I have been a little bit overwhelmed with the kids lately. I have felt my patience running thin, and my moods to be shallow. I know partly it has been my fault. These last couple of weeks I have been slacking on exercising, and my eating habits. My birthday brought me a ton of delicious sweets and goodies, and I TOTALLY indulged (oops)! Thinking back now, that has to be why I’ve been having mood swings like a change of a channel. However, I’ve been blaming it on my high maintenance son. Although, I do believe I’ve got a stage five clinger on our hands.
Last night, while my husband was at his football fantasy draft, (what kind of crap is that honestly) I sat down while Nolan was still happily crawling around at 8pm. I stared at him as he played with the doggy and was throwing his ball. Pure joy in his eyes. I caught his attention, and that little toothy smile just captured my heart. Earlier that day we had a lot of errands to do and driving isn’t Nolan’s favorite thing to do. The car seat is the absolute devil in his eyes, and he sure does make it known. I was frustrated most of the day, and that lead me to the loss of my patience. As I was sitting there watching him, I felt guilt rush over me. I always regret the way I’ve handled certain situations, but hey I’m only human right?
That leads me to this…I love the Huffington Post. It’s real, it has an array of information and news, and it’s limitless. This morning I got up and found this article that just completely eased my mind, because it fits my son to a T.
Dear Parents of High-Need Babies
Did you read it? Can you relate? If you’re the mom who is thinking, absolutely not because you have an angel of a baby who hasn’t wanted you to rip your hair out? Well then, I salute you. My husband blames it on us being a little bit of high strung people, I blame it on that sometimes too. We will never be, and just are not the people who are as calm as a cucumber. Not gonna happen. But when I read what she highlighted from The Fussy Baby Book, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
“One of the most difficult mental adjustments for parents to make is overcoming the fear of “being manipulated” and “losing control.” Once you make the switch in mind-set to believing that your baby is communicating her needs, not controlling your lives, thriving and surviving with a high-need baby will be much easier.“
Nolan has always cried, a lot. He’s shy, he’s fussy (that’s not sort of starting to diminish), he doesn’t warm up easily to new people, and he demands A LOT of attention. With a 4 1/2 year old, that gets challenging and at the end of the day a nice, large glass of cold beer just is needed to ease my mind, sometimes. Other times, I want to cry from guilt of not showing Ava enough attention herself, or guilt from like I said, my patience running thin. But that little blurb really hit home. “Not controlling your lives, thriving and surviving with a high-need baby will be much easier.” We are always saying we can’t do this, or can’t do that, or go here, or go there because of Nolan. Always worried he will make the situation so much more stressful and unenjoyable. Then again, maybe we just have an over communicative child? One that just really, really, needs more than the other, and that I’m okay with. He’s a sensitive child, always has been in an array of needs and I feel like maybe we just need to embrace it a little more, and be OKAY with it.
It won’t be like this forever, at least I pray it won’t be. Ava is the complete opposite, she’s needy but not in the way of Nolan. She is very self-sufficient which helps me a lot, but she doesn’t stop talking from the moment she wakes up until the moment she’s asleep. Which is amazing, and fun in so many ways, but also very mentally exhausting. Especially with a fussy baby 95% of the time tugging at my leg. But here is to EMBRACING WHAT IT IS, and learning as a mama, to give those special needs to each of my babies. It’s a challenge, an every day learning curve, but what isn’t with motherhood?
Do you feel you have a high-need/high maintenance baby? What have you done differently to help you cope?