The Pedestrian Life with Kids

As if parenting wasn't a marathon on its own, we decided to do it without a car. 

Of course we got our in-laws to pick us up from the hospital after having the baby. After that I thought it would be smooth sailing. Here are my initial thoughts:

Pros:

• this will help me lose my baby weight!
• healthy lifestyle example for the kids
• good for the baby too
• creating the sort of the world I want my kids to grow up in - with fewer emissions, living responsibly
• giving the frugal example to my kids

Cons:

• a tad slower maybe
• less motion sickness while walking
• more motion sickness when using public transport - buses and trains tend to make me more sick than cars

Almost 5 years later here are the updated listings:

Pros:

• it did help me lose baby weight and then a bit more which left me a bit thin and frail and open to every cold and infection (including mastitis - three times! Okay maybe this should be a con. It IS possible to lose too much weight and run yourself ragged.)
• healthy....ish
• living responsibly, smaller footprint
• giving frugal examples to the kids
• not having to strap in children into car seats - I mean seriously car seats are mind bogglingly difficult sometimes. They leap in the buggy and off we go! A lot less twisting and bending over shadowy carseats is probably good for my back.
• being able to pay more attention to my kids - when driving, you can't make eye contact and talk to your kid like on the bus!
• napping - both children can nap on the way to a destination or one child can nap while the other plays, rather than everyone being locked in the car for the duration of baby's nap

Cons:

• curbs - the city centre is better about having slopes for buggies and wheelchairs, these days in the outskirts we do a lot of lifting the buggy over tall curbs
• pushing a buggy makes your butt look bigger because of the angle you have to walk at
• the baby who wants to breastfeed ALL THE TIME - I know some people have a knack for slings where the baby can continually suck but I never managed that. Partially because in Edinburgh there is always someone looking down at you from a tall building so in a rural landscape, you could probably get away with it, but not in Edinburgh. Also if you walk an hour with a baby in a sling, things come undone no matter how carefully you set them up.
• everyone judging your parenting and life choices - seriously in a car no one can tell if you have two kids under the age of two but on the street you can not only see the condemnation in their eyes but hear the shocked murmuring ('Do you suppose they're twins?'...'Hasn't she ever heard of birth control?')
• When you are far away from shops and friends and your toddler announces he's hungry or thirsty, having eaten your cute picnic in the first ten minutes of the trip
• when it starts to rain and you forgot the rain cover
• when the wheel pops off the buggy after a three hour ordeal to the diy store to get a toilet seat, and when you go to take the toilet seat out it falls out of its wet cardboard packaging and scratches itself on the ground 
• your child gets pooped on by gulls
• your child gets sniffed or licked by passing dogs
• your child gets icy winds, sand, rain rushing into his delicate soft face, causing him to scream, and all the old ladies in the nearby bus shelter to laugh hysterically at you as you beat a quick retreat into the shelter and explain 'Och when mine were wee, I used to be known to walk backwards in this sort of weather!'
• breathing problems - this hasn't happened to my children, but other kids who seem predisposed to breathing problems seem to get more frequent flare-ups if pushed in the buggy. A theory is that buggies are at the level where all the smog and car emissions and dust, etc, are at their worst. One lady I met at a bus stop claimed that the reason modern kids have more outbreaks of asthma is because the old silvercross prams were much higher off the ground and less likely to expose the kids of bygone eras to low-lying gases and dust.
• cold - some children, particularly premature babies, are more susceptible to the cold. Even healthy children will have huge body temperature drops if you're out long enough - say on a three hour walk. You may be warm from pushing the buggy but the kids aren't! So wrap up and I mean socks, shoes, three layers, a hat, and something for their hands.
• kid's hands - always hard if the toddler refuses to wear gloves or mittens. I have been known to sew scratch mitts onto toddlers' shirts in the past. Or if the temperature isn't so bad, sometimes I allow them to keep their hands inside the cosy-toes.
• mud splashes - thinking of when waiting for a 26 bus and a different bus from the one we wanted, a 19 bus, wallowed into a mud-filled hole in the street and splashed my toddler and me from head to toe with greasy mud. It smelled like the worst city runoff and stained our clothing, buggy and cosy-toes permanently. 
• cyclists - generally a friendly bunch but when they cycle on the sidewalk which is illegal here, it's rather annoying not to mention downright dangerous with small children in tow
• storage - in a car, you can bring everything but the kitchen sink. Even in buggies with generous storage space, only 1/2 is really available since the remaining space is full of rain covers, coats, and other emergency items relating to the buggy. Some people carry around an extra buggy wheel for example. This means you are more frequently caught out without that one essential item (usually water, which is heavy, bulky and tends to leak - not my favorite thing to pack, or a third change of clothes or a bag to pick up the dog poo all over the children's playground or a towel. My kids always seem to choose the wet slides to go down or the biggest puddles to jump in, or the ponds at the parliament to fall in, so this is the one thing I always seem to be without!).
• kids who need a toilet when there is none around - and in freezing temperatures it's kinda hard to ask them to pee outside! With an audience.
• kids who announce they've wet their pants just after you leave whatever fun place you've been but when you still have 30 minutes before you're home - if you had a car, you could change them inside a semi-sheltered space, but a buggy is fairly exposed in terms of wind, rain and people staring at wee guy's privates. I once changed him in a shop behind some crates. When I got up I realize the security cameras were pointed straight at us. No one said anything though. Thank goodness for the British! A Parisian would have given me a stern lecture and the Germans would have marched me out to wherever they put homeschoolers.
• toddlers in a tantrum
• toddlers in a nosedive tantrum
• motorists - When I was a snotty 3-year-old I remember walking on the sidewalk nearest the road and Mrs. Walters, a family friend, saying, 'Don't do that, you might get run over.' to which I replied with 110% obnxiousness 'Cars don't drive on the sidewalk.' to which the wise Mrs. Walters replied, 'You never know where cars will go.' So then 25 years later, we got run into by a car when the kids were in the buggy and we were crossing the street! The kids were fine, the driver had been reversing and his mirror was broken and he paid for the buggy, so I don't think he's the worst person ever, but it was terrifying. I am officially sorry, Mrs. Walters, you were right. And Defensive Pedestrianizing was born. I now behave as if cars were an alien species bent on eradicating the human race.

I originally decided to raise kids without a car to lose my 'baby weight,' and for other reasons but I have since noted that anyone who raises more than one kid without a car for more than two years goes to phsyiotherapy. It destroys your body. Yes I burned off that baby fat but if you injure your back, neck, wrist, or leg you have no time to rest and recover. Even with a car, you might feel you have no reprieve and just keep re-injuring the body part. But without a car it's truly merciless.

If you want to push your kids around a city in a buggy for a year or two, I think you could get away with that but NOT if 

• you have pelvic girdle pain (particularly if you were planning to use a buggy board, which my friend's phsyiotherapist told her is the worst for your back)
• postpartum depression
• any serious recurring injury of back, neck, or limbs (having said that, I struggled with my left knee for years but it never bothered me while pushing the buggy until this week - so it just depends)

Walking with kids can be a great way to be healthy, save money and teach kids it's important to act on our beliefs like wanting to look after God's creation as good stewards. But there are definitely downsides.