The Fussy Baby

My husband and I definitely struggled in the beginning of parenthood. It was just a really messy equation:

baby born 3 weeks early + postpartum depression + being far away from family = stress

I felt like there had to be something wrong. I knew it shouldn’t be this hard. No one told me it would be THIS hard. What were we doing wrong? Was it colic? Did Gerrit have acid reflux or an allergy to something I was eating? Why wouldn’t he sleep?!

It wasn’t until a few months (and SO many books) later, that I found our answer: we had a High Need Baby. We were struggling so much with sleep with Gerrit in the first few months, that I was literally buying every sleep book I could find on Amazon. I bought books that suggested cry-it-out, I bought “gentle” sleep books, and then I bought what ended up being my favorite sleep book: The Baby Sleep Book by Dr. Sears. While reading this book, I came across the term High Need Baby. And it sounded so much like Gerrit. I started feeling like maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe I wasn’t the reason why parenting Gerrit was exhausting and difficult.

After reading Dr. Sears’ sleep book, I went ahead and ordered The Fussy Baby Book as well. It was so comforting to read about other people going through the same things we had gone through or were going through. Without meaning to, I feel like friends and family made me feel like Gerrit’s behaviors were my fault. I held him too much. I nursed him to sleep too often. I took naps with him and often would bedshare at night. I didn’t give him a pacifier so he didn’t know how to self-soothe. But maybe it wasn’t me after all! I feel like I was just doing what I needed to do to survive. All the things I did for Gerrit was for me too: I needed rest and so did he. He was very needy and demanding, and that’s just his personality.

So what is a High Need Baby? Here are the 12 features that Dr. Sears highlights. I’ll just touch on the ones that are very apparent in our little guy.

Hyperactive
As Gerrit started becoming more awake and aware of his surroundings, we started to see this feature all the time. He was rarely still. His legs were always kicking, and he just seemed “tense” all the time. When I saw other babies just peacefully observing their environment, I was astounded. My kid was never peaceful like that unless he was passed out cold! Even when I held him, he would arch his back like he was trying to jump down and explore.

Andrew says he gets this from me, haha. I also cannot just sit and relax. I’m constantly needing to do something when I’m “relaxing.” When I lay in bed before sleeping, I do logic puzzles. It’s like I need to tire my brain out or something. And when we watch TV in the evening, I’m also meal-planning for the week or crocheting, or researching something online. Andrew also says I’m always tense. My muscles never seem to relax, even when I’m getting a massage. So I guess even though Gerrit definitely looks like a Kiel, he got his Momma’s crazy energy!

Draining
Oh yes. Definitely this one! I keep telling myself that it will get better as he gets older, but that’s not true at all. As he gets older, the ways he siphons off my energy just changes.

When he was a newborn, he was quite literally always in my arms. He wouldn’t sleep unless I held him, and sometimes it seemed like he nursed around the clock. I felt like I was just stuck on the couch all day long. I rarely cleaned. I was happy if I got some laundry done (although it rarely got folded). I was so so so thankful for all the meals people brought us in the first few weeks, because I had no time or energy to cook. And when those meals stopped coming, dinner was often very quick, often processed food that was thrown together at 10pm!

Now that Gerrit is 8 months old, he is draining in a whole different way! He is obviously awake a lot more than he was as a newborn, and he wants me to play with him nearly all day. I’m so proud of him when he will sit and play by himself for 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there. Usually he is trying to climb me, pull my hair, or give me a dental exam (lately he is fascinated by our mouths and teeth!). He is constantly wanting to explore and go, go, go! He has the army crawl mastered, and he scoots around the house so quickly.

While he still wants to be held all the time, it’s much different. He doesn’t actually want to be held in a cuddly sense. He wants to jump on my lap, bounce around while I sing, or reach up and pull my hair out of the ponytail. Or he wants me to help him walk around the house (my poor back!). When I set him down? Unless something instantly distracts him, he quickly crawls over to my feet or my lap and tries to crawl up on me.

