Every Consultant Needs a Resource List. Here's What Goes On It.
Sep 08, 2026
The consult goes well. The baby is comfortably up; both are relaxed; the caregiver has done it twice on her own without needing us. We start to pack up. And then comes the question.
"Is there something I can read about this?”
There are two ways that goes. Without a list, it's "I'll send you a few links," which means that night at 9 pm you're digging through bookmarks trying to remember the name of that one post about carrier storage. Or you forget, and the parent goes to a search engine instead, and finds a message board thread from 2011 with a photo of a baby positioned in a way that makes us want to scream.
With a list, it takes four seconds. "Yes, I have some ideas for you. Check your email in the morning.”
A resource list is a short, reusable page to hand a client (or email/text) after the teaching stops: a few printables, a few links, a couple of local professionals they might want to see, and outings to consider. It costs you one afternoon to assemble, and it works for years.
Here's the case for building a resource list: where to gather from, what CBWS already has ready to go, and how to get it into a parent's hands so it’s used and shows you as useful.
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What does a resource list buy you?
It buys you credibility. In the eleven weeks between a first class and a follow-up consult, when the baby has grown, and everything that worked has stopped working… where are they turning to for references, ideas, and help? Well, that resource list provides things like: a moms group to attend, a fun outing to do, your troubleshooting and drop-in times, and a list of what to watch for as things start to evolve in babywearing. In fact, it provides a continual reminder that you are there and ready to help them if needed.
It buys a follow-up that isn't a sales pitch. A resource email is a reason to appear in someone's inbox without asking for anything. Even better, create an email or text series to drip out. Two weeks after a newborn consult, "here's the feeding-in-a-carrier guide I mentioned" is a welcome message. "Ready to book again?" isn’t. The first one leads to the second one anyway.
It buys you out of answering the same message over and over again at 10 pm. Every consultant has a set of questions that come in over DM - forever. How do I wash this? Can I nurse in it? Is it safe to buy used? My mother-in-law wants to try it, and I'm terrified. Is it OK for her to try it, or should I get a different carrier? Answering each message from scratch is unpaid work…with no ceiling! Have a reply, document, email, blog for each, and it turns a twenty-minute reply into a link and a sentence.
It buys credibility with people who’ve never heard of you. A pediatric PT, a lactation consultant, a nurse on a mother-baby unit. When they ask what we do, a printable handout with our name and phone number on it answers faster than any explanation. Handouts circulate. They get pinned to break room bulletin boards and photocopied by people we'll never meet.
It buys a table at the expo a job. If you’ve attended a birth fair or worked one, you know the problem: people walk past, smile, keep walking. Something in your hand slows them down. A parent leaves with a piece of paper and a memory of the person who gave it to them. Even better, email or text it to them so you have their info.
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The good material already exists. It's just scattered.
Nobody needs to write a positioning guide from scratch. The babywearing world has been producing excellent material for twenty years, and it's sitting in a dozen different places: manufacturer fit guides that are genuinely well made, the safety organizations, the hip dysplasia institute, IBCLCs and pediatric PTs writing about carriers from their own angle, other consultants' blogs, and even CBWS’s blog.
The problem was never scarcity. It's that a tired parent at 2 am doesn’t want to search for trustworthy information. Curation is the point of the list. Being the person who already read it all and picked the things that might be relevant to them is worth more to a client than being the person who wrote one of them. Be the person who thought about what they might need before they need it, and then show them the way forward, with your list.
So gather, and gather widely. But also, let’s cover a few rules that keep a list from turning into a liability (I learned this the hard way):
Check that it says what we'd say. Read every piece all the way through from beginning to end before it goes on your list, including the embedded links. A great article with one paragraph suggesting to wait until baby is 4 months or older to be worn becomes a problem when a client follows the link, reads it, and comes back confused about who to believe.
Prefer the source over the summary. Link the actual manufacturer instructions, the actual research page, the original post. Aggregator sites go stale and rot, and their links break - fast.
Note who made it and why. A brand's fit video for their own carrier is useful and should be labeled as such. Parents are smart and appreciate the transparency.
Credit the people we borrow from. Send traffic to the consultant whose post you're linking to. Use the real title and don't rehost someone else's PDF as our own. Obvious, I know, but colleagues notice. And they link back.
Re-read the whole list once a year or sooner. Links die, brands discontinue carriers, guidance shifts. A resource list is a living document, or it's stale. (Set a recurring reminder in your calendar now.)
