Non-napping piranha
Jul. 18th, 2020 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halojedhaBedtime tonight is totally out of whack.
E's been doing their Magical Non Napping Child thing lately. They've got very good at resisting being slung when they don't want it. They didn't nap the day before yesterday despite being slung twice, breastfed in bed with rain noise, the whole caboodle. Yesterday we managed to get them into the sling and then they slept for an hour. Today, no naps.
They're going through a bitey phase. I keep having to withhold the boob, both to set boundaries and because I can't deal with the pain. When they get going they will claw and bite any part of me they can reach, not in anger, but with a sort of manic giggling. It makes slinging them impossible - they bite my arms as I'm trying to tie the wrap, banana backwards and lose their seat, and if I do manage to wrestle them in they start clawing and twisting my ears and neck.
I think they're teething, we're giving them calpol more or less every day and constantly offering teething toys, cold cloths, cold apple and cucumber, bits of bonjela, whatever else we can think of. But sometimes they seem particularly obsessed with eating ME.
(I never thought babies would eat MY face, wailed parent who voted for the Babies Eating Your Face Party.)
Tooth pain and biting feels nice, I guess? And I smell good to them, and they're testing boundaries or some such?
We've tried weaning them onto solids during the day - which works until it doesn't - pumping and bottle-feeding them instead, having Leo care for them, and all the distraction techniques we can think of. It's an ongoing negotiation.
The whole thing has jangled my nerves. I've literally involuntarily screamed with pain a couple of times and been left shaking and crying after hard bites on the nipple. It's exhausting trying to stay gentle and calm and soft and open, and not react by shutting them out. I find it extremely stressful to experience the strong impulse to violently get them OFF me, and draining regulating myself so I don't actually hurt them.
Naps help reduce the biteyness. We like naps. But naps don't always happen.
Today we tried the sleepy breastfeed, we tried the sling, we tried the nap routine with the singing and the rain noise and the lavender scent and the dark room and the breastfeed, and then the bottle milk when they were too bitey for boob. But no nap.
Then I had a work thing for a couple of hours. It was urgent and time sensitive - me anddenny, who has very limited availability, deploying new code, which meant breaking a public facing commercial website and fixing it again asap. I wasn't in a great position to stop once we'd started.
I heard lots of squawks and shouts from downstairs, and when I checked in via Signal Leo said they'd been teething and had just had Calpol. Then quiet. We were nearly done. Started to hear screaming again and it was a real effort to concentrate on work. E's getting more and more toddlerish with their sudden intense Big Feels if something is Frustrating or they Want something or feel Thwarted, so outraged shrieks of displeasure are a lot more common than they used to be. I figured if I got a message asking me to come, I'd come, but otherwise I'd press on and get the damn website back online.
So I did, and we did, and then I rushed downstairs to find Leo sitting on the kitchen floor holding a completely distraught child, who had sobbed themself into a state of utter wretchedness. They had been trying to get into the bathroom apparently, perhaps thinking to find me there, and then I wasn't there. Oh darling.
I scooped them up and cuddled them and talked to them softly and fed them, and they latched on and suckled in that heartbreaking pink, hiccupy way of a distraught baby. It was at this point 6.30pm, when we usually have dinner, followed by teeth brushing and books and bedtime routine and into bed by 8.30pm.
Reader, they fed until 8.30pm. I was nursing for two hours without a break for the first time since they had their tongue tie cut. They slept and fed and slept and fed and slept and fed. I read my book. Leo brought me food and beer and I ate and drank one handed. E's hot little head and body in my arms became damp with sweat, although they were only wearing a t-shirt and nappy. Halfway through they woke from a snooze Suddenly Very Sad again, but I got them back on the boob eventually.
They skipped their solid dinner entirely.
We had an hour of awake time, during which I desperately tried to go to the loo and brush my teeth and get both of us ready for bed while dealing with E's separation anxiety. Didn't manage to finish my teeth. But they are now, finally, after another bedtime routine and even more feeding, asleep in bed.