Andrew has given me one of the best compliments when he commented, “I don’t know how you stay that energetic with him all day.” You know, I don’t know how I do it either! I don’t drink coffee anymore for fear that it will make Gerrit sleep even less. And I probably only get 5 hours of interrupted sleep each night. I feel like I’m constantly going, and I am over the moon when Gerrit takes a long (anything over an hour) nap. That’s my only downtime. If you miss my blog posts, try to convince Gerrit to take longer naps! 😉

Feeds Frequently
Eh, yes and no. We really struggled with breastfeeding in the beginning. I had way too much milk, Gerrit struggled to keep up with my fast letdown, and we both were frustrated over all. His feedings were often short and therefore frequent. He comfort nursed to sleep for nearly every nap and bedtime. Because of his frequent feedings, it was impossible to set any type of schedule for this kid. I had to force myself to get over the idea of “feed every 2-3 hours” and just whip out the boob anytime he seemed to want it.

Now? He’s closer to the “every 3 hours” feeding. He nurses before every nap, before bedtime, and during any night wakings. When he gets hungry between naps, I usually have to lay down with him to get him to take a proper feedings. Otherwise he would much rather play. But playing when hungry just makes for a cranky baby!

Demanding
Yes. Gerrit is very demanding! Once he got past the newborn stage, he really didn’t cry much. It was replaced by fussing and whining. Anytime he is not occupied or distracted by something, he is letting you know with his whine. Now that he is mobile, he will follow me around the house, whining until I pick him up! He has now learned the intentional cry too: he will start crying if I am not responding quickly enough to his whining. From Dr. Sears’ site:

These babies convey a sense of urgency in their signals; they do not like waiting, and they do not readily accept alternatives. Woe to the parent who offers baby the rattle when he is expecting a breast. He will let you know quickly and loudly that you’ve misread his cues. The concept of “delayed gratification” is totally foreign to infants, it must be sensitively and gradually taught when the child is developmentally ready to learn it.

It’s easy to feel like Gerrit is manipulating me or controlling me, but I know that he’s just frustrated. He can’t tell me what he wants, and when I offer something he doesn’t want, of course he’s irritated. I would be too! Thankfully, I’m getting better at knowing what he wants, and it’s usually some undivided attention!

Awakens Frequently
If you know me at all, you know that this is Gerrit to a T. We started really struggling with Gerrit’s sleep around the time he turned 3 months old. It was a long process to get him down at night (sometimes an hour long battle), he refused to nap unless I was holding him, and he woke up at night constantly. All the books I bought? They were telling me how much sleep he should be getting a night (11-12 hours… which NEVER happened), and how the things I was doing (nursing him to sleep, rocking him, patting him, etc.) were just sleep props that I was going to have to eliminate if I wanted him to sleep better. Only books promoting attachment parenting encouraged me to sleep with him and to continue nursing him to sleep because it was NATURAL.

Did you know that it’s normal, natural, and healthy for babies to awaken frequently at night? So please stop pestering new parents with the question, “Is he/she sleeping through the night yet?” I felt like Gerrit was abnormal for the way he slept. Even after reading study after study about how he WAS normal, I still struggled with it! Here we are with an 8 month old who still does not sleep through the night. Usually he wakes up 2 or 3 times for a quick feeding before sleeping soundly for another few hours.

Unsatisfied
This was much more the case when Gerrit was a newborn. I could never tell if he was hungry, tired, overstimulated, understimulated, gassy, wet… even when all of his needs were met (or so I thought), he would cry! So what did I do? Usually I kept trying to nurse him. I figured he had to either be tired or hungry, and the boob would help with both of those! But when it clearly wasn’t helping, I usually had to hold him and walk. I’d walk around the room singing, or I’d bounce him while talking about nonsense. I would recite every little nursery rhyme or counting song I could think of. Sometimes I could put him in the Moby wrap while doing these things; other times he struggled to get out of the wrap, so I had to just hold him. Put him in the bouncy seat? Ha, you are kidding right? Once in awhile I could get him to sit in the bouncy seat for 10-15 minutes while I cooked or cleaned something. But that was still with me singing and making frequent eye contact.

