Crawling...the next frontier

Crawling is supposed to be a part of the natural progression of your baby. But so far it has been a challenge and a frustration for our son, and to a lesser extent, to us.

It’s a precarious position for a young parent. You want to see your child stay on par with other babies his/her age. You want to match teething stories and crawling stories tit for tat with his peers. But at the same time you’re in no hurry for the child to get one minute older. For that matter, you’re in no hurry for him to become mobile either. Rolling is one thing, crawling opens up a virtual Pandora’s box of potential troublemaking.

Our son has been pushing himself up with his arms for sometime. He’s been craning his neck out of the bassinet each morning as if to say, “I’m awake, wet and hungry….you know what to do.” In the last couple weeks he’s been pushing himself with his arms. Unfortunately, when you’re on your belly and you push yourself with your arms, you only go backwards, thus his frustration.

Occasionally in the last week or so he’s begun to use his legs only a little. There has been no forward motion, but he’s perched on his toes and hands and rocked. Ever so often he’s actually been on hands and knees rocking, but still no forward motion. We root for him and cheer him on. He looks at us like we’re ape-people and then collapses under the weight of his own body.

We’re getting closer. I feel like we’re less than a week away from the first crawl. My fear is that he’s going to do it at the babysitter’s. I really hope he holds out until he’s at home. You feel like you miss so much just being at work everyday. Luckily he’s only teethed on the weekends, so we’ve been able to see those things sprout. But crawling worries me. I guess we’ll see.