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abnormal, age, alertness, babies, comparisons, development, mothers, normal, parenthood
Every now and then someone says something to me about young babies that goes right over my head.
For example, when Babby was small(er) they would give me strange assurances that I did not understand.
just under two weeks old
“Don’t worry, it gets much better when they get older. They don’t spend so much time unconscious and they get much more interactive!”
…More?
“Oh, flying with them this young is easy, because they still love their sleep!”
…They do?
“You can cut his nails while he is sleeping.”
…But then he wouldn’t be sleeping any more…
I had no idea what they were talking about. Babby has always fought going into that good night with all the rage of Dylan Thomas and spent all of his waking hours demanding constant interaction.
Then I saw a baby at a restaurant.
babby at 12 weeks old
Over Christmas, I left Babby with my mother and went to dinner with some friends.
A lady at the restaurant had a tiny baby girl.
She still had that floppy, wobbly, curvy look that new babies have, and her flimsy neck was carefully supported by her admirers as they passed her around.
She mostly slept or squinted into the middle distance and was about as interactive as a potato.
I felt like an experienced women at that moment. This lady had just entered the wonderful and exhausting world of motherhood, with her newborn and I felt worldy by comparison with my ancient twelve week old, who was so insistent on standing all the time that you couldn’t fold him, let alone cuddle him floppily.
“How old is she?” I asked the proud new mother indulgently.
“Nine weeks,” the woman responded with a glowing smile.
…
…?
…?!!
Babby at nine weeks old.
I just managed to prevent the look of shock from spreading over my features.
Nine weeks? NINE EFFING WEEKS? She was only three weeks younger than Babby was at the time.
This baby, at nine weeks, did not remotely resemble my baby at that age.
That was when the comments of strangers and the perplexing references made by other parents came rushing in at me, and this time they carried a different meaning of what “normal” might mean.
It’s such a flood of mixed maternal emotions when one surreptitiously compares one’s own baby to someone else’s. Everyone secretly wants to believe their baby is advanced, smart, more special than other people’s babies. But at the same time, no one wants to feel that their baby isn’t “normal”
…and there’s a fine line between “good different” and “BAD different”.
Looking at that dozy, uninterested, spineless nine week old, I found a little senseless pride that my own baby was so much more advanced (and I felt heartily ashamed for feeling proud of something so meaningless) but there was another emotion there, too:
I felt cheated.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore my baby. I miss him whenever he isn’t in my arms. I love his big smiles, and I am proud of huge eyes, and of his sturdy little legs, and his indomitable spirit.
But.
I feel like I missed a whole stage of babyhood – one where two month old babies are still floppy lovebugs who get passively passed around in public and can even go to a restaurant and sleep through the meal.
It’s better now. He can go to a restaurant without screaming. He sits and looks all around and grabs at the forks drops Sophie on the ground and looks to see where she went and then tries to eat the napkins.
But that feeling of envy keeps coming back, sometimes when I least expect it.
For the last three weeks, I have attended a “Baby Bonding Group” at the Women’s hospital where my shrink is. A girl there had a 10 week old. Guess what she was complaining about?
“I feel like I never get to spend time with my daughter. She’s only awake for a certain amount of time each day, and then everyone passes her around and when she comes back to me, she’s asleep again.”
…She is?
There was that feeling again. The feeling of jealousy. Of confusion. Of realizing that a mother with a baby younger than mine was experiencing things I had never experienced. Sure, there are clearly downsides to her experience. But it seems like hers is more… usual. More normal.
A friend of mine has a newborn baby, and has posted adorable pictures of him slumped over and sleeping in everyone’s arms, curled up like a sweet little bug and people were like “I love that stage!”
…and I realized that I never really had that. I tried to take pictures of him being all cute and curled up in my arms. But they never looked right.
10 days old
He was always holding himself stiff, and straight. The legs always dangled down, often stiffened like tent poles.
The cute Anne Geddes style pictures other people get of their baby adorable curled on a furry rug in the fetal position, or snuggled into their mother’s chest in a bug-like ball or cupped peacefully in loving parental hands… just never happened for me.
It’s not that he didn’t want to be held. He insisted on it. But he has always seemed to be in a battle. A war against sleep, against the environment, against his own body. Even when he slept, it was stretched out, or tightly swaddled.
Ever since he was born – even now – the first thing anyone says about my baby is
“Look at those eyes! He’s very alert for his age!”
Seriously. Every. Time. I was out with him yesterday. Three people told me that he is very alert.
4 weeks old and still damn well alert
I’m sure alert is good. I’m glad I have an alert baby.
“Has it occurred to you that he’s just very, very bright?” asked the leader of the post partum group when he was three months old. Sure, it has. Babby’s father is a genius. I’m sure my baby is bright. But my mother in law says that PH slept great as a baby, so there goes that theory.
