High Needs Baby

Dr. Sears invented this term and I feel like it fits my baby quite well. It's hard to mother this baby. She is so cute and I really do love her. She is also the saddest Baby I've ever known and the most demanding. I wish I had gotten a picture of her at 2 or 3 months when she was sad. It was the most heartbreaking look. So, naturally, I couldn't bring myself to take a picture instead of comforting her.

The first few months were so physically draining, but when I calmed down so did she. The next few months were like bliss. She slept for a stretch of 6  hours at night, I could put her in a bumbo seat near me and get my dishes done during the day, and she could stay in a wet diaper for more than 10 minutes!

Now, at 8 months I feel like the pendulum of exhaustion has swung clear over to the emotional side. This post is really just a reflection on my experience and figuring how to go from here.

Sometimes I feel really judged about my parenting approach. I feel like others think I made my baby this way, or that I'm too soft and my baby is ruling my life - like I'm a slave to my baby. The truth is, I totally have affected my baby and I've pretty much dedicated life to her right now. Perhaps my extreme anxiety for her welfare caused her to learn to be anxious about life. Perhaps my anxiety was a just response to her sensitive and demanding nature. (She cried so much when she was born that I had a hard time believing she was ok when she was calm.) My younger brother's theory is that her birth was so gentle, everything after that was traumatizing. Who knows? It may be something altogether different. What God let me know is that she and I are two different people and we have learn to understand and love each other.  She came to earth as a real person with her own personality and probably her own expectations. As the child, she has to learn to trust and obey me, and as the mother I have to teach her how to trust me and provide the nurture she needs.

So, teaching a 6 month old baby how to snuggle may not be every mother's requirement, and that's OK. Children aren't meant to be clones and families are meant to last forever. Motherhood doesn't come in one size fits all. To a child, Mother is the world, and there is no comparison. 

A Personal Bill of Rights

Following a suggestion from Jodi Hildebrandt, (hyperlink) I have created my own personal Bill of Rights. This is to help me see more clearly my own personal needs and to recognize that other people have their own rights too, and I need to respect that.

Also, my husband helped me see that a Bill of Rights is not meant to enumerate every right, but to identify the most important and basic rights and to establish idea/pattern.

1. I have a right to be loved by God.

2. I have a right to love Good and to worship Him.

3. I have a right to love and serve others.

4. I have a right to hope for and exercise faith in seeking the greatest good.

5. I have a right to have my own experiences and emotions and to learn from them.

6. I have a right to allow others to have their own experiences and emotions and to learn from them. (Hyperlink 2 nephi 2:16)

7. I have a right to learn and develop my talents.

8. I have a right to keep my Covenants.
9. I have a right to expect my husband to keep his covenants, and to provide for me and our children. (Hyperlink)
10. I have a right to raise my children in truth and righteousness. (Hyperlink)

Someday in the future, when I'm typing on the computer and not my phone, I'll add in hyperlinks. 

A Title

Today I decided that I should keep a blog. Then I remembered that I have this one I never use! What's more, I already titled it A Happy Lot - perfect. 

Where to begin? When I was little, my mom would sometimes day she needed to go talk to her therapist. She would then hide in her room until she had worked through whatever it was. I later learned that meant she was going to write in her journal, calm down, and reason through her emotions and the situation. 

I feel like a blog is a public journal hidden away for everyone to access. (I wish I knew how to make that sentence an aporia.) Anyway, I need some space to reflect and share my thoughts without interruption or advice, so I can work through things. And then, maybe the things I've learned can be helpful to someone else who may stumble upon them.