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We already made the handouts. Go get them.
This is the part that surprises people: the CBWS resource page exists, the printables are free, and they're built to be branded and handed out with a consultant's own name on them. Not ours. Yours.
What's up there now?
Monitoring Baby While Babywearing. The single most useful thing to leave behind after a first consult, because "monitor your baby" is advice everyone repeats and almost nobody breaks down into what it actually looks like from the outside.
Feeding in a Carrier. Pair it with a lactation referral and watch how quickly that IBCLC starts sending clients back.
Secondhand Baby Carrier Guide. For the marketplace shopper, the hand-me-down recipient, and the buy-nothing-group regular. Which is many families. (And for the educator expanding their library, too.)
Babywearing With Alternative Caregivers. They say ‘it takes a village.’ Hand two copies to the parent. One is for the grandmother, who will try it whether or not anyone teaches her.
Hot Weather Babywearing Tips and Halloween Babywearing Hacks. Seasonal, which means they're a reason to email the whole client list twice a year without inventing an excuse.
Each resource has related blog posts listed underneath it, so a single handout can carry a whole reading trail, great for 2 a.m.-awake-and-hungry-for-answers parents.
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Send parents somewhere, not just something
A single handout answers a single question. An entire page of resources answers the many, many more. For clients who want to keep going, Why Babywearing Matters in the First Seven Years is built for exactly that: a free positioning guide, the research links for the parent who wants sources, and a stack of short reads on storage, cold weather layering, walking in the city, getting comfortable, and slowing down when the carrier feels like a fight. The whole 'for caregivers' tag on the blog is fair game too.
That page is still growing, and seriously, it should be growing faster. Consultants in the field, like you, know better than anyone which questions keep coming back. If there's a handout that should exist and doesn't, we want to hear about it. The resource library will only get better if it's built based on real questions and needs.
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Build the resource without making it a project
The temptation is to design something beautiful and never finish it. Skip that. A working list has three parts. And know, version one can live in a plain email draft that you adapt over time.
The four or five things every client gets. Same email, every time, sent within 24 hours. Positioning basics, monitoring, a next-check-in reminder, how to reach us.
The by-request pile. Feeding, secondhand shopping, other caregivers, seasonal. Pulled out when the topic comes up, never dumped all at once.
One thing that is only yours. Your local carrier lending library details, your drop-in hours at the community center, the pediatric chiropractor who actually understands carriers, the consignment shop that stocks decent second-hand carriers. This is the part no national organization can supply, and it's what makes a list you created feel like it came from a person, not a search result.
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Getting it into a parent's hands
A list nobody opens is a list nobody has. How you deliver it matters as much as what's on it.
The follow-up email is the workhorse. Send it within 24 hours, while the consult is still fresh and the parent is still telling their partner about it. Keep it to five or six links, with one line each explaining when to use it. A wall of twenty bookmarks gets closed. Write it, save it as a template, and update the names, baby included, each time.
Print for the room. In-person consults, expo tables, classes, library talks…any time you’re in person. A handout with your name on it survives long after the conversation, and it works for the parent who never opens email. But bring more than you think you’ll need.
One QR code, one page. For expos and classes, a single code on a card that points to one page of links might be easier than handing over six separate pieces of paper. It also means you can update the list without reprinting anything, and you'll have their contact information so you can keep the conversation going.
Park it somewhere permanent. A resources page on your own site, a link in the Instagram bio, a pinned post. When someone asks in a local parenting group, the answer is one link, not a re-typed paragraph.
Drip the seasonal ones. Hot weather in June, Germs in September, Halloween in October, layering in November. Two or three emails a year to past clients, each one genuinely useful, will keep your name alive without any selling. However, the word ‘useful’ here is truly important.
Hand the referral partners their own copy. The lactation consultant, the pediatric PT, the doula collective. Give them the printables and permission to hand them out. Then their clients become your clients.
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The math on four seconds
A consultant who sends a list is remembered as a consultant who kept helping. That memory is what gets a name repeated in a moms' group when someone's baby won't stop screaming in a carrier.
Few people refer to a person who solved a problem and disappeared. They refer the one whose email is still sitting in their inbox, still useful, four months later. Be that person. Get that referral.
The printables are at cbws.org/resources, free to download, brand, and hand out. Tell us what's missing.
