Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Finding Peace with the Term "High Needs" Baby

I always grab one of those "parenting" or "childhood" magazines they have stacked at the pediatrician's office; I figure it's free and bound to have some piece of valuable advice in there somewhere.  I picked one up last week when I was there with two sick kids...I just remembered about it and got around to flipping through.  I came across an article on the "high needs" baby; I quickly scanned and then I actually turned back to the first page and read word for word.  Here was a pediatrician writing about how his fourth child, their first girl, was a completely different baby from his previous laid back, easy-to-please boys.  She needed to nurse constantly and needed to be held just as often; she was happy in a carrier/sling but miserable when put down.  I felt like I was reading a description of my own new baby.  Except now here was a doctor describing his own parenting experience and how he and his wife (after stressing out over what they were doing "wrong") threw out all the rules and the "shoulds" of the parenting books to accommodate her needs; they decided to call her a "high needs" baby instead of a "fussy baby".  I reread my recent post of my own "fussy baby" and it turns out he was right: when I think of her as "high need" instead of "fussy" and stop focusing on how much she is "difficult", I feel myself relax...just enough to let my shoulders drop.  So as I sit here with my baby asleep in her sling and my left shoulder slightly strained from the weight of her, I just tell myself, "she's a 'high needs' baby", and I'm giving her exactly what she needs.

1 comment:

  1. I actually read that article and it was a good piece. Better to read that then to listen to friends tell you what you "should" do.

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