…People with Children
I am almost embarrassed by how Craig and I would sit back and tease our friends about their different parenting styles. Some would jump at even the tiniest whimper from their little ones, urging their spouses to drive faster so that they wouldn’t have to endure a meltdown in the car. Others were so liassez-faire that we wondered if they knew they even had a baby as they left our house, infant in tow, at 1:30AM after a party (you know who you are, and you know I love you). Craig and I would talk about what kind of first time parents would we be. Would we jump with every “meh” out of our baby’s mouth? Would we let ourselves get all worked up and flustered at all the crying? After all, it didn’t bother us to hear our friends’ babies cry, why should ours be different? We thought we’d be somewhere in the middle, pretty laid back but not neglectful. Keeping our cool, letting our baby do his thing, but making sure we watch his cues, tending to his needs. Well, after spending a day with friends who have three kids, one only a few weeks younger than Aleck, we realized we have become the super sensitive, frantic, we can’t go anywhere, we can’t do anything, sit in the back seat next to the car seat so he doesn’t cry type of parents. This realization was a major bummer.
When did it happen? Was it right away or at some point did we just get really uptight about all of this? When did we decide that life had to end everytime Aleck made a peep? I mean, if you have three kids you can’t be there at the instant each of them calls for you unless you’ve spent your $50K and upwards on those clones you ordered. So what happens then? Do they learn to calm themselves down better? Do they learn to only scream when they really need to? What would happen if we didn’t go running and grab Aleck with every peep that came out of him? I know I certainly want to try. Maybe I’ll do it in stages. Wait until he’s fully crying, not just complaining before I go to him when he’s in his crib, in his swing, or in his bouncy seat. I know to an extent, when I’m alone, I very often have to do that anyway. I mean, I need to eat, I need to clean my nursing gear, put on clothing and even, gasp, go to the bathroom(though I’m waiting for a baby carrier that allows me to wear him while doing that too). But when Craig and I are together I know we probably over baby him, potentially setting the stage for a needier baby.
But he must be a different baby. It can’t just be us, right? We have always been pretty laid back people, how did we change overnight? I was watching this woman on the Today Show who published a book called, “When My Baby Dreams”http://milasdaydreams.blogspot.com/, where she created these amazing scenes around her sleeping baby while she napped on the floor all over her home. The only way I can get Aleck to nap during the day is in his swing. He used to nap in his bouncy seat and car seat but that stopped after he got his cast and splint, when he was just 4 weeks old. The other place he likes to nap is in someone’s arms, but now only after lots of singing, bouncing, shushing, with a pacifier in his mouth, and sometimes I now have to stroke his forehead or the top of his nose to get him to release himself to sleep. My mom calls it, “giving up the ghost”, and he’s had a hard time with it ever since he started his treatments.
On Tuesday there’s a chance we are going to meet a new Aleck Persin as he gets his final cast removed from his leg and if all goes well with the ultrasound, the OK to be done with the hip splint. I’m so excited to see his right leg, I hardly know what it looks like. One thing I know for sure is that it’s going to be interesting. I was looking at those toes tonight and the nails need clipping, but the skin looks like it might be peeling in there and it might take some time before it resembles a “normal” looking leg. We’ll find out soon enough. And if I thought he hated the splint, not sure how he’s going to feel about having his feet braced together 23 hours a day. Clearly we will be bidding adieu to the “leg of self expression” which I will miss a lot. It’s definitely given us great laughs through this journey and I think I will, in the end, always refer to his left leg that way. It’s also going to be interesting to see how the muscles in his right leg have and haven’t developed. Now he can lift that casted leg up higher than his arms to inadvertently kick the toys hanging above his gym mat, so will it be a bionic leg? And what is it going to be like for him to sleep with those braces on? Will we be total zombies come Wednesday morning?
In other news, Aleck is still working hard on reaching for those toys on his mat with his arms, and he’s done it a few times on his own. It’s not a regular occurence yet, but I hope it turns into one. I so desperately want him to know that he can use his arms and hands, albeit in a different way than others, and I don’t want him to get discouraged but rather remain curious and empowered. I ordered him some touch and feel books online, anything to help keep him interested in his extremities. It started with “Pat the Bunny”, and now we have “Tails” for him to play with and he seemed to be interested in what I was doing with his hands. I find I’m looking for books and activities that will help get him interested and motivated to use his upper body, his arms and his hands. He certainly loves watching me play “Itsy Bitsy Spider” above his head. If you have any suggestions for other hand centric books, games, songs, etc, please feel free to send them my way. Anything I can do to make moving his upper body part of a game or play time, the more likely I feel that he will be interested in doing it. My goal is to make as many of his PT and OT activities into part of his daily funtime so that he’ll keep it up and so will I.
On Friday Aleck was fitted with what will be his second set of splints, these are for stretching while the others are for playing. Unlike the ones he got from Children’s, these do a great job of separating his thumb from the rest of the fingers, and even more importantly they are easy to get on. A gradual stretch versus the extreme stretch that his first set attempted to do, he doesn’t let out a peep when you put these on him, but when he wakes up from a nap with them on he’s one pissed off little dude. That’s because as he wakes up he starts contracting his muscles again and it hurts him to be contracting against the splints. Heidi and I found that out with our first experience with splints as Aleck wailed his little face off, crocodile tears pouring down his cheecks. So now he’s got two sets of splints to use 1-2 times a day for about 20 minutes or more each. Our days just keep filling up with activities 😉
Wish us luck on Tuesday, hopefully we can say goodbye to the splint as we say hello to the brace!
To see Aleck hit the elephant rattle for the first time click on this link:
https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150510099452218&saved