"high needs" in vs out

tonight, i was talking to a friend about how brady is about 8.5 months old and he's at the point where he's been out about as long as he was in.  i said something like "the strange thing though is that pregnancy was such a breeze and it just flew by and these last eight and a half months have felt like ffffffffoooorrrreeeevvvvvveeeeeerrrrrr."  don't get me wrong, i love my kid, but holy cow, it's been a really, really long 8.5 months."  my friend has a difficult baby like brady so we can relate.  but tonight i just keep thinking about that.  so i finally did the math.  turns out, today exactly, brady is as old as the number of days i was pregnant (well, kinda... the first two weeks of pregnancy are a freebie because the moment you conceive, you're already considered two weeks along... but whatever).  let's be honest here that being pregnant was way easier than actually taking care of a baby.  and i really loved being pregnant so we can also be honest that being pregnant was also frequently more enjoyable than taking care of a baby.  but, still in complete honesty, i anticipate the next 8.5 months to be way more awesome than the previous 17 months... so there.

brady has not been an easy baby at all.  in fact, according to this article about the 12 features of a high needs baby*, brady is as "high needs" as they come.  apparently "high needs" is the politically correct term for that kind of baby.  i read this article and it was as if someone wrote that article specifically about brady.

like this...

Along with their unpredictability, these children show extremes of mood swings. When happy, they are a joy to be around; they are master charmers and people pleasers. When angry, they let everyone around them feel the heat.  

"When he is happy, he is the happiest baby around, but when he is angry he is the worst baby around. He is still that way, sunshine and smiles, anger and daggers. He has no middle emotion." 

The child's unpredictability makes your day unpredictable. Do you take him shopping and risk a mega tantrum when his first grocery grabs are thwarted, or will this be a day when he is the model shopping cart baby, charming everyone at the checkout counter?

i mean seriously!  how many times have i called him bipolar?!  that's why!  he only knows the two extremes of emotion.  i've always said "he's never just quiet, he's only laughing or crying.  thankfully, this is not the case anymore.  well... not as much.  he's still very much bipolar (although thankfully the percentages have shifted and he's now happy and laughing far more than he's fussy and crying) but he's really evened out into a pretty well adjusted kid!

