Meet Andrea and Karly, Two Voices Joining Us at HELD Vancouver

'Babywearing' doesn't live in one lane or one neat little box. It's a practice, a really useful and integrated practice for that matter.

It shows up in birth work, in lactation support, in bodywork, in postpartum recovery, and in chiropractors', pediatricians', and physical therapists' offices, too. It shows up when a caregiver is touched-out and exhausted and just trying to figure out how to get through the afternoon. It shows up in the questions nobody warned them about: "Okay, but how do I manage a shower?"

That is part of what HELD | The Babywearing Weekend is built around. We're not saying that babywearing is the answer to everything, or that everyone in the room needs to become a babywearing educator. But carrying happens every day, throughout the day, and tends to sit right in the middle of the support families are already seeking. And when all these people, the varied perinatal professionals, are actually in the same room together, the conversation gets more expansive, infinitely more creative, and the end result is better support for the families we all serve.

For the Vancouver event, we are genuinely excited about the two subject matter experts joining us. Check them out!

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Andrea Sanders

Andrea Sanders is a Registered Massage Therapist and clinic director who's been working with perinatal clients for nearly a decade. Her background spans both clinical settings and the birth space, and she also brings experience as a birth doula, which gives her a grounded, practical understanding of pregnancy, birth, recovery, and the physical realities families navigate in those early months.

This broad perspective matters a lot when applying a babywearing context, because, of course, a carrier doesn't land on an abstract body.

It lands on an actual body. Sometimes a sore body or a recovering one. Often a touched-out, sleep-deprived, doing-its-best body.

Andrea also happens to be a new mom, and babywearing has become one of her passions since becoming a parent. She is actively interested in learning and in thoughtfully weaving babywearing support into her clinical work and community care. Her clinical cases will help us shine a light on how small conversations and little adjustments can make an outsized effect on a new family.

Bodywork and babywearing are already connected in real life. They just do not always get talked about together. Andrea helps change that. 

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Karly Keeping

Karly Keeping is a Canadian nurse, educator, and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant based in Northern British Columbia. Her work centers on lactation, infant and toddler feeding, breastfeeding, human milk, pumping, bottles, and early postpartum care. In other words, Karly spends a lot of time in the thick of actual newborn daily life.

Feeding questions. Bottle questions. Pumping questions. Caregivers trying to figure out why every piece of advice they got doesn't seem to match the baby currently yelling at them.

Feeding and carrying never happen in separate little boxes. They show up together: baby, caregiver, tired arms, sore boobs, tear-stained faces, and lots of questions.

Karly brings more than 3,000 hours of experience supporting families through pregnancy, feeding challenges, solids, weaning, and all the little transitions that don't come with a manual. Her approach is both evidence-based and holistic, with attention to infant physiology and caregiver well-being.

That attention matters in our shared babywearing space. Her clinical cases highlight how a family might be navigating multiple challenges: a new bottle and breast routine, a painful latch, a baby who only settles upright, except now the parent is too physically exhausted to hold the baby that long. The parent might have even bought a carrier, watched the videos, and is just still tired, and in their overwhelm, it just feels like it should be easier than this. How can we help this family in a way that actually has a meaningful impact on their daily lives?

Having a lactation and infant-feeding perspective in the room with us will make our babywearing and support conversations more realistic. And honestly, more useful for everyone: you, me, and the families we serve.

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This is what it looks like when it connects

A lactation professional may notice feeding patterns and how that pattern might impact a baby and the caregivers' daily rhythm. A bodyworker may catch things about caregiver posture, tension, and recovery that nobody else in the room would think to ask about. A birth worker knows what a caregiver asks and thinks about before the baby arrives and before a caregiver ever picks up a carrier.

And a babywearing educator understands, no matter how you slice it, a baby will be carried, and how the baby is carried impacts everything.

Together, we can take all of those pieces and translate them into something actually usable for ourselves and our clients.

Families don't experience their needs in neat professional categories. They experience all of it at once.

That's the conversation happening at HELD in Vancouver on June 7th.  And we'll go deeper at The Babywearing Weekend from June 5th-7th. We're really looking forward to it!