The World’s First Baby Carrier Designed for Early Motor Milestones
In this article, Dr. Henrik Norholt - one of the world’s leading experts on baby carrying, father of Ida Lea and founder of Moova - explores how traditional carriers may unintentionally limit motor and social development, and how the Moova carrier was designed to change that. Grounded in science and shaped by decades of research, Moova offers a new way of thinking about baby carrying - one that supports not just comfort and closeness, but also movement and early development.
By dr. Henrik Norholt
I drafted the first article on baby carrying and motor development, where I learned of recently discovered concepts of the impact of training head control in 4 week old infants, as well as segmental acquisition of trunk control.
I realised that the current baby carrier designs have completely overlooked the baby’s motor development capacities and emerging needs, leading to a variety of fundamental challenges for current baby carrier designs, including baby carrying refusal at 3-4 months, the non-optimum forward facing position and slowed down social and motor development.
In response to these shortcomings, I developed and patent applied for a carrier design, which features a uniquely adjustable back panel made possible through the use of a socalled YKK autolock zipper, which requires active and intentional pulling of the pull tab to release, which allows the baby to exercise its emerging capacity for postural control of initially the head and subsequently the torso. It also allows for the baby’s unrestricted reaching out for objects, grasping them and bringing them to the mouth.
The patent and the design also includes baby hand grips, which allows for the infants active gripping through the well-recognized palmar reflex when the height of the back panel is reduced to set the infant in the active head and trunk self-support mode.
Theoretically, these innovative baby carrier features should allow for an accelerated achievement of fine and gross motor skills, with significant positive implications for long-term cognitive and social development and agency.
Reflecting the paradigmshift in the broadened understanding of what an infant needs from an optimum baby carrier, namely to also support motor development, the carrier design is trademarked Moova, inferring movement and mobility.
The Moova carrier design allows for the baby’s volitional turning of its neck and torso to engage with people and objects in the environment, which has implications for healthy spinal development and thereby prevention of scoliosis as well as positional plagiocephaly (flat backhead). Positional plagiocephaly has become common after the introduction of supine sleeping for prevention of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), affecting up to one in three infants.
User experiences with the Moova carrier in the first postnatal months also hints at accelerated infant social development afforded through the adult releasing while manually holding the head in a backwards oblique position, promoting exceptionally long bouts of baby-adult eye contact, that vastly exceeds the norms for infant capacity for early eye contact. Such extended early eye contact generally correlates with later-in-life social, neurological and cogntive development.
Video footage also surprisingly demonstrates the negative effect on infant alertness and enviromental engagement of baby carrier designs that constrain the head in a manner that is considered standard and minimum safety in the baby carrier industry – and conversely, the free and bright calm alert visual and social engagement with the enviroment when the baby is allowed to hold its own head and upper trunk – with potential substantial implications for social and cognitive development.
From a motor skills and social development point of view, the Moova carrier design significantly surpasses the controversial forward facing position, as the infant is given the freedom to rotate in neck and spine and to freely reach out with arms and hand to engage manually in the surrounding. This, in contrast to the forward facing position, where the infant does not need to rotate in spine and neck, the torso is still supported much higher than the infant’s level of segmental acqusition of trunk control (thereby impeding the practicing and achievement of infant trunk control), reaching with arms and hands is restricted by the arms being locked in the elbow joints in most forward facing carrier designs. Some carrier designs furthermore feature back panels that extend so high that they appear suffocating to the infant, as the contact point is at the level of the infant’s throat.
As for materials, the Moova carrier design employs only natural fibres and shuns synthetic socalled breathable mesh fabrics. User concerns about the infant and the adult wearer overheating in a baby carrier turn out to be unfounded for the Moova carrier design, as the adjustable panel allows for a reduction of the fabric covered area of the infant’s head and torso and furthermore allows the infant to slightly lean away from the caregiver during carrying, resulting in less infant-adult mutual front-to-front heating and better air circulation for the infant’s back which is largely not covered by any textile at all in the lowered panel position.
For the parents, the Moova carrier design furthermore for a generally much-appreciated ease of 1. mounting the carrier on the adult through stabilised crossed shoulderstraps and 2. loading the infant after the carrier has been mounted on the adult via the lowered adjustable back panel.
Through extensive testing amongst the most experienced baby carrying clinicians - the certified baby carrying consultants - the Moova carrier design is recognized as extraordinarily comfortable. The magnetic buckles, the well-padded crossed and stabilized shoulder straps and the lush natural fibre and sustainably sourced and produced fabrics all contribute to this.
Physiotherapists in Europe and the US also embrace the Moova carrier and concept for parents with handicaps of their own as well as for infants with developmental delays/handicaps, recognizing that the adjustability of the trunk support and freedom of arms and hand movement provides very exact and well-matched motor skills challenges.
Recognizing that products which support parenthood should not merely be practical and functional but also about celebrate the unique beautiful miracle of life, the Moova carrier design draws on some of the most internationally celebrated fashion designers in creating the Moova carriers’ unique style expression and fit.
Moova’s contributions to parents’ successful and confident baby carrying experience however do not end with merely supplying a paradigmshifting and state-of-the-art baby carrier. Moova is committed to providing excellent guidance through easily available on-line video tutorials, focused and timely email subscription services that enlighten parents on the developmental opportunities and the subtle adjustments of the Moova carrier all along their baby’s first years and quick and competent customer guidance service.
About Dr. Henrik Northolt
Dr. Henrik Norholt is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading scientific authorities on baby carrying. With more than two decades of dedicated research and engagement in the field, he brings depth of knowledge to the Moova project.
A respected figure within the global network of certified baby carrying consultants, he has been a driving force behind initiatives to establish baby carrying as a recognized public health intervention. His mission is rooted in empowering parents and promoting healthy developmental outcomes for children - starting from the earliest days of life.
