Measuring Up – 1

Jessica walking Amanda to school.

As I was working on my last post “Some Things Take Time,” I began to ponder these next two posts on measuring up. It’s such an important topic that I took my time writing this, wanting to make sure that I communicate it as clearly as possible.

Does Your Child Measure Up?

Most of us have seen charts that measure a child’s developmental stages from infant to toddler. These charts help us as parents to know when our baby should be rolling over, sitting up on his or her own, crawling and the like. We need to be informed, because we spend more time with our children than the medical professionals do and we might notice something out of the ordinary that they never saw.

It’s important that our children get the professional care that they need, but that is not what these posts are about. They are about addressing the kind that parents do with one healthy, normal kid against another. Pride, not the interest of the child, drives this kind of comparing.

Let me use a short scenario. Dad takes his son Jimmy at age 2 ½ to his very first day at playgroup. While there, Dad meets the father of another boy named Johnny who he finds out is the same age and has a birthday in the same month as Jimmy. Both dads are standing proudly by watching their boys at play. The boys run up to their dads, telling them excitedly about something they had been playing. Johnny is speaking in full sentences, but Jimmy is not yet able to. Up until that moment, Jimmy’s dad had thought his son was a bright spark, but now he begins to wonder.

What would you say to Jimmy’s dad? I’d love to hear from you, but I might not respond to comments on this post as there is more that I want to say on this topic in “Measuring Up – Part 2.”

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Living with a Colicky Baby



Living with a colicky baby. This is a photo of baby Amanda.

I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on the topic of colic. I would, however, consider myself a veteran on living with a colicky baby. Out of my four kids, all of them came with colic. I tried different things like changing my diet and over the counter remedies, but nothing really helped. All four of my babies were often unhappy when they were awake, and sometimes even when they slept. I’ve looked at other people’s babies that lie with their eyes open, smiling up at the ceiling and I envy them.

The first step we took with Amanda’s colic was to introduce probiotics (good bacteria) into her stomach. She didn’t get better, so I switched from breast milk to soya milk for two days. When that didn’t make a difference, we took her to see the doctor, hoping that prescription drugs would do the trick. The doctor gave her something for her cramps, but the medicine caused her to stop having bowl movements. That was worse, so we had to stop giving it.

Infants are meant to sleep several times in the day, but Amanda went through several months during her infancy where she battled to sleep at all during the day. If she fell asleep for 10 minutes, that was something.

If you have a colicky baby, find someone who can take him/her for an hour or two so that you can have a much needed break. Make sure that someone will love your baby even if he/she cries a lot. And, by all means, try the safe remedies and see the doctor if you feel it’s necessary. Just remember, when you think it will never end, “this too shall pass.”

I couldn’t beat the colic in my babies’ lives; only their growth over time could do that. I don’t miss their colicky days, but I enjoy all of my kids so much that it was worth it.

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