While everyone else’s babies (geniuses included) were curled up all cute and sleepy, mine was alert. Alert and screaming, or alert and interactive, but always alert. I have sleep logs to prove it.
I’m happy. I’m happy with my son. But when I see small babies doing things mine never did, and I hear parents talking about things I never experienced, I feel a little sad, too.
It makes me wonder if I did something wrong. People in non-Western cultures have never heard of colic, and consider it strange for a baby to cry for more than a minute or so at a time.
WHY AREN'T YOU A BETTER MOMMY TO ME??
I carried my baby, I wore my baby (more so after my mother left) and I breast fed him on demand. But still he was always awake, always screaming. Could I have done something differently?
Is my baby born different or was I not satisfying some inner need of his biology?
I wonder… did I mess up my chance?
I never got that phase, either. I wrote a similar post recently, actually.
http://theseversons.net/?p=754
Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean your baby has THE AUTISM!!
I never got that phase, either. I wrote a similar post recently, actually.
http://theseversons.net/?p=754
Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean your baby has THE AUTISM!! But it’s part of that inevitable comparing process that so sucks. You seem to really get it already, which is good. It’s taken me ages. When Graham was little he was swaddled constantly, cried a lot, we never got to sit and cuddle with him much. I admit, I hope to have a second kid in large part to finally get my fix.
I have to admit, I’ve considered autism for Babby. I do think he’s intelligent, but lots of autistic people are highly intelligent, and as you know, it runs in my family.
But I mentioned it to the Bonding Group psychologist lady yesterday and she pretty much laughed at me. She pointed out that he was very interactive, constantly seeking eye contact, smiles back at people, talks to people, etc.
“He’s not autistic. He’s just a very active, very alert kid.” She said.
But still. Sometimes, you wonder, you know?
Yeah, I know. People always said the same thing to me. Even doctors. You watch, it’s okay, you’re the mom. Trust your gut. And no matter what it means, you get the fun of your hyper-aware babby. It is rather funny sometimes.
I hope no matter what that you get nice and comfortable with Babby. You seem much more connected and aware than I was at that same point, so props.
I’ll definitely keep an eye on him. Is there anything, looking back, about Graham that you noticed around 5-6 months of age? Anything he was/wasn’t doing?
Not a ton. He has always been high-maintenance, always had a fussy disposition. But when I look back at the videos he did have more interaction with us and more typical behaviors at that point. It’s around 9 months that I noticed decreased babbling and by 12 months there was decreased eye contact though I didn’t notice at the time. But it’s so specific from kid to kid, you know? Like everyone always comforted me about eye contact (which he still does pretty well, just decreased) but that’s 1 question out of the 23 for autism indicators.
When he’s 12 months if you still have questions you can start googling. But before that it’s almost impossible to tell what’s personality and what’s not. I still don’t know if his all-around fussy-ness is the autism or just him. Ah well.
Enjoy your intense little babby. And don’t worry too much.
Thanks, and I will, and I will try not to!
No, no, no!! You did not mess up your chance. Babby is who he is. You did everything by the book in that you followed your mama instincts and parented him (and continue to parent him) the way you wanted to and he is a beautiful, angry, alert, stubborn, happy and curious boy. We never know what kind of baby we are going to get. Yes, newborns do typically sleep alot and are awfully snuggly, but every now and again, a Babby comes along who does everything different from “the norm” no matter what we do and we are powerless against them. Let’s face it, the babies of the world are in charge. We’re just lucky they don’t have the body strength and good head control needed to actually rule the world.
LOL his first decisions would be
1. Show me the booba
and
2. Show me more booba
don’t get caught up in other’s babies…. your babby is your babby. he will continue to be an individual, and continue to be different from everyone else, as will everyone else…
He’s my special snowflake :-p
OMG, I totally felt like I got cheated with my second son. He was born at 11 lbs and 7 oz, so I basically had a 2 month old baby at birth. He still hit all of his development milestones when he should have (rolled over at 3 months, sat up by 6 months) but I never got that sweet little newborn to dress in newborn clothes or newborn diapers. Owen was wearing 3 month clothes right out of the womb and size 1 diapers. I bought some newborn cloth diapers that never fit his massive tushie. Now that he is almost 7 months old and wearing 9, 12, 18 month clothing I get stares from strangers who ask how old he is and I tell them 7 months.
I love my huge baby, but I wish he hadn’t spent his newborn time in the womb. I wish I got to snuggle with my newborn the other way!
That is one big baby! Poor you!
Oh, how I remember exactly that feeling – the shock I felt when I started to notice all the babies lying happily on their backs, idly playing with toys within their reach, while I paced the floor with Bub, jiggling and humming as he stood bolt upright in my arms, eyes wide open … ahem, yes.
And it was SO nice when I had the Pie to see how completely different she was, how totally herself. Even the very first day she was born, she snuggled her head into my chest and everything about her behaviour and body language was so much different and (yes) easier.
