Still learning after all these years
Wednesday, July 14th 2010 @ 1:32 AM
Just when you think you’ve got the hang of this bringing-up-baby thing, you realize you don’t. Or at least, that's what happened to me.
I thought I knew how “my babies” go. They talk very early and walk very late. While I fill pages and pages with their cute word mispronunciations (starting well before they hit their first birthdays), I wait with a bit of anxiety for them to attempt to take a step on their own.
Yep, that’s how it goes with my babies. Or so I thought, until my new baby, my fifth. You’d think by baby number five I wouldn’t have too much left to learn. But this super-cute little creature is almost 15 months old, and she does not say one recognizable word. Well, maybe one, but you have to be very creative to catch it. Most of the time, she babbles, or just says “uh uh uh" and points to things.
I coach her, "Say ma-ma-ma-ma-mommy!” She mouths it along with me, but doesn't verbalize it, and never initiates it on her own. She'll mimic inflections and all kinds of silly sounds, she has a great sense of humor, and she understands everything—but she seems determined not to speak a word. Is she really my baby? Well, of course—just a whole new person with a timetable of her own.
I try not to worry about her. I know that she will develop at her own pace, and she is moving (inching) along in the direction of speaking. But I’m used to having conversations with babies of this age, and with her, I’m still knee-deep in the guessing-game stage. It’s hard!
Honestly, I don’t expect her to be walking, though. “My babies” never walk at this age. But they do try to stand alone... although my new little one rarely does. She crawls, goes up stairs, and cruises just a bit, but standing seems far off. Meanwhile other toddlers her age are running around! You would think after five children, I wouldn’t compare. And the truth is, I never used to. So why is it different this time around? It’s hard to say.
She’s also a teeny-tiny thing. One of my other kids was also tiny at this age, but somehow I never worried. So why, if I’m such a seasoned, been-there-done-that mother, am I worried about this latest tiny thing? I look at her oh-so-dainty (don’t call them scrawny) arms and legs and her petite face and it’s hard not to say, “Grow already!!”
She “fell off” her growth curve. Her doctor is concerned and has done tests. I’m usually impervious to worry about this kind of thing; as a natural optimist, I tend to assume things will work themselves out just fine. But I took the doctor’s advice to supplement with vitamin D to correct a deficiency, and I’ve ramped up my ongoing efforts to get my baby to eat some actual food. I’ve been trying to get her to eat (or drink) since she was ten months old, but for all intents and purposes, she’s still exclusively nursing. Clearly, she needs more.
“My babies” always eat plenty of food by this age! But not this baby.
So I’m finding that after being a mother for 16 years, for the first time I am worrying, “Is my baby developing normally?” I didn’t worry when one of my kids didn’t walk until almost 20 months old. I didn’t worry when another was a super-skinny toddler. So why is it different now, with baby number five? Are the facts of her development any more worrisome, objectively speaking? I don't think so. She is most likely somewhere on the continuum of normal, just on the slower end of the curve. But on a gut level, I just feel different. Maybe in my ripe older age, I’m becoming more protective and more cautious, less willing to wait things out and hope for the best. Or maybe my instincts are alerting me to something not being quite right.
In any case, this is an all-new experience for me. And I’m learning (again, because I know I have learned this lesson many times in many different ways) that there really is no such thing as being an expert when it comes to parenting. Over many years of being parents, we can develop skills and emotional resources that we will use again and again, and that’s very helpful. But experience can also be a pitfall, when it leads to assumptions about what is normal and expected—if not for all children, then for “my children”—and those assumptions turn out to be wrong.
I would say that if there is a way to be a parenting expert, it would be to let go of expectations, and to simply be present and tuned in to each child (and ready to intervene when needed) at every step along the way.
