Southern California dad

Djjubbajubba · August 2013

My son is to be born early October. I want to take him to the beach right away and let him see and feel the ocean(just his feet of coarse) because it will more than likely, be a major part of his life. Any feelings?

LuckyDad · August 2013

You can certainly take a very small baby for a nice stroll along the boardwalk. But before three months or so they're probably gonna treat having their feet dipped in cold ocean water as pure torture.

Basically, up until a certain point, they can barely see or sense anything around them. I guess my feeling is it's nice to take them to experience that nice ocean breeze in their warm stroller, I would at least wait til they can support their head before you go dipping them in the cold Pacific Ocean.

Wulfgar · September 2013

My son was born in early June and we took him to the beach (Lake Erie) that July when her extended family vacations together for a week.

Southern California from what I understand is just south of the really cold water so I don't see a huge issue with it. If you lived in the Seattle area were at the most the water temperature gets up to 55 degrees at the height of the summer I would say no.

Djjubbajubba · September 2013

Well, the average is around 70. So it's not really warm. Lucky, thanks for that input. Maybe I will wait a few months.

Wulfgar · September 2013

The support their own head comes at various ages. For my LO, he was looking around the hospital room from the start with decent head control that only got better. My wife's aunt and uncle's latest foster child couldn't support her head for roughly 3 months.

LuckyDad · September 2013

Wulfgar said:

My son was born in early June and we took him to the beach (Lake Erie) that July when her extended family vacations together for a week.

Southern California from what I understand is just south of the really cold water so I don't see a huge issue with it. If you lived in the Seattle area were at the most the water temperature gets up to 55 degrees at the height of the summer I would say no.

The ocean here rarely gets above 65 degrees.

I mean, it's not gonna hurt the kid to have their toes dipped in. You just might have to deal with a screaming baby after

bklyndad · September 2013

FWIW, we were advised to keep the lights low and our DD in a relatively quiet environment in our bedroom at home for the first couple of months if possible. We live in Brooklyn, NY, so the "quiet" part wasn't really an option, but we did keep her close to home and tried to limit sensory input. We wanted to reveal the world to her as slowly as possible as everything seems to have a huge impact.

At five weeks we took her on a road trip to visit my mother and ended up taking her to the beach in my hometown in Florida. It was nice to be able to take her into the Gulf of Mexico with me on the same beach where I first discovered the water, and she loved it. She was near 12lbs and chubby, the water was warm and calm and we all had a great time. Lived in LA for six years and I don't think I would've dipped her in the Pacific, though maybe the feet would be ok. It's worth noting that newborns can't properly regulate their own body temperatures in the same way that we do, so cold water might be a real shock — or "pure torture" as someone above noted.

Full disclaimer: She's 5mos old now, we're currently visiting family in LA and she's absolutely getting her feet dipped this week.

Southern California dad

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