The crawling machine is on a roll. Some days he is so fast that he can crawl at the pace we walk to reach a room with an open door. Most rooms in the house are always closed giving him very less opportunity to play with water or hurt himself with the stuff lying on the floor. He naturally doesn't understand that he is only nine months old and his body can only take so much. He pushes himself to the limits crawling tirelessly continuously sometimes for an hour. At the end of day, he is so tired that he cannot sleep. His joints ache as he keeps touching his knees with his little hands and moaning through the night unable to sleep. wish kids this age could talk. His moaning makes us helpless while trying to figure out what is bothering him - body ache, mosquito bite, ant bite, hunger, thirst, too cold or too hot etc etc.

I am more than positive now that it is his body that aches on days when he has crawled a lot. By the end of the day, I can make out if there is something interesting happening in the room but he doesn't make an effort to move at all or if he is rubbing his fingers over his legs. I have never seen LG sit in a place for more than 10 days, so the past 3-4 days have been very disheartening to see him sit in the same place and play with his toys which is more than enough to say that he is not his usual self.

Here are a few things that I have tried and it has helped:


  1. Give a hot sponge bath before putting him to sleep. Or you could wash your baby from the thighs (down) with hot water. It is soothing for the aching body without risking him to catch a cold.

  2. Try a hot water bag - there is one specially available for kids these days that can be microwaveable.

  3. Try massaging your baby's body gently.

  4. If you know your baby is tired, hold him in your lap and let him crawl too much for the time being.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Lakshmi,

I happened to browse your blog this morning and must say your tips and suggestions would be really helpful to other to be moms.
I have a one year old, went thro a painful looong delivery and hence could relate to a lot of things mentioned here. I referred my friend who is 3 months preg to read through your tips.

Thanks, Prathiba

L said...

Prathiba,

Thank you. Hope your friend find it useful :)

- Lakshmi