I've been awake since 5am and was hoping for an early night tonight, but it's now half ten and it's going to take me a while to calm down after all that.
E's been doing their Magical Non Napping Child thing lately. They've got very good at resisting being slung when they don't want it. They didn't nap the day before yesterday despite being slung twice, breastfed in bed with rain noise, the whole caboodle. Yesterday we managed to get them into the sling and then they slept for an hour. Today, no naps.
They're going through a bitey phase. I keep having to withhold the boob, both to set boundaries and because I can't deal with the pain. When they get going they will claw and bite any part of me they can reach, not in anger, but with a sort of manic giggling. It makes slinging them impossible - they bite my arms as I'm trying to tie the wrap, banana backwards and lose their seat, and if I do manage to wrestle them in they start clawing and twisting my ears and neck.
I think they're teething, we're giving them calpol more or less every day and constantly offering teething toys, cold cloths, cold apple and cucumber, bits of bonjela, whatever else we can think of. But sometimes they seem particularly obsessed with eating ME.
(I never thought babies would eat MY face, wailed parent who voted for the Babies Eating Your Face Party.)
Tooth pain and biting feels nice, I guess? And I smell good to them, and they're testing boundaries or some such?
We've tried weaning them onto solids during the day - which works until it doesn't - pumping and bottle-feeding them instead, having Leo care for them, and all the distraction techniques we can think of. It's an ongoing negotiation.
The whole thing has jangled my nerves. I've literally involuntarily screamed with pain a couple of times and been left shaking and crying after hard bites on the nipple. It's exhausting trying to stay gentle and calm and soft and open, and not react by shutting them out. I find it extremely stressful to experience the strong impulse to violently get them OFF me, and draining regulating myself so I don't actually hurt them.
Naps help reduce the biteyness. We like naps. But naps don't always happen.
Today we tried the sleepy breastfeed, we tried the sling, we tried the nap routine with the singing and the rain noise and the lavender scent and the dark room and the breastfeed, and then the bottle milk when they were too bitey for boob. But no nap.
Then I had a work thing for a couple of hours. It was urgent and time sensitive - me and
denny, who has very limited availability, deploying new code, which meant breaking a public facing commercial website and fixing it again asap. I wasn't in a great position to stop once we'd started.I heard lots of squawks and shouts from downstairs, and when I checked in via Signal Leo said they'd been teething and had just had Calpol. Then quiet. We were nearly done. Started to hear screaming again and it was a real effort to concentrate on work. E's getting more and more toddlerish with their sudden intense Big Feels if something is Frustrating or they Want something or feel Thwarted, so outraged shrieks of displeasure are a lot more common than they used to be. I figured if I got a message asking me to come, I'd come, but otherwise I'd press on and get the damn website back online.
So I did, and we did, and then I rushed downstairs to find Leo sitting on the kitchen floor holding a completely distraught child, who had sobbed themself into a state of utter wretchedness. They had been trying to get into the bathroom apparently, perhaps thinking to find me there, and then I wasn't there. Oh darling.
I scooped them up and cuddled them and talked to them softly and fed them, and they latched on and suckled in that heartbreaking pink, hiccupy way of a distraught baby. It was at this point 6.30pm, when we usually have dinner, followed by teeth brushing and books and bedtime routine and into bed by 8.30pm.
Reader, they fed until 8.30pm. I was nursing for two hours without a break for the first time since they had their tongue tie cut. They slept and fed and slept and fed and slept and fed. I read my book. Leo brought me food and beer and I ate and drank one handed. E's hot little head and body in my arms became damp with sweat, although they were only wearing a t-shirt and nappy. Halfway through they woke from a snooze Suddenly Very Sad again, but I got them back on the boob eventually.
They skipped their solid dinner entirely.
