Exercise to beat the baby blues

When my son was born we walked. A lot. We would walk for around an hour and a half at least once a day, sometimes more. We walked in heat waves, wind and rain. Mainly rain, often heavy rain that soaks you to the bone. He was a winter baby so the chances of having long balmy days were never really in my favour but a girl can dream.

To the casual observer they would probably conclude that I was a hard core exercise addict determined to get my pre pregnancy body back as quickly as possible. The reality was very different.

Babies cry, we all know this. Nothing can prepare you for the wretched, helpless, trapped feeling you experience when listening a baby cry non-stop for what feels like an eternity despite your best efforts to attend to all of their needs. It is soooo frustrating.

One of the reasons that the crying sounds so unbearable to you is that it is designed to do just that. Mother Nature has purposely made it so that when you hear your baby crying it goes right through you and the natural instinct is to tend to the baby's needs. This is obviously a good survival technique for the species but a really annoying thing for modern parents. There were so many occasions when I wanted to scream at my cave man wiring that things had moved on and it wasn't necessary to make me feel that way as I wasn't going to abandon the baby and let it be eaten by a lion.

My solution to this problem was to walk.

Walking has lots of benefits. Firstly, yes it is a good form of exercise and will contribute to you losing the baby weight you gained in pregnancy. It also releases endorphins. These happy feel good hormones race around your body lifting your mood, clearing out the cobwebs and generally make you feel good.

Once in this mood you can appreciate the wonders of Mother Nature and enjoy the scenery. This might be a good time to add that I live in London. The scenery mainly consists of parked cars, traffic, horns hooting, shop fronts, a token tree every so many yards and lots of dog poo left behind from careless owners who have no consideration for owners of prams or wheelchairs. Anyway, bearing all of this in mind those endorphins are really powerful when they can make you feel good to be alive when the scenery is such as described above!

Another benefit of walking is that the instant you start to walk the rocking of the pram calms the baby and they normally very quickly stop crying and often drift off to sleep. Perfect, you don’t have to listen to crying and after the baby wakes up and you are home they are in a much better mood. This also means you are in a much better mood.

Walking is free and maternity leave can be very expensive. Firstly your income is greatly reduced and secondly in a bid to have adult interaction and a break from the monotony of feed, change, sleep repeat you join every baby class going which quickly adds up.

The best thing about walking was that it had predictable, guaranteed results. If for some reason the walking didn’t calm him down the sound of the traffic and driving rain would drown out the crying anyway! Result. Whichever way you looked at it I always got a break from the crying.

And when the health visitors asks you can smugly say that you walk with your baby everyday as you understand the importance of baby getting lots of fresh air whilst having the opportunity to learn about the world around them. You will receive extra brownie points if like me these walks take place during bad weather.

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