but that article describes his newborn days so perfectly.
1. "intense" - like how he screamed for the first three hours after he was born and every nurse that came in commented on how loud and angry he was.  and they sent us home with five or six of those green pacifiers.  with abigail, we were sent home with zero pacifiers.  brady, they just kept throwing those our way.
2. "hyperactive" - basically, his body didn't have the ability to relax.  his whole body was always flexed and tense, back arched, squirming and wiggling.  i know now that it was from the pain of reflux but holy cow was it exhausting to try to hold him.  and my whole body would ache after trying to feed him because i was trying to contort myself to keep him latched.  i remember sprawling out after nursing him, my whole body completely spent.
3. "draining" - i think of this more like everyday he would completely suck the life out of me.  he took everything i had to offer, and still wanted more.  sucked me dry until i literally had nothing left to give.
4. "feeds frequently" - with abigail, she refused to nurse more frequently than every four hours and it was hard for me to imagine when other people told me their newborn liked to eat every two hours.  with brady, it was like he hated nursing but wanted to do it all the time.  at the height of his difficulty (thankfully for me, while my mom was in town) brady was two weeks old and would nurse so frequently than in a single hour, i couldn't tell you how many times he'd eaten.  even now, i nurse him about every 2.5 hours (when he wakes and before he goes to sleep), plus give him solids.  and he puts down a TON of food.  lunch today was almost an entire avocado, almost an entire pear (abigail got a few bites of each), and oatmeal cereal with a hard boiled egg yolk mixed in.  for a kid barely on the charts.  i'm realizing now that he just requires more food, and more frequently.  thankfully, feeding him tons during the day has directly correlated to longer stretches of sleep at night.  i think the kid was just hungry.  really really hungry.
5. "demanding" - like the article says, it was never a request to be held or be fed, it was positively demanded.  if i had a dollar for every time i said "i feel like a slave to my child."  he was truly a slave driver.  constantly cracking a bull whip.  and he sometimes (wait for the "unpredictable" bullet point) still is.  when he wakes during the night with a dirty diaper and i try to change his diaper before i nurse him, you better believe he is going to scream bloody murder during that entire diaper change... right into that baby monitor.... which i'm sure christopher appreciates.  so now i nurse him on one side, change his diaper, and then nurse on the other side before putting him back in his crib.
6. "awakens frequently" - i actually don't have that many memories of this because i could never get him to sleep in the first place.  but i do know that even the very slightest thing would wake him up and that he wouldn't transfer from my arms to a crib or anywhere else and that his naps were super short and his night time sleep stretches were frequently only an hour.  so umm, i guess i do remember this part after all.  but really, before i started him on zantac... he never slept.  awake for hours and hours and hours on end during the day.  and i remember so many sleep deprived nights where brady "slept" in the moses basket next to our bed and i could go three hours straight just putting a binky back in his mouth after he'd spit it out and cry.  i was doing that about every 15-30 seconds... FOR HOURS.  all. night. long.  then maybe we would sleep for 30 minutes.  but then it was the binky game for a few more hours.  and then back to day time when i was just up and bouncing his crying self all day.  i remember finally looking at the clock one afternoon and thinking, "how could it be?!  it can't be this late in the day!  he most recently woke up before noon!  that was four or five hours ago!"  if he does poorly in school, i am going to attribute it to his severe lack of sleep during those formative newborn days.  i couldn't figure out how to follow an eat play sleep routine when he would constantly eat, never play, and absolutely downright refuse to sleep.
7. "unsatisfied" - how many times did i cry (with brady) in frustration that nothing i did was working?!  i could try every trick in the book and it was just not enough.  no matter how swaddled, bounced, binkied, nursed, etc. that baby was... it just wasn't enough.
8. "unpredictable" - go back and read blog posts from the early days if you want examples but basically, the only thing constant... was change.  the same thing never worked twice and my mom frequently referred to this challenge as brady's "secret combinations."  trying to figure out which combination of things and in which order... next to impossible.  next to "bipolar," "unpredictable" is actually the word i used most to describe him.  brady's like a box of chocolates; you just never know what you're gonna get.
9. "super sensitive" - brady always noticed even the slightest change in lighting or temperature or sound or the way i was holding him.  he was definitely easily bothered and being around him was like walking on eggshells.  i remember my mother in law coming over and, seeing me holding him, saying "well, he doesn't look too fussy right now!" as she smiled at him.  just that she made eye contact with him and smiled at him sent him in full hysterics.  unpredictable and very sensitive.  the times that i took brady to therapy for his arm, the therapist always noticed how perceptive he was to sounds.  she would comment on it that he obviously noticed a sound from the hallway... normally something i didn't ever hear or notice but the therapist caught a ton of those at every appointment.  also, if i was holding him, i couldn't speak in anything above a whisper or he would start screaming.  you wouldn't really think so, but this was hiiiiiiiighly inconvenient.
10. "can't put baby down" - it wasn't just that he needed to be held.  but he needed to be held by a human, that was standing up, and in motion, that would offer a variety of bouncing, rocking, etc changing on a dime, depending on what brady was in the mood for.  a swing wasn't enough, and neither was a bouncer.  and a sling wasn't either.  none of those things can change every ten seconds.  so even though i had one of the most gorgeous newborns to ever grace this planet, i have so few pictures of it because i could never put the kid down.  although the few times it happened, i took a million pictures.  my mom really got in on it too.  "quick!  he's not crying!  take a picture!"  if he could be put down for 15 to 30 SECONDS without crying, my mom and i celebrated.  that meant that he wasn't crying in my arms, and that the crying didn't start even when he was out of my arms.  though neither of those things really happened more than three times a week.  but ohhh, he was so gorgeous.  he still is, but it's pretty rare for a new baby to be as beautiful as he was.
11. "not a self-soother" - i remember the doctor asking me how brady was sleeping and i said something like "i can sometimes get him to sleep if i double swaddle him (in this very particular way with certain blankets and certain pj's) and have it be really dark and hold a binky in his mouth while cradling him in my arms and bouncing in this very particular way while it's absolutely silent except for me making really loud shhhh-ing noises but then i can't put him down or stop doing any of those things or he'll instantly be awake and screaming again.  and i remember being so proud of that until my doctor made a comment about him being picky about his sleep environment.  ha.  this goes back to him not wanting a swing or a bouncer or anything else (although he did do very well with a carseat when it was in motion)... he needed a human... and about fifty other things, all part of the secret combination, to be happy not miserable.
12. "separation sensitive" - if by some miracle, i could get brady to be content in my arms, he would immediately go into full blown panic mode with even the slightest change (walking on eggshells much?) occurring that might indicate that i was about to leave him in any way.  if my body tensed in a different way, he would sense that i was about to place him in his crib/carseat/swing/bouncer/someone else's arms and he also learned to recognize his bedroom and dark rooms in general to the point that if i had him quiet and content in my arms and i walked upstairs, he would start crying as i stepped over the threshold into his dark bedroom because he sensed that i was about to place him in his crib.  even now, he's really great playing independently, but does best when i'm either always in sight or never in sight.  if i have him playing in the great room and i'm putting laundry away or cleaning around the house or doing anything that requires me to go from room to room, frequently coming and going from his sight, he's going to freak out and fuss the whole time.  it's like every time i leave he thinks i'm never coming back.  DUDE!  I ALWAYS COME BACK!

so as difficult as a brady was as a baby, i am grateful it has made me so appreciative for the kid he is today.  he's got his fair share of fussiness but he smiles so so much and it is so easy to get tons of those real deep belly laughs out of him.  people always comment on what a happy baby he is and i typically just smile and say "he's come a long way."  i know people don't think twice about it when i say that, but for me, it's special.  he really has come such a long way.  as a mother of just abigail, i would have looked at my current self with pity like "your child nurses how often?!  and still doesn't sleep 12 hours at night?!  and needs a binky 24/7?!"  but my experience with brady makes me grateful that even though he still nurses frequently, it is enjoyable for both of us.  and even though he doesn't sleep 12 hours straight at night, he's only waking up once and often has an 8 or 9 hour stretch in there... getting over 12 hours total.  and even though he has a binky in his mouth more often than not... he is happy!  forget the secret combinations... binky = independent, happy baby.  it's straight forward and we love it.

i really love this kid.  he has taught me so much and really, he is the most gorgeous, laughy kid everrrrrr.  raising him is like continually unwrapping a present and he's only getting better with age.  i'm so excited for all the days we have ahead of us.

*i found this article through this blog post... which really could have been written by me, it soooo perfectly described my own experience.  like word for word. almost... there are some minor exceptions.