So no – it’s not something you did. And even if your boy turns out to have a tiny little bit of “the autism” (like Bub) it might not be so bad – Bub is thriving in the regular classroom, reading well above grade level, and in a lot of ways he’s an easier kid to handle than his sister, with an absolutely delightful, happy personality. I worried so much when he was a baby that this negative temperament was indicative of a permanent personality, and it really, really wasn’t – he is really very even-tempered, optimistic, and sunny today, and has been ever seen he really stopped being a baby. He just didn’t like babyhood all that much. Childhood suits him much better.
I’m glad Bub is doing so well!
I love your little guy, partly because he has so much personality. I don’t normally have the automatic “awwww – baby” reaction that some women do, but your son is awesome. I’m sure he would be awesome curled up in a hand or a flower too, but I think it’s also pretty cool that he might instead devour it. Or at least look a little like he might want to, and is planning the most successful way to go about it.
There is no point in particular to that comment. It just wanted to be said.
It was very nice to hear! Or, see, I guess. Damn you, figurative language.
No! You did nothing wrong! Every baby.is different.
Isaac never slept if he could help it, needed to be worn constantly and held his own head up in the hospital the day he was born. When we visited my mom’s house, which is painted in very bright colours and full of stuff, he’d get so overstimulated he’d cry and cry and cry – this went on for the first six months, until he started crawling.
I joined a mom-and-baby yoga class for kids under six months and was asked (!) to leave (!!!) because everyone else’s baby was content to lie on the yoga mat & watch their mothers posing for half an hour, whereas mine cried and screamed and then rolled over and started body-surfing toward the other babies.
Today, he’s a happy, articulate, bright, well-adjusted kid with tons of friends who reads at a second-grade level and does math in his head better than I do.
Enjoy your wee boy for who & what he is. You may never have one of those floppy sleeps-all-the-time babies. And that’s OK. They’re kind of boring, anyway. 😉
That is comforting! I suspect that crawling would cheer Babby up a lot, even though my life would become much more complicated. However, right now he’s so intent on learning to walk that there hasn’t been much progression towards crawling…
Isaac only crawled for about three months anyway – he walked at nine months. And while it did make life more hectic for a while, it was better. Right around the time he started walking was when he started night-sleeping for more than two hours at a time, too.
Here’s hoping Babby figures one or the other out soon, then!
Gosh, I don’t know if it’s temperament, the reflux or something else but I had a very similar experience. Alex is sleeping more at 20 months old than he was at 3 or 4 months old. I had that austism thought too after reading about the link with fussy babies. I seriously had a moment of panic when he would play on his playmat and not turn his head to look at me at all. I took him to the doctor and turns out it was Torticollis, which is basically a stiff neck. He was so jammed in the belly that he got a crick in his neck. He’s completely recovered from it now after having physiotherapy (baby physio!), but boy that was scary.
I had one other friend with a difficult baby, and the rest were cute blobs that slept all the time. We were recently discussing how much easier it is with our kids now, while our other friends are having more of a tough time.
I see newborns and I do not miss that stage at all.
Sure you might not have had a cuddly newborn, but you might just get a cuddly toddler who loves to give you hugs and kisses. I prefer the latter.
I did read that colicky infants often turn into more compliant toddlers. Maybe they get all their rage out early?
This is true of my Liam!
Awwww, Carol. *hugs*
It must be hard to feel you missed out on cuddles. Liam wasn’t quite in the same category as Babby, but he DID have colic and food intolerances and so we had a very rough go of it from 4pm till 10 or 11pm each night for a couple of months. It was hell at the time, and we certainly felt like we had been super unlucky to get a challenging baby. They’re all different, though. Jonah has been a pretty “easy” baby, as far as being more mellow, no issues like the colic, happy most of the time. But he still nurses several times a night at almost seventeen months old, and sometimes hourly from 3am on. That is really, really hard. The sleep deprivation is literally making me crazy at the moment! (On that note — be careful what you wish for! Jonah was going to be my kid who loved sleep! That’s what I told myself when I was pregnant, anyway, because I was having trouble dealing with Liam’s night wakings. Jonah’s been worse. Ugh. What can ya do?)
My point is, I’m not sure there really *are* easy babies. They’re all different and there always seems to be SOMETHING that can be hard. And even if they’re practically living dolls as newborns, they can be hellions as toddlers. (Or they can be sweet little cuddly three-year-olds but have anxiety issues that are a whole other kettle of fish to contend with. *sigh*)
You definitely didn’t mess anything up!! And it’s okay to feel cheated, too. Sometimes I think that “special babies” are only give to “special parents”, the ones who can handle them. It makes me feel a little better and helps me get through the tough times. Babby just needs YOU, and you’re doing a terrific job. 🙂
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