When Abby was born we joked that she wasn't done "baking". She spent the first few months of her life as mellow and calm as a baby could be. She rarely cried, she didn't make much noise or move around much. She was happiest swaddled and laying in her crib next to her sister. (We know now that her rhombencephalosynapsis would hold her development back quite a bit.) As time went on and it became obvious that she had "special needs" she remained one of the most mellow babies I had ever known. She had her moments and rarely slept but she was a very laid back baby. I loved that about her. I loved that in spite of pushing her to her physical limits daily she would smile through the whole thing.
I remember reading the literature on Rhombencephalosynapsis and smiling to myself about how lucky we were that the part of RS that we avoided was the behavioral and anxiety aspects. We were the lucky ones.
I think I smiled too soon. Over the course of six months (from about 3 until 3 and a half) we saw a different child emerge. One who was easily upset and ornery. She counted obsessively. She had tantrums for the FIRST time in her life ALL. THE. TIME. I spent sleepless nights crying at the thought of losing my baby. The sweet laid back smiler was replaced with someone I didn't recognize. She had become a VERY difficult child. I lost a lot of sleep in those six months. I also cried almost as much as I did when we first found out something was "wrong" with her.
Since then we have educated ourselves. We have talked a lot about things like OCD and anxiety and SPD and ADD. We have found the doctors and therapies and tools that we need to deal with her newfound issues.
What makes me have to laugh is the fact that when we were dealing with helmets and walkers and core strengthening we thought we had it bad. We had no idea that dealing with motoric issues would pale in comparison to dealing with "simple" behavioral issues. Who knew... ;D
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