Lifting and Carrying Children

As Arthur’s post on carrying your baby and toddler says, it is common for parents to injure themselves or have nagging soreness while doing the hard physical work that is required with caring for young children.

There are a few issues to consider for both yourself and your child.  As parents, we need to use safe lifting practices to look after ourselves and we need to carry our child in ways that promote the development of their motor control. As a mother of three, I know how often we just do something the quick way, or the times you can’t do a safe lift because you are grabbing a child to keep them out of danger, or they are throwing a tantrum and you find it challenging to practice safe lifting habits of keeping the “load” close to your body when arms and legs are flailing in frustration from the toddler.Nevertheless, we can face that those times happen occasionally and we do our best to try and do things in a better way every other time. Remember if difficult behaviour is a common occurrence, behaviour management strategies might be the way to go. Toddler Taming by Christopher Green is a great book, and there are many other resources out there. Your maternal health nurse is a great person to turn to for advice.Find your local centre through your local council. www.whitehorse.vic.gov.au www.manningham.vic.gov.au

So, back to lifting and carrying…here are some pictures of ways to hold your child to promote strengthening of certain muscle groups required for your baby to get moving.

CARRYING

To start your baby needs to get head control and you can see how these positions encourage holding the head up. As babies get older they start to use the trunk muscles to tilt the body and keep it up straight. This means parents don’t have to provide as much support, and we can move the support we do give, lower down the body.

Lifting

Remember that you do not stand over your child and bend your back to reach down to them on the floor or cot or pram to pick them up! Bend your knees to get down to them, kneel on the floor, then put one foot forward to push yourself up while holding your child close to your body.

Come in and see us for further advice and information.We have  brochures to help you put good lifting and carrying into practice everyday with your child.Take care of your body, and come and see us if you have those niggling aches and pains!We can help you strengthen your body and prevent sore backs.

Contact us on 9877 7304 to seek advice on carrying or lifting, or make an appointment to improve your back pain.