THE BABYWEARING WEEKEND
for babywearing educators, consultants, and group leaders.
Apply learning in real-life contexts.
Collaborate across disciplines.
More integration.
Why Create This?
Because family struggles don't happen in silos.
Babywearing educators, consultants, and group leaders consistently tell us they want:
- More time to think, discuss, and explore, not just learn techniques.
- Professional development that reflects the complexity of real, everyday family situations and broadens their knowledge and experience.
- Stronger relationships with allied professionals who understand the potential of infant carrying and how a babywearing professional can assist their clients.
- Education that expands and evolves with the field. Education that pushes us beyond simple fit checks and troubleshooting.
- Opportunities to meet and connect with their peers in real life.
The Babywearing Weekend is a direct response to those needs.
Immersive without being overwhelming.
Collaborative without being diluted.
This Is For You If:
You're promoting babywearing and supporting families in your community.
You enjoy discussion and peer connection and desire to broaden your perspective on and approach to infant carrying.
You're open to learning more about how others support families.
You're ready to focus on preventative and therapeutic babywearing applications in a protected, practice‑heavy environment.
This Isn’t For You If:
You're a parent or caregiver looking for babywearing education or support for your own family. However, we do need caregiver/baby models for the HELD interdisciplinary event.
Let us know if you're interested.
The Babywearing Weekend centers infant carrying within a broader system of family support and infant development. If you're not open to interdisciplinary learning and collaboration, or to working alongside allied professionals, a core component of the HELD experience, then this event isn't for you.
You're not interested in teaching, professional application, or community-level impact, this isn't for you.
How The Babywearing Weekend Works
Educator-Only Immersion
Friday
The weekend begins with dedicated learning and connection time exclusively for babywearing consultants, educators, and group leaders.
In prep for HELD, we'll spend time in our Carrier Lab, where you’ll:
- Explore the structure, function, and design of carriers from trusted babywearing-first brands.
- Brands that value the education-and-support way we work.
- Brands that value our point of view.
We'll preview a few case studies for HELD, so you'll:
- be prepared to share how infant carrying and baby carriers could make an impact in our real-life client contexts.
- have time to share and test your career adaptations and ideas in a safe, no-way-to-fail space.
- feel ready to share infant carrying with allied professionals with confidence.
OK, let's be real, then we'll end the night grabbing something to eat and hanging out in the hotel lobby until bedtime!
This kind of hands-on, thoughtful exploration rarely fits into standard conferences, but it fundamentally changes how you teach, assess, and support families.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration at HELD
Saturday
Saturday anchors the weekend with HELD, the interdisciplinary event that brings babywearing consultants, educators, and group leaders together with allied professionals such as pediatricians, RNs, pediatric physical therapists, occupational therapists, midwives, lactation professionals, and other perinatal specialists.
This is where everything connects.
During HELD, you will:
- Apply what you explored on Friday in small groups for a collaborative case study approach.
- Discover how other professionals approach movement, development, feeding, regulation, and support.
- Practice translating babywearing expertise into a shared language that strengthens referral relationships and builds bridges of understanding.
This fun, immersive day will have you moving in and out of small groups and (of course) baby carriers. We'll look at real-life parent-baby models to see what changes across real models, what works, and what doesn't. You'll build meaningful relationships with allied professionals and strengthen your role on the perinatal care team.
Allied professionals interested in HELD can learn more here.
Educator-Only Master Class
Sunday
The weekend concludes with a Master Class led by Joanna, supported by the facilitators and hosts, ensuring a rich, babywearing-focused wrap-up. Beyond capturing and discussing options arising from HELD, we'll go further to look at alternative carriers and carrying options, and discuss what 'support' might really look like if we want people to adopt the practice of extended infant carrying.
Expect time on toddler wearing, weather-related wearing, current topics, and open discussion.
This session goes beyond foundational skills and focuses on:
- Advanced concepts and emerging ideas in babywearing education and support
- Nuanced approaches for your teaching challenges and in-the-moment decision-making
- Thoughtful discussion that integrates research, practice, and lived experience
- pushes the current boundaries around the role of a babywearing educator, consultant, or group leader.
This is rare access to deep mentorship, reflection, and synthesis. Time and space many educators simply don’t get elsewhere.
The Babywearing Weekend isn’t about adding more to your plate, it isn't a repeat of what you already know, and it isn't about sitting in a lecture hall.
It’s about elevating, strengthening, and expanding the work you already do.
Space is limited at each location, and pricing increases in stages.
