Moby Wrap Review

The first carrier I ever bought was a Moby wrap.  Before my son was born I asked around all my friends, I went to a sling library to learn about all the different types of baby carriers and came to the conclusion I should get a stretchy wrap.  This was absolutely the right choice for us - when Tom was born it was worth its weight in gold for all 3 of us; for Tom who just wanted to sleep snuggled against one of his parent's chests and definitely not in his moses basket; for me who just wanted to make a cup of tea; and for my husband David who loved the freedom of being able to leave the flat without being weighed down by a pram.

For all these reasons I am sure we'll be using a stretchy wrap again when our new baby due in November arrives.  However, we won't be using the Moby.

I choose the Moby at the time, because it was the biggest name, the one everyone I asked had heard of (as an aside, the more I learn about baby carriers the more I realise the biggest names/best sellers are usually not the best carriers!  They are the brands with the

biggest markets budgets and consequently have been able to get their carriers into high street stores).  The sling library I went to only had 2 stretchy wraps and told me 'they are all the same anyway'.  Which I have since learnt is simply not true. I currently have 8 different brands of stretchy wrap in the library and they all feel different.  They have different levels of stretch, different thickness, made from different materials which all feel different to the touch etc etc...

But of all of them the Moby is my least favourite.  This is for 2 main reasons;

1. While it was snuggly and soft for me and my son, by the start of May when he was around 6/7 weeks old it was properly boiling.  The Moby is one of the thickest on the market.  Its 5.6m long, 62cm wide and weighs 753g which makes for quite a claustrophobic carrier in summer!  To put this in context this is one of the longest, widest and heaviest stretchy wraps on the market.  Definitely don't consider the Moby if your having a spring or summer baby.
2. Its the hardest for a beginner to learn! The beauty of stretchy wraps is that you can pretie them and simply pop baby in.  Even pop baby in and out without retying.  But this is really difficult to do with the Moby ... the window between having the carrier tied so tightly you can't actually get your baby in and having the carrier too loose resulting in baby slumping over time is really tiny.  Like trying to find the setting on an old temperamental toaster between burnt and still bread.  It meant I spent ages trying to perfect exactly how tightly to tie, and spent ages walking around with a baby starting to slump in the carrier.

Why is the Moby so hard to use?  It is one of the least stretchy carriers, and only stretches in one direction.  In general stretchy wraps that stretch in two directions are much easier to learn as this 'window' is much wider and nearly everyone can get the hang of it right away.  Even with other one way stretchy wraps, while they are all harder to learn compared to two way stretchies, most are still a bit less stiff than the Moby and its this stiffness that makes it pretty difficult to use in this way.  In fact it works much better if you instead use it more like a woven!  This stiffness means its pretty supportive if you do get the tying right ... in fact where I do think the Moby shines is for those wishing to wrap twins.  The extra stability that comes with the lack of stretch compared to other stretchy wraps really helps when trying to support 2 at once.

But for my singleton baby due in a few months I am going to make my life easy and give the Moby a skip.  If, however, this sounds ideal to you - you can find it here.