Living with Cerebral Palsy 🍋🍋

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Life's a Beach

The Easter holiday's are approaching, Elin is in very good spirits and we are all looking forward to a break! We have a big Drake family holiday booked for a little Welsh town by the sea and can't wait. Last time we went on a big family holiday, Elin was nine months old. She was very small and more importantly she was easily transportable. It was only when a friend asked me recently, on hearing about our holiday plans, if I was looking forward to a nice walk on the beach that I was struck by something rather obvious. As a family, how do we go for a walk on the beach? Buggy's do not exactly lend themselves to sand. Not an issue for most family's with babies or young children- they get carried and by the time they are too big to carry, they are walking. But for us, it's almost impossible to carry over two stone of child further than a few hundred yards, particularly a child who has no muscle control/tone and no ability to grip with hands or legs. Certainly wont be able to push a buggy over the dunes! I got to thinking Elin and I would just have to miss out on any beach-walking activity. But then a friend posted a link to something on Facebook and we have a possible solution. A toddler carrier/back sling. Crucially, it's not the same as the walking rucksacks you see a lot of people with. We tried one of those and since they rely on the child being able to assume a 'sitting' position and maintain it with their muscle tone, it didn't work for Elin. She simply bounced around in it, her head dangerously lolling back and two between the metal frame (no matter how much stuffing with towels we did). She couldn't 'hang on' and it was desperately unsafe. Plus, she hated it. The toddler back-sling seems like it could work, as it will keep Elin resting on our backs, hopefully encouraging the 'safe' feeling she enjoys so much from body-to-body contact, keep her hips wide apart to discourage leg tension and 'dangling' and has a mesh hood that is supposed to be used if the toddler wants to go to sleep but for us should act as a nice soft head support. I am very excited about it arriving, could it be the answer to the problem of walking on the beach? Time will tell, photo's will follow :-)
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