We had an hour of awake time, during which I desperately tried to go to the loo and brush my teeth and get both of us ready for bed while dealing with E's separation anxiety. Didn't manage to finish my teeth. But they are now, finally, after another bedtime routine and even more feeding, asleep in bed.
I've been awake since 5am and was hoping for an early night tonight, but it's now half ten and it's going to take me a while to calm down after all that.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-18 10:32 pm (UTC)*Hugs you*
no subject
Date: 2020-07-19 08:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-19 02:58 am (UTC)It's exhausting trying to stay gentle and calm and soft and open
I don't think you're supposed to stay gentle and calm and soft and open when your kid bites you. Kid is now about 1 yr old, right?
Kid is now at the age to be learning that when they bite someone, that someone cries "OUCH!" and moves away from them or moves to protect their from them in a closing-off way – at least momentarily.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-19 05:26 am (UTC)The problem isn't "how do I let them keep biting me", it's "how do I keep from losing my temper". I don't want to slap them away from me, or yell at them, or be pissy with them for ages, or otherwise model violence. But when the adrenaline surges I feel angry and defensive and there's a passing impulse to do all these things.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-19 07:02 am (UTC)Yeah, that's what I thought was going on. You want advice? Heaven knows as a parent you probably get more than you need!
no subject
Date: 2020-07-19 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-20 05:33 am (UTC)We get angry when our boundaries are crossed; we get violent when we become desperate for want of other ways to defend our boundaries. Your unwanted impulses are because you are being physically hurt and can't stop your little piranha from hurting you.
You've been trying to communicate with your kid that you are not okay with being bit by indicating pain vocally with a yelp or an "Ouch!" (good!) and withdrawing, either partially or wholly (good!), and using words like "We don't bite people" or "Be gentle" or "I guess you don't want to feed right now" (uh-oh!).
At 1 year old, it is highly unlikely your kid can parse any of those sentences. Those are probably developmentally over their head.
You familiar with this famous comic strip?
At about one year old, kids have pretty small vocabularies and very little grammar; what they do when exposed to utterances they can't decode is attend to the tone of voice.
So if you're saying things like "We don't bite people" mildly, in your ordinary conversational tone of voice, your kid is getting the message, "Oh, okay, the 'rent is as usual."
So from their perspective, what's happening is, "I bite my parent, they make a high pitched sound of alarm, take my boob away, and then they go back to ordinary comforting babble." Or maybe the order is, "I bite my parent, they make a high pitched sound of alarm, they go back to ordinary comforting babble, and then take my boob away." Can you see how that might be super confusing for the kid? Like - "Wait, if everything is okay, how come you took away your breast?!? I was having fun! Wasn't this a fun game?"
But even if your kid could understand those sets of words, they'd still be confused by them. "Be gentle" is an order. "We don't do that" is a statement of abstract principle. "I guess you don't want to feed right now" is snark. For us older, more sophisticated English-users, they have clear implications; for beginners, they are less transparent. They do no communicate what you actually want to communicate, which are:
• I don't want to be bit.
• I don't like being bit.
• When you bite me, I feel angry.
• I cannot tolerate your biting me, so if you bite me I will have to remove myself from being bit.
None of those are sentences your kid is up to comprehending yet, but that's okay. The first step is always knowing what you're trying to convey; having clarity in your mind is enormously helpful.
Because once you can see that, you can avail yourself of the fortunate fact that there's a convenient word in English that means all that. We use it to mean "I don't want that" and "I don't like that" and "it makes me mad" and "I cannot tolerate that". And it's a word so simple and basic a one year old can start to learn it, and by two year old have typically mastered it.
That word is "No".
Kids learn what "no" means by the tone of voice it's said in. It doesn't need to be - and shouldn't be – "angry" in the sense of hostile, scary, rageful, or nasty. It needs to be authoritative, and different from normal conversational tone (so the kid can distinguish it), and firm, and abrupt, and just a smidge louder than normal conversational volume. In other words: with emphasis. It's communicating anger in a different way – an assertive, not aggressive way, a way that's unapologetic while non-violent, and an honest, non-shaming way.
