Cherished Style Carrier Review

Post-Christmas shopping tired her out. She curled right in and stopped crying the second I put her here.

I have had the pleasure, through starting this blog, to meet Jasmine Julian who is a mommy of 4 and a the mind behind Cherished Style. While on my trip to NY at Thanksgiving, I was able to meet up with her and chat. She was generous enough to give me one of her Mai Tai style carriers to test out and review. I had only used my home-made Moby wrap up to this point when I needed to carry Fuss around with me, but she had outgrown its use. Everything in her shop is made-to-order, and my Mai Tai was no exception. All I asked was that it be gender neutral and match my diaper bag which was brown with lime green piping. This is what she came up with! The green matched the piping/interior of my diaper bag EXACTLY, sight unseen!

She has two styles of this carrier. Mine is her "old style" which works great for older children. This one gives Fuss a great safe-feeling seat compared to some others we have seen.

The second style is much more trim (as you can see in the photo on the left) compared to the "old" style. This one is ideal for newborns and younger children. I think you would also be able to wear a larger baby in this one as well since the construction on these carriers is excellent. Honestly, you would be hard-pressed to find a comparably made carrier below $100 retail.

Pocket

Rain hood clipped to D-Rings

One of my favorite features of this carrier is the little pocket on the front. This is a great place to put your keys, tissues, or any other small items you may need access to quickly. It has a snap to keep things from falling out and getting lost in the shuffle. The rain hood fits really well inside this pocket when not in use as well. Second favorite? The rain hood! It just snaps on to the carrier and you fold it up and over baby, loop through the D-Rings at the shoulders, and snap. The D-Rings are also very handy for toys or clipping other small items to. They are very strong and work great with "links" or carabiners. If you aren't using the rain hood, it snaps off and you can use the hood snaps to fold the upper part of the carrier down for a better view for your little one.

Finally, unlike many carriers, the straps are well-padded but not too thick. Before I knew how bad they were for babies, I used a Bjorn to get some relief from Fuss's crying by wearing her around the house. I could only manage this for about 20 minutes before my shoulders were being cut into and my back was aching so badly I could barely move. And that was with a 5 pound baby!! With this carrier, I don't have either problem! I can easily wear Fuss for 2+ hours while out shopping and not have any side effects. The straps are wide enough that they spread the weight across the whole shoulder, and the criss-cross used in the back gives support as well as weight distribution throughout your whole body.

Jasmine makes an addition to her carrier that will work for TWINS! Here is a photo of Jasmine wearing her 2 youngest to show how it would work:

Here, she has the carrier strapped on with a front carry, then the twin addition is simply clipped onto the hiking-grade buckles with extra webbing across Mom's shoulders and tied on the bottom! Neat, huh?

Jasmine doesn't just make carriers, though, she also makes diaper bags (great for cloth mamas because they have like 10 interior and exterior pockets and can even be made with customizable pocket inserts!), nursing covers, and children's doll carriers. She's also been working hard on a new soft structured carrier.

Head over to Life With My Littles and be sure to enter her #BirthdayBlessingsBash for a chance to win a $25 gift card for Cherished Style from Jasmine and me! Don't forget to stop by Cherished Style LLC on Facebook and thank Jasmine for her generous gift!

In parting, I will leave you with a few photos of both the front and back carry with Fuss and me. By the way, ignore Fuss in a couple of those, she *HATES* the back carry! LOL. I also apologize for the "MySpace" style shots. I only had my MIL take one because that's all the time we had. These are the best I could do.