Tag: Development

Child 2, Weeks 6 & 7: The Hunger Games

I remember way back when, in the dim and distant past, when Thing 1 was a few weeks old, someone – maybe a health visitor, maybe a friend – told us that kids have growth spurts at ‘the threes’ – three days, three weeks, three months, and three years old. Actually, it may not have been ‘the threes’. It may have been ‘the fives’. Or ‘the sevens’. Well, it was some natural number, but the point remains the same. At certain periods of your kid’s upbringing, they’re going to be putting on weight and increasing in height at levels previously unseen, and as a result, they’re going to be HUNGRY, INSATIABLE BASTARDS.

For us, this hit during week six. Thing 2 was unbelievable. He was constantly hungry. He’d breast-feed for half-an-hour on each side then, instead of flopping off into a milk coma and sleeping for two hours, he’d be angsty and unsettled and root and root for another shot of milk. We’d make top-up bottles of formula to try and calm his rampant hunger, of which he’d take 3, 4, or 5 fl. ozs. He’d guzzle milk and formula at such a rate that his brain didn’t even get chance to receive the signal from his full, full belly that he could stop his fevered sucking, and he’d just continue until his steady possetting signalled that we should pry the bottle from his lips. Maybe, just maybe, after all that milk (and a hearty burping session) would he settle long enough to succumb to sleep. Until two hours later when he’d wake up in another hunger frenzy and the whole cycle would start again.

And this was reflected in his weight gain. He put on over a pound a week for a couple of weeks, slowly moving up the centiles. And he looks better for it, too – he now better fills his crinkly little baby face quite nicely. As we hit the end of week seven, his hunger has abated slightly now, and we’re back to a slightly more normal routine, although we still use a bottle of formula (usually 7 fl. ozs., most of which he drinks) if we really want to knock him out for a sleep, in a way that a breast-feeding session doesn’t. I ‘eagerly’ await the next growth spurt for more of the same ‘fun’, although I have no clue whether that’s going to be a five, six, or seven months…

The other major change Thing 2 has exhibited during week 7 is he’s finally giving something back, after seven weeks of selfishly taking our time, attention, money, and food with nary a nod in our direction. Yes, the kid is finally starting to smile. Now I’m not going to fall into the trap that naive new parents (and I include my five-years-ago self in that group) do when they mistake a grunting, gurning, attempting-to-push-out-a-turd grimace for baby’s first smile. No, these were genuine smiles, which is heart-warmingly awesome. Coupled with the odd bout baby babble, which certainly makes a pleasant change from the constant whinging and crying, having Thing 2 in our lives is finally starting to feel like a two-way deal. Even my Dad, the bestest father and grandpa the world has ever seen (in my most biased opinion), admitted that he found babies quite dull and uninteresting until they actually gave something back1. And I can see that. Whilst I obviously love Thing 2 unconditionally, some of the early work can seem incredibly arduous and thankless when you’re dealing with an mewling, pink lump. But when you start getting reactions from them, especially ones that can be construed as positive, everything changes. It’s now a game for the whole family, a task taken on with relish by Thing 1, to try and find the stimuli that make Thing 2 smile. Is it a tickle under chin, or a rub of the forehead? Or is it entirely random? Half the fun is finding out.

So weeks six and seven are all about development. The kid’s growing (and hungry with it), but not just physically – emotionally, he’s starting to respond, and to attempt to interact with us, in his own basic way. I’m trying to appreciate these early days, where the babbling is quiet and infrequent, as if he’s anything like his big brother, we soon won’t be getting a break from his incessant jabbering, singing, joke-telling, and nonsense talking from daybreak through to the evening. Mmm, stereo babble.

  1. Sadly, my Dad didn’t make the arrival of his second grandson, passing away only a couple of months before he was born. There’s precious little that makes me more sad than the thought of Thing 1 only having had five years of his Grandpa’s time, and Thing 2 never even crossing paths with him. ↩

Competition Schmompetition

There’s something about being a parent that brings out the competitive nature in people. Whether consciously or subconsciously, a whole heap of comparing and contrasting goes on whenever a critical mass of parents gather. At an early age, it’s about whether your child has started weaning before or after other kids. A little later, it’s potty training – there’s always a kid in your group that is walking its way onto the potty at 18 months, when your kid is still exploding in a shower of piss and poop all over itself at two-and-a-half years. At school, there’s always a parent that can’t wait to tell you the advanced level reading colour band that their child is on, when your child still can’t spell her name.

We’ve encountered this with Junior. There have been plenty of areas throughout his first five years where, if those areas were compared in isolation against other kids, he’d have been seen to be behind. He didn’t walk until 18 months; in fact, he didn’t even really crawl until he was 12 months. He couldn’t be bothered – people brought him things which meant he didn’t have to move. I can appreciate that level of economy and efficiency. There was a long period of time where, even though he was potty trained, he still wet himself, mostly due to him being very much involved in an activity and not being mature enough to know to break away from that and go to the loo. This took a long period of time to overcome. At five, he can neither ride a bike, nor swim. Many times we’ve been at the park practicing on our stabilisered steed and a kid perhaps half his age has zoomed passed, training wheel-free, usually helmet-less (don’t get me started), whilst we, once again, get into an argument about him not trying hard enough to pedal. There are kids in his class whose writing we see on the classroom walls that could be the hand of a 10 year old. Perfectly formed, perfectly sized, perfectly aligned. Junior still can’t get his ‘b’s and ‘d’s the right way round, and tends to end a sentence at least 5 cm lower down the page than where he started.

Solely taking this things, and comparing Junior to his peers, he would seem to be developmentally at the back of the queue. Especially when parenting is jam-packed full of people who are never more happy than when comparing. But there’s two things to remember:

  1. The things your kid doesn’t do very well is only half the story. There’re myriad things he does that would put him at the top or thereabouts when comparing him to other kids. Which you shouldn’t do because…
  2. Comparing kids is a terrible, and terribly inaccurate, imprecise, thing to do.

Don’t compare your kids. The window where kids learn their basic life skills – let’s say from birth to five – is such a small window in their whole life that to worry that your child is seemingly six months behind some other child is just nonsense in the grand scheme of things. Your child can’t walk at 18 months? Don’t worry, she will. Give it another few months. If you’re worried, go see a doctor. Otherwise, continue to guide her, and she’ll pick up. Sweat ye not, insecure parent. Your child can’t write his own name properly in year one, whilst his peers can? Relax, it’ll come. Practice with him, and he’ll get it. If you’re worried, speak to his teacher. If they’re concerned, they’ll help you out. If they’re not, you’re free to go.

There are so many things when raising a child that can be causes for concern, stress, and worry. Anything in the first five years or so that results from your child comparing badly against the development of one of his peers is not one of those things to get concerned about. Unless a health visitor or doctor or teacher is sitting you down and having the “We need to talk about Junior” speech then relax, you and your little one are fine, and it’ll all come together in the end.