Monday, January 18, 2016

No One is Normal: Why You Shouldn't Fret Over Baby Standards

 
     Everyone knows being a new mom is not easy. Figuring out how to take care of your new baby, living on barely any sleep the first few months, hearing everyone tell you how they think you should mother, your baby and you trying to figure out the whole breastfeeding skill, and trying to keep your relationship with your husband civil with all the exhausting, new changes in your life. If that wasn't enough to scare you, there is the huge burden of baby milestones looming above your heads.
   We try to tell ourselves that every baby is unique and to not look at other babies of the same age and compare. Yet we parents love our baby so much and have this built-in pride of our child's "perfectness." I would say anyone is lying if they do not think their child is the 'best' when looking at other children, which I think is right in a way. MY baby is BEST for me. Not the best, perfect baby of the year, but the perfect baby for MY life because God knew to give me MY baby and built in me this searing love for him that is incomprehensible. Even after not saying thank-you and just taking, taking, taking, the first year of their lives, we moms still have this all-encompassing view of our children.
    The prayer and desire on my heart lately has been to turn my thoughts away anytime I compare Cedric to another baby. This is a daily multiple times a day prayer I must pray.
    Baby forums can be helpful for seeing the average baby milestones, but they can also be a real headache and stress-inducer. I know at the bottom of all the milestones they had in small print, "it's important to remember that babies all develop at their own pace." But they tell you all this stuff your baby should be doing and by the end you are either second-guessing your baby's mental abilities or thinking your child is the boss (because he or she accomplishes a milestone so soon). Then you see the little note at the bottom of the page about babies developing at their own pace and that's suppose to make all your feelings just disappear?!
    I am not saying that babies who take an extremely long time getting to milestones are perfectly fine. If it is months or even a year past significant milestones you really do need to get them checked out by their pediatrician, but I think being caring mothers it's hard not to jump right to the worst conclusion as each month passes by. A really interesting concept is the consideration of babies being so adaptable in different environments and cultures. A study done by the Department of Educational Sciences in the same city around mothers of different cultural backgrounds showed the difference in predictability of milestones:
    A total of 124 mothers from three cultural groups living in the same British city were asked to give the ages at which they expected their one-month-old infants to achieve three motor milestones. Jamaican mothers expected their infants to sit and walk much earlier than their English and Indian counterparts. The Indian mothers gave later estimates for crawling than those of the other two groups. The actual ages at which the abilities were attained closely reflected the cultural differences in expectations between the Jamaican and English mothers. Jamaican mothers were particularly accurate in predicting sitting age.
    So interesting. We really need to stop the whole standardization of each child, and try to really understand our particular child and change our perspectives to help them out their way. The benefit of the standard deviation is that it is something to bounce off of, but it really shouldn't be what you use to measure your child's development and health. I think Barbosa says it best:
       Cedric has been a frustrated go-getter from the beginning. I love how Parents.com says it:
"Temperament can influence motor development. According to a study by Campos and his colleagues, babies who were prone to frustration began walking two to four weeks earlier than other babies. 'Temperamentally, these babies were inclined to find a faster and more efficient way than crawling to get to where they wanted to be."
       Cedric has been one to always think he is bigger then he is. Which really can be a hard thing on him and me. He has marked many "milestones" early, but he just has one of those overly eager personalities. I have mentioned before I have one of those all or nothing attitudes, so go figure my child is the same way. Right now Cedric is 7 1/2 months, and hates that he is not mobile. He can only stomach about 5 minutes of tummy time (pun intended), which he needs to encourage him to learn how to crawl, but all he wants to do is stand. He has no idea how to walk yet, but he loves being a big boy and supporting himself on his feet. I keep telling myself, if he decides he doesn't want to crawl, so be it!
      One of the milestones he has had a really tough time with is his sleep. I HATED reading the baby forums about how 6-week-old babies can sleep "through the night" (6-8 hours in a row). At 3 months, he was still waking up every hour to three hours wanting to be fed. It was so hard sleep-deprived and reading how some babies really sleep like a baby (never understood THAT saying) and it was so disheartening. My husband Justin finally told me to stop reading those forums and pay attention to my individual baby. That was when I started really changing my perspective (or trying to ).
       It is so fun that I can just sit back and be surprised about the new abilities Cedric develops every week. At this young age, they are going through so much growth that I see him changing every second. One moment he was an infant, now I look at what seems to be a little toddler. They really aren't lying to you when a mother says all you have to do is blink and your child is 18. Yes, Cedric is only 7 months, but it flew by, and I know the coming years will too. So instead of comparing my child to any others, I want to embrace the unknown with Cedric and see where he takes us!
 
Can you relate to this internal struggle? Has your child developed at a different pace then what the 'norm' is? How did that make you feel?

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