The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five. Martha Sears

mother”, who hovers over the child and anxiously responds within a millisecond to the child’s every whim. This is unhealthy for both mother and child. The mother’s needs for intimacy are being met by her doting over her child, and the child uses the perceived neediness to control the mother. In extreme cases, the child is crippled by not learning self-management skills. This parent needs professional counselling.

hyperactive

      This feature of high-need babies, and its cousin, hypertonic, are directly related to the quality of intensity. The term “hypertonic” refers to muscles that are frequently tensed and ready to go, tight and waiting to explode into action. The muscles and mind of high-need children are seldom relaxed or still. “Even when he was a newborn, I could feel the wiry in him”, one mother related. “She hated being swaddled”, another mother volunteered. Most infants, even high-need ones, welcome being wrapped in a blanket, worn in a sling, or draped over your shoulder to mould into the contour of your body, but there are some high-need babies who seem to shun containment and physical restraint. They stiffen their limbs and arch their backs when you try to hold them, and they are frequently seen doing back dives in your lap, turning even breast-feeding into a gymnastic event.

      Parents, remember that, like all the words used to describe high-need children, the term “hyperactive” is not a negative tag. At what point a normally active child becomes a hyperactive child is a judgment call. Calling your busy toddler hyperactive does not mean he will be burdened with this label forever, or that a school psychologist will someday tag him “hyperactive”. This term just describes how your child acts, without making any judgment about whether it’s good or bad. Hyperactive in an infant or toddler is not a disorder, it’s a description.

      “Hyper” is often in the eye of the child-watcher. Activity level is relative to the company the child keeps. Place an intense, creative, enthusiastic child in the midst of a group of more reserved children, and the doer gets tagged “hyper”. Also, the activity level of the child depends on the setting. A child may play quietly in the comfortable, known environment of his own home, yet be frantic and undirected in a playgroup full of strangers.

      “There’s no such thing as a still shot”, said one photographer-father of a high-need baby. “His motor seems stuck in fast idle”, another father commented. These motor traits are part of the baby’s personality. They may be hard to live with at times, but this restlessness is not necessarily a negative trait. Many highly creative, world-changing people were labelled hyperactive as children.

draining

      High-need babies extract every bit of energy from tired parents – and then want more. Though parents use the term “draining”, it’s not an apt description. What you give your baby doesn’t go down the drain. Perhaps “siphoning” is a more accurate term, because what you are really doing is transferring much of your energy into your baby’s tank to help her thrive. You will need to muster up as positive an attitude as you can; try to think of these draining days as giving days. This will help get you through those high-maintenance early months.

      Babies take the fuel they need from you without considering whether they leave anything behind in mother’s gas tank. The seemingly constant holding, feeding, and comforting leave little energy for your needs. Experienced mothers learn to operate in what one woman calls “the mother zone” (like the Twilight Zone); you feel a bit fuzzy, somewhat sleep-deprived; you simply function in low gear for a stretch of time. It’s a season that passes; and while you’re in it, try not to fight it or resent it.

      communication, not control

       One of the most difficult mental adjustments for parents to make is overcoming the fear of “being manipulated” and “losing control”. Once you make the switch in mind-set to believing that your baby is communicating her needs, not controlling your lives, thriving and surviving with a high-need baby will be much easier.

      Instead of feeling sorry for yourself that you didn’t get enough sleep, just don’t expect as much from yourself that day. Of course you’re not completely rested – you are the mother of a baby who needs you. Time spent in the mother zone is good for you and for baby. Ease up on yourself and you’ll be easier to be around. You’ll be happier getting less done. Other tasks can wait, but baby can’t.

      Many mothers seem to have an internal energy gauge that magically brings in more fuel just as the tank nears empty. There will be days of incessant holding with no breaks. But just when you feel you can’t cope with another day of giving, you get a second wind, and suddenly you can relax and enjoy your baby’s unique personality blooming. Perhaps baby even senses mother’s breaking point and backs off a bit. There probably won’t be any days off, but some days will be less difficult than others.

feeds frequently

      You will soon learn that feeding is not only a source of nutrition, but also an easy tool for comforting, not only because the skin-to-skin contact makes the breast a nice place to nestle, but also because the baby can easily regulate the flow of milk. Studies show that babies who are fed frequently, as needed, cry less than infants who are fed on a more rigid, parent-controlled schedule. In cultures in which babies rarely cry, as documented, for example, in Liedloff’s The Continuum Concept, infants usually breast-feed twenty or so times a day. Researchers have attributed the mellowness of the babies in these “higher” cultures to the effect frequent feeding has on the overall organizing of the baby’s biological systems. This number of feedings sounds incredible to us in our Western culture, but it’s really not so strange when you consider that in these cultures baby is worn on the mother’s body in such a way that he has easy access to the breast. A feeding in this case may last only five minutes, rather than the thirty to forty-five minutes a baby takes to fill his tummy when fed only six or eight times a day in a more controlled feeding arrangement.

      the “velcro” mother and baby

       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