Читать книгу The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five - Martha Sears - Страница 34

Tracy and her baby, Michael, seemed to be constantly attached. In fact, when Michael was one month of age, Tracy tagged him “the Velcro baby”. You never saw one without the other. When Michael wasn’t nursing at Tracy’s breasts, he was in her arms or in her sling. When Tracy worked about the house, she wore Michael in her sling, a scene she called “work and wear”. On particularly high-need days, Tracy said, “I seem to put him on in the morning and take him off at night.” When Michael wasn’t on some part of Tracy’s body, he was glued to Daddy. This baby was put down only for a long nap, when Tracy needed to attend to her personal needs, or when he grew up enough to demand some “floor time”. At night, baby and mother did not go their separate ways either. The pair slept face-to-face, tummy to tummy, nursing several times at night without either member of the pair fully awakening. Not all babies need this much intensive care, and not all mothers are comfortable providing it, but for many high-need families, this level of attachment works smoothly, especially when they realize that this high-maintenance stage does not last forever.

As a parent, you’ll put your hours in at one end or the other of the time your child lives with you. We personally would much rather put that time in when they are infants and toddlers than when they are teens. Our teens have not given us the chance to find out what it would be like to sit up all night wondering where they are or whom they’re with. But we can imagine this would be far more nerve-racking than being there for our infants and toddlers when they need us so much.

We live in a culture that is definitely at odds with this “primitive” style of mothering. And our babies cry a lot! It is a challenge to a Western mother of a high-need baby to find a lifestyle that both she and her baby can live with. And there must be a balance in feeding. Overfed formula-feeders can get fat, so using a formula-filled bottle as a constant pacifier is certainly not healthy or appropriate. The good news is, you don’t have to worry about over-breast-feeding, because the caloric content of breast milk self-adjusts to frequent feeding; when baby has just a brief “comfort-feed”, she gets only the lower-calorie foremilk. Besides, frequent breast-feeders rarely remain overweight, even if for a while some look like miniature sumo wrestlers. Studies show that the fat cells laid down by breast-feeding babies are quite different from those of babies fed manufactured baby milk. The fat melts away once baby becomes mobile. So how often should you breast-feed your high-need baby? As frequently as baby needs, yet not to the extent that it wears you out. There are other ways to comfort high-need babies, and it’s important to learn some of these alternatives.

We’re in harmony with each other. I nurse an average of eighteen times a day. I know this sounds like a lot of nursing, but there is never a schedule to it. Either she lets me know or I just start it. It always works out. Nursing is never a hassle or bother. It’s just second nature to me. I don’t even think about it or worry about it. It seems like we are always in harmony. We just nurse whenever or wherever Lindsey or I start it.