Go for lots of walks when you're caring for a baby or toddler
Many parents walk, and walk, and walk some more when they're caring for a baby or toddler!
Walking is great for sleep, both yours and your small child's. Walking provides your baby or toddler with lovely rich sensory motor experiences, which keep her dialled down while her sleep pressure is rising. This helps a lot with night-time sleep. And walking is great for your mental and emotional well-being!
I acknowledge that many carers of babies and toddlers live with disabilities. If this is your situation, you may not find this article particularly helpful, or it may even bring up grief. You might enjoy the website disABILITY maternity care.
Walking is an easy kind of physical activity, which gets you outside the house with your little one. You might walk with your little one in the pram or stroller, carrier or backpack carrier. Lots of women or primary carers go out for walks, short or long, with their small child multiple times a day! Why not? You can spend a lot of the day walking, if you want to.
This might be easier in pedestrian cultures like New York City, where my daughter and her children live. But remember that you can go out for a walk even though you have only just come in from a walk a little time ago. Walking can be the solution if you're exhausted, if your baby or toddler is dialling up, if you’re on your own and out of your mind with boredom, if there's no group activity planned or friend you can visit. Walking is an opportunity for mindful attention to your environment and your body's sensations, whether that's walking a busy city street, local park, or in your own backyard.
There's no need to pull cloth covers over your little one's field of vision. Babies and toddlers will fall asleep when their sleep pressure is high enough, and in the meantime the rich and changing sensory motor stimulation of a walk keeps them dialled down.
If your little one can't see out and enjoy the visual spectacle of the world around them, if he can't feel the air and the breeze on his skin, if he can't feel the changing air temperature, his sensory experience is substantially diminished - and he will often cry and fuss inside the pram or stroller as a result. There is also research showing that cloths or covers over the pram or stroller significantly increase the temperature underneath.
If your toddler has to spend too long strapped into a stroller, she is likely to cry and fuss and struggle. This is because she has a powerful biological need to move her own little body and explore the world, which can't happen when she's strapped into the stroller. Some primary carers use stroller time as snack time for their toddlers.
A 2024 study by Canadian Dr Andy Deprato and his team looks at all the existing research on the topic of exercise and mental health after birth. Their study shows that brisk exercise for about 80 minutes a week, if you start it before your baby is 12 weeks of age, dramatically improves your emotional and mental wellbeing, protecting against or helping treat postnatal depression. I suggest starting slowly and even just for short distances and brief amounts of time, from when your body feels ready after the birth. The most important thing is to enjoy your walking with baby - which makes it more likely that you'll keep doing it!
Recommended resources
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Parkrun is a community based non-profit initiative which supports families and others to walk or run for five kilometres on a Saturday morning, often in a park. Parkruns are found all around the world www.parkrun.com
Selected references
Deprato A, Ruchat S-M, Ali MU. Impact of postpartum physical activity on maternal depression and anxiety: a systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2024:doi:10.1136/bjsports-2024-108478.
Huang H-H, Stubbs B, Chen L-J. The effect of physical activity on sleep disturbance in various populations: a scoping review of randomized clinical trials. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. 2023;20(44):https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-12023-01449-12967.
Wang J, Carru C, Sedda S. Comparative impact of exercise-based interventions for postpartum depression: a Bayesian network meta-analysis. International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. 2023;00:1-9.
