Come to a Library Session

We run free to attend library sessions in Royston and at the Clay Farm Centre. These sessions give you the opportunity to learn more about carrying and the types of slings and carriers available. We can talk to you about what options might suit you best according to your own needs and personal circumstances, give you advice on using your own sling or carrier and help you to learn more about carrying your little one comfortably and safely.

Try or Hire our Carriers

You can try on any of our slings at a library session with one of us or one of our trained volunteers on hand to help and answer any questions you might have. You can hire our slings and carriers so you can to try them out at home and see how they work in real life or if you just need a carrier for a short time, perhaps for a holiday or a pram free day out! Hiring a carrier is simple, register as a member through lend engine either before or during a library session. When you sign up in advance you can choose to pay your £40 membership deposit at the same time if you’re sure you want to hire a carrier or you can choose a free, temporary membership to reserve the carrier and pay your deposit on the day if you decide to take it away with you. Your deposit allows you to reserve and hire up to 4 carriers at any one time for as long as you want to use the library and is refunded when you return your final item. Hire fees are £12 per item, per fortnight.

Get Support with your own slings

If you already have a sling or carrier, you are welcome to bring it along for some support with how to use it. We can help you to put your carrier on, set it up to suit you and your child and check the fit. If, for whatever it’s not working, uncomfortable or just not right for you, we can talk to you about alternatives.

What’s in the library?

We have a wide range of slings and carriers available to hire, from stretchy wraps for tiny newborns, right up to preschool carriers suitable up to 4 years and beyond. Items include stretchy wraps, Close Caboo’s, a huge variety of buckled carriers, tie on carriers, woven wraps and ring slings along with some specialist twin carriers.

We also have weighted and unweighted demo dolls for you to use when trying out our slings. You can absolutely use your real baby, but sometimes it helps to try with a fake one first and also comes in handy if your little one hasn’t arrived yet!

We don’t bring every carrier to every session, there’s simply far to many to transport, they’re heavy and there’s only so much space in the car! However we will make sure we have a good selection of carriers including at least one of each type for you to choose from. If you’re looking for something specific, you can browse our full range of slings and carriers on our Lend Engine site. You can also sign up and reserve a carrier to guarantee you get a chance try on at a library session if there’s something you particularly want to have a go with, you will then be able to take it out on hire if you want to, but there is no obligation to do so.

The library is constantly growing and we add to our collection when new carriers come to the market, if there’s something you’d like to see that we don’t currently have, please do let us know and we’ll see if we can add it!

Our Limitations

Our Library sessions are held in public spaces and operate on a first come, first served basis. If you arrive at the very end of a session, we will do our best to offer you support, however this isn’t always possible and we may have to ask you to come back to the next session. The sling library can get busy at times and the level of support we are able to offer you will vary depending on the amount of volunteers and attendees at the sessions.

While we have the time and space to support you the basics of safe comfortable carrying, unfortunately we aren’t able to teach you how to back carry or other more complex skills within the library sessions. If you or your little one have a medical condition that impacts carrying or you wish to carry multiple children we recommend getting in touch with us before attending a session to avoid disappointment if we don’t feel we are able to meet your needs within a busy public session.

The boring legal stuff

If you come along to our library sessions, we expect you to be nice to us and our volunteers, we won’t tolerate disrespectful or abusive behaviour of any kind and you will be asked to leave.

If you hire one of our slings or carriers we expect you to look after it and bring it back enabling it to remain in the library for others to try. As such there are some terms and conditions we need you to agree to before we let you take it home. We also take a refundable deposit to protect us both against loss or damage. You can read these in full here