On carriers, you can get carriers right up to pre-school age. We only got a lightweight stroller for our son when he was 2.5.
On Gina Ford... erm. We followed much more of an attachment style parenting method but quite frankly that was easiest.
I didn't go into making a rod for my own back or whatever, but in terms of slings, it means you have a contented baby and both hands free to do stuff.
We also co-slept (meant I didn't have to get out of bed to do the night feeds, which I think is much more disturbing to your sleep - by the end of pregnancy you will probably find you're sleeping very lightly anyway, and for me the night time feeds were an extension of that to some degree).
But - in short, do whatever works for you. No one else has your family setup, with your unique personalities (including the baby's!); or your own situations.
One of the authors (Dr Sears) who writes about attachment parenting has an interesting family background - him and his wife had 7 or 8 kids, in the end. They raised the first two 'normally' but the third was 'high needs' - wouldn't be put down, cried constantly etc. That's when they came up with various other methods that enabled them to keep living normally - she was calmer in a sling, etc, etc; and those are the methods they recommend in their books.