearing!). Her particular interests are post-natal depression, as well as mums and babies with special needs, and whether babywearing would be a useful strategy for these mums and babies (indications are that it could be very valuable).

Denby played a crucial role in developing the website and still provides valuable support and assistance in maintaining the reviews system and other site functions. We both strongly believe that babywearing is a wonderful "intervention" for most families. Our idea for this website came out of our own experiences: it's a resource that would have helped us, when we started out as parents. We hope that it will help others who are just starting out or who are finding that parenting in isn't as easy as they were led to believe!

For some history of the site read this, this, and this.

Current Site Administrator - Christy Montemurro

Christy and Leo
(March 2007)

Christy was lucky to have a good friend who had a baby five months prior to the birth of her own son, Leo (February 2005), and see what an amazing parenting tool babywearing was for her friend. But when her first carrier didn't meet all of her needs, she did online research to figure out which one would work better for her. She quickly found TBW and pored over the explanations of different carrier types and brands. She had no idea what she was getting into! (Read more about her personal babywearing journey here.) As Christy absorbed as much information as she could about babywearing, she became yet another mom won over by how helpful a babycarrier can be, and was also moved by the warmth of the online babywearing community. Soon she was helping Jeni and Denby's successor, Melanie Mulrooney, to run the site, and now is the site owner and administrator. Christy is thrilled to be welcoming her second baby in January 2008 and can't wait for this little one to benefit from all she's learned from TBW.