Baby on Board

My wife has already committed much of her blog to having our son (now 16 months old) on board a boat, but I wanted to provide a bit of a view from my perspective. Here is the first of a short series of posts (maybe 3 or 4) about having a baby on board.

First of all, I will say that A. does the bulk of the work with our son. As I am off at work each day, she ends up with him as her constant companion during the day. This is what we had planned before having kids – we wanted to raise our own children. Not have them, then pass them off to a daycare or nanny to raise as is done so often today. It was a choice we made. However wonderful it sounded back when we were just taking about having kids, we never imagined how much hard, mind numbing work it would entail. A. is a trooper – she is doing a great job with L. She has the patience to provide the attention he needs now as he learns new things each day.

When we first moved aboard L. was 9 months old. At that age, he was just beginning to change from a baby to a little boy. He, of course, had expressions, and responded to tickles and moving things and was crawling, but was not yet climbing. As he got comfortable on board he began to do some serious exploring. The boat was the perfect place for him as down in the main cabin he was able to move freely around without us having to worry about what he was getting into (he was always in sight). Once he started climbing, things changed a bit. He quickly discovered that he could climb up onto the settees and from there onto the fridge where if he stood up, he could look out the companionway. This quickly became a favorite perch of his – looking out into the cockpit. The whole climbing thing made A. and I a bit uneasy at first as we were always imagining that he would fall. But he quickly demonstrated his natural agility and balance and we were able to relax our minds about it. He did fall a couple of times, but other than the surprise of landing hard, he never really got hurt. The next stage of exploration was to actually crawl out the companionway into the cockpit. You should have seen the delight on his face as he proudly looked back at us after performing that little stunt. Thank goodness it was winter by then, and we had the plastic cover over the boat. We allowed him to rove around the cockpit and play down in the bottom with his toys. He loved the freedom and the change of scenery. Soon it was off exploring up the sides of the cabin toward the bow of the boat. We were not too happy about this as that area is, well, our storage area – and not baby proofed. So we ended that part of his roving by blocking off the way to the bow. How long that will last I don’t know – he is already showing signs of being able to crawl over the boxes we put in place. A week or two ago I put up a net to block off the doorway to the outside so that we can have the door open during the day without L. being able to get out. (It’s getting too hot in the canopy during the day – especially when the sun is shining.)

When we first moved aboard, we did not have any real place set aside for L. to sleep, so we kept him up in the v-berth with us. I can say that there are pro’s and con’s to having your baby sleep with you. First of all, it is really nice for the whole family to be together – cuddling up on a Saturday morning with the boy poking around your eyes or nose, while giggling away is just plain fun. I think it was nice for him too. He would often reach out in his sleep to make sure you were there – sometimes leaving his hand on your face. On the other hand, I don’t think any of us really slept that well. L. would often end up sideways so that he could cuddle face to face with mom while digging his heels into dad’s chest. At first I thought that was cute, but when he began to bruise me, it wasn’t so cute. He also tended to roam around in his sleep, crawling over top of one of us or moving down around our feet. I can’t believe how much he would move in a night. Plus in all his moving around, of course he would end up banging his head somewhere – which produced more tears and crying than real pain. L. would then go back to sleep in about 10 seconds leaving A. and I to stare at the ceiling and wonder what on earth we were going to do to get a full nights sleep. Eventually, we designed and built at leecloth system for the port settee that is now L’s bed. We rig it up in the evening and put him to bed there when we go to bed, then in the morning it all folds up under the settee cushion. Works perfectly – we all are sleeping much better.