Beyond an Infant Sleep Aid: Reclaiming infant carrying practices to support Indigenous infant and maternal health

Abstract The practice of infant carrying (carrying an infant on the body using a carrier or cloth material) has historical and cultural relevance across many communities, including to American Indian and Native Alaska (AI/AN) people. Infant carrying is emerging in the literature as a novel intervention to improve infant and maternal health outcomes. However, contemporary practices and the commercialization of infant carrying devices has largely stripped the practice of its cultural significance. The NIH and American Academy of Pediatrics has recognized that cradleboards, a tribally-specific infant carrier, is an acceptable sleep surface; we examine its cultural meaning beyond infant sleep benefits with the goal of revealing a clinical opportunity to enhance infant and maternal health in a culturally meaningful way. Individual interviews were conducted among urban Indigenous mothers living in AZ (N=16) to identify parenting traditions that help to promote maternal and infant health in the postpartum period. Among mothers who identified as Navajo or Diné, the use of a tribally-specific cradleboard was described as an important parenting tool. Four themes emerged from the data: attachment(e.g., “it gives…a sense of security because they are bundled up tight in blankets”), calming (“help when the kids were being fussy”), infants’ development (“to gain a posture and can hold their head high”), and tradition(“each part of the cradleboard has a meaning”). Social workers addressing the needs of Indigenous mothers in the postpartum period can benefit from organizational-level support and training on cultural humility, in an effort to promote the use of Indigenous cultural parenting tools and traditions, to ultimately support new mothers to reclaim their Indigenous cultural parenting practices.