Babies

All of my children as babies have been completely different. I'm sure there are a lot of factors that help the situation; experience or lack of, exhaustion, and level of panic which I think drops by a factor of 2 for every child you have.

Carly was the biggest baby I had ever seen, at 10 lbs 2 oz, I'm pretty sure most people haven't seen a baby that size. I remember taking her home, the exhaustion, and the pure joy she gave me. She never slept through the night (not kidding) until shortly after I took Tanya home from the hospital almost 18 months later. Carly rarely cried loud enough to be heard in a separate room. She started talking at a normal age, and had all of the normal milestones. As she got older, it was clear that Carly was going to have to do everything for herself. Not because we did it for her, she was just an independent kid and wanted to do everything for herself. For example, Carly was about 4 years old she asked me to show her how to tie her shoes. So I did, she watched a couple more times and then took her shoe into her room. About 2 hours later, she ran out of her room and showed me that he could tie her shoes.

As Carly started preschool, people were having trouble understanding her. We had a speech evaluation through her preschool in the spring of 2004. They suggested she get some speech therapy when she started school in the fall. As fall came around, Carly's speech matured naturally. When she saw the speech therapist for the first time, she told me Carly was doing well and she didn't need to have any services.

Tanya was such a wonderful blessing, but a little bit of a surprise. At 9 lbs 2oz, she was smaller and had none of the issues Carly had as a large baby. She nursed well ( I breast-fed all of my babies for at least a year). Tanya slept in our bed also while I was nursing her, until her first birthday. Tanya from the time she could talk was so funny. She had the greatest facial expressions in the world. She could and can still crack you up just with one look.

I enrolled Tanya into the same preschool as Carly when she was 3. We had most of the same tests and she needed speech therapy as well, for the same reason. She had speech therapy until she started Kindergarten.

At this point, the two girls were so well behaved. We had no problems bringing them into a restaurant, stores, or any gathering. We never had to put them in a play pen after they started walking. They never ran off on us when we were out.

Then came Eden. I remember when Eden was born, she was my smallest baby at 8lbs 7 oz. I remember talking to Ed, my husband. we were so ready for her. We had already had 2 beautiful, fun, well-behaved children. When we got home from the hospital, it was business as usual. The first few nights were very long as with every newborn. After a week or two, things during the day were wonderful. Eden only nurse every 6 hours from her first day, sometimes she waited 8 hours. I remember this only because with Carly I had learned that babies need to nurse every 2 to 4 hours to keep their calorie count up. The nurse at the hospital was even surprised that she didn't seem to need to nurse more. We just went along because if she was gaining weight and growing she was fine.

Night time was a horrible for Eden even as a baby. She never let me eat (we still have lots of issues around this time) Eden would be up all night crying, and being parents of two other children we weren't afraid of letting her cry; we decided one night to put her into her bed after I fed her. We figured, if she was going to cry all night in bed with us, she can cry in her crib and we would check on her every couple of hours. To our surprise, it was instantaneous, she fell asleep. We were amazed! From that night on we did the same thing. She would sleep 8 hours at a time.

As I tried to adjust to life with 3 kids, I had made the decision to not hold Eden all day. As I put Eden down to play with the other girls, she seemed content. Even as a very small child she never wanted to be held. I would put her on the floor with some toys or in the little saucer thing. I even went so far as to use the playpen on our front porch put a shade over it and let her stay out with us while we played. She would play and sleep from time to time on her own.

Dinner time has always been a challenge for Eden. When Eden was about 9 months old I did the "normal" thing and went out and bought baby food and rice cereal. Every time I would feed it to Eden she would gag. At first I thought she was too young, so I waited. (My other girls have foods that they don't like, but always ate most of the food in front of them without a fuss) After a while of trying and waiting. I decided Eden had enough teeth to start eating real food instead of me forcing her to eat baby food. To this day, she has super texture issues with her food. What Eden likes (because this is the shorter list) bananas, most cereals, macaroni, rice, maybe a couple of others she will rarely eat like English muffins, broccoli, and grapes.

Eden hates to have her hair brushed, unless we distract her she will scream when you brush her hair. Eden like most kids hates to wear clothes, but most of the time it takes bribery and some screaming to get her dressed in the morning. Eden when we are home has to be touching me all the time. I can barely go to the bathroom and have sometimes had to take a shower with her because even if there are other people in the house; all she wants is me. Sometimes she is like this with her father, but as he works and has school, he isn't around too much.

I can't leave Eden alone in a room for too long without having to check on her. She has been known to destroy things like books, tearing wall paper off the wall, drawing on the wall, and trying to use finger nail clippers (she is obsessed with them) She is constantly climbing on things and falling off of things.

Don't get me wrong Eden isn't all bad. I am just trying to point out some of the issues I've been having with her. The reasons for all of this behavior is not because she is a bad kid. It's because she is has issues with her senses. Either they are over-loaded or she is confused, we are not sure but all of this is going to be answered.

I am slightly relieved as we are figuring this out that this may not be a result of our parenting, but a "short circuit" of her brain. I am grateful that we are going to find tools that will make her life and our life easier. My children are my favorite people and are so wonderful in so many ways. If they weren't different my life would be pretty boring.