Unpredictable
Most definitely. In the beginning, I was obsessed with tracking Gerrit’s input/output down to the minute. He had lost a lot of weight when he was born (normal) but also struggled with jaundice, so the medical staff was pushing me to feed, feed, feed. And with my oversupply and strong letdown? Gerrit was seriously struggling to eat as much as he needed.

Anyway, after he started putting on weight (like crazy!), I started trying to find a pattern in his feedings. I would scour my notes for any rhyme or reason to explain why some days he nursed every 2 hours and others he nursed every 30 minutes. I started also tracking his sleep. I mean, if there was no pattern with his eating, there had to be one with sleep, right? Nope! It was all over the map too! Books assured me that even if there didn’t seem to be a pattern, there probably was some predictability to Gerrit’s days. Trust me, if there was, I would have found it. I started making charts that color-coded different parts of his days since I’m a visual person. Still nothing.

Now at 8 months we are actually getting into a schedule. It’s a loose schedule; it completely depends on Gerrit’s mood and how his sleep has been that day. I would hardly say that Gerrit is predictable now, but I guess it just makes my life a little more exciting, huh? 🙂

Can’t Put Baby Down
I feel like I already touched on this one, but this is very much a feature of Gerrit! He was constantly with either Andrew or me when he was a newborn. It was such a relief when we could get him to go to sleep at night. He was tightly swaddled in his bassinet at the foot of our bed with a fan for white noise. During the day, he was practically an extra growth on my body. I wish he had loved the Moby wrap, because I would have worn him all day!

He still had his moments with this now, usually when he’s very tired, but he’s getting to be much more independent. And when I’m not super frustrated, my heart warms a little bit knowing how much he loves to be near me.

Not a Self-Soother
This was very true in the beginning. We were big followers of Dr. Karp’s soothing techniques. Gerrit needed all of it! The hardest part was the sucking step, because he didn’t take a pacifier. It’s hard to bounce/jiggle a baby while nursing when nursing is difficult!

Gerrit has improved so much since then! He will sometimes go to sleep all on his own, and I’m still always impressed when he can do this. I still nurse him to sleep about 80% of the time, but if he awakens a little when I lay him down, his eyes just flutter and he gets himself comfortable. It’s amazing compared to what we used to deal with!

Separation Sensitive
Oh boy, YES! This one has definitely shown itself in the past couple of months. He definitely struggled for awhile with separation at night after we moved him to his own room (just after he turned 5 months old). We really needed to move him though, because sharing a room with him was becoming very tense! We had to be quiet as mice after he went to sleep. And when we did go to bed? I swear, he sensed my presence! He started sleeping better once he got used to his own bed and own room.

During the day, we still deal with this though. If he’s well-rested and fed, I can leave the room while he plays for short amounts of time. At the end of the day when he’s tired? He pretty much won’t let me out of his sight. Even if Andrew is trying to talk to him or play with him, he is focused on knowing exactly where I am. I’m often stuck holding him at the end of the day just so he isn’t fussy until bedtime.

So there you have it! Gerrit is my High Need Baby. I love him so much, but he is definitely not an easy kid! You might say I’m obsessed with him, the way that I try to figure out a good sleep schedule for him, and the way I am constantly looking for new ways to entertain him or pique his curiosity. But I think that’s just what comes with having a High Need Baby.

Gerrit is my smart, energetic, crazy boy. There are days when I wish I had an “easy baby.” There are nights when I wish he would just sleep straight through the night. But maybe I would be bored with an easy baby. And I absolutely love how calm and content he is when he nurses at 2 in the morning. I have come a long way with him, and I know I will appreciate his unique personality more and more as he gets older. For now I’m just loving my little guy the best way I know how.

Do you have a High Need Baby? You just go ahead and message/call me to vent as much as you want! I only made it through the hard days by reading blogs about fussy babies and messaging other parents who had gone through this. If you are one of those parents, THANK YOU! You truly helped me get though some tough times.