My husband had been prompting me to get out of the house for some exercise with the baby for weeks. Now that the baby was 7 weeks old, I had run out of excuses for both of us to stay in. What's more, I was starting to get a slightly scary case of cabin fever. Maybe it was finding the cordless phone in the refrigerator that did it, but my husband was calling home a lot, asking what I was up to and if I'd been outside yet today.

It was the mailman who finally did it. As I answered the front door for him so he could deliver yet another new baby gift to us, we discussed the weather.

"Beautiful day, isn't it?" I said, cradling my fussy newborn and trying to be a good neighbor and smile in my sleep-deprived state. "Yes, it is!" he replied. "And you both should be out in it!"

He was right. It was a perfect end-of-summer day in Chicago: cloudless, breezy and about 74 degrees. I decided it was time to break in the new stroller and go for our first outing as mother and child.

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