And you do need to communicate your anger to your kid. Because right now your two choices are teaching them that biting people does make them angry, or teaching them that biting people does not make them angry. You can only exemplify one of these, but you will exemplify one of these.
Using "No!" is not magic. Your kid will not immediately stop biting you if you use it. But by using it, and using it consistently every time you do the "am bit/yelp/remove self" sequence, you are giving your kid the opportunity to figure it out, in a way a constantly changing set of phrases doesn't. You're providing a simple keyword, an easily detected pair of phonemes, delivered in a highlighted way, for them to pick up on and start to associate with "parent withdrawing the breast"; if you then keep doing it, your kid will probably start figuring it out.
The thing is: your kid isn't going to like it. Your kid likes biting you, apparently, from your description of their "manic giggling". If this is great fun for them, they are not going to like you taking away their fun. They will probably take great umbrage.
Fundamentally, you are trying to make someone stop doing something they actively want to do. This is coercion. It is, in fact, the legitimate purpose of coercion.
But you may feel very strongly about coercion. To coerce someone may fly in the face of your self-concept as a non-coercive person and a gentle person and a person who solves problems by communication and a person who is generally agreeable and mellow and a person who is a loving and infinitely generous and patient and self-sacrificing parent.
Unfortunately, when someone can't be reasoned with, for whatever reason, and really, really, really wants to bite us, our only choices are to coerce them into them stopping biting us or to tolerate getting bit.
If we choose to use coercion, our choices are then how to do it as ethically, and as justly, and as gently, and as respectfully, and as kindly as possible.
If we write off coercion as something we will never do, as intrinsically immoral, we never learn the ethics of coercion, and we are at very high risk, should we ever out of desperation recourse to coercion, do it abusively and to an excessive degree. There are better and worse ways to use coercion.
When we have to use coercion with beings with whom we cannot have a discussion, we owe it to them to use the least amount of coercion possible, and to be as clear and intelligible in our behavior as possible. Doing so gives them the chance to figure out where we're coming from, and get back in sync with us, according to the terms we set – so that we we can be in relation without having to use coercion to mediate that relationship.
A way we do that is being very consistent in our responses, using very clear, easily discerned signals.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-20 06:26 pm (UTC)I agree with all of
I agree with all of <user=siderea>'s developmental comments here. This can be a SUPER frustrating age b/c kiddos are definitely becoming little people instead of the little wiggly grubs they've been since birth, and they start making decisions, but they are entirely unreachable via reason and language for a while yet. And so I agree with the firm, serious "No."
Soon words will help more. Sooooooooon. (not soon enough, mutters my mother.)
no subject
Date: 2020-07-31 09:33 am (UTC)However their comprehension is consistently more advanced than I expect, AND if I get into good speech habits now it'll stand me in stead once they do start understanding me. So I've settled on a non-violent communication approach based on a recommendation from C, amazing friend and nanny currently unavailable for childcare due to Covid, but still on hand for child development advice.
It goes something like, move them to arm's length and say
"Oww! No, biting hurts! When you bite me I feel sad / angry" (Show them with my face how I feel)
Backed up with BSL for the emotion sign, and "hurts" over the part of my body hurt.
Once I've got their attention, wait a beat, keep showing them the emotion sign and the demonstrative expression, then ask "all done?" And If they are not actively trying to bite, smile approvingly and agree on the goal, "That's right, we don't bite!", then bring them back.
It seems to be working well - both in terms of teaching them that it's not funny, and helping me express my feelings/boundaries without building up resentment. And it lays the foundation for *explaining* the boundary and *waiting for agreement* which will form part of our negotiations and boundary setting once they can talk.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-31 08:03 pm (UTC)Awesome! That sounds great. Glad it was useful, and I'm glad to hear your solution is working.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-19 10:43 am (UTC)Often the more boring you can be about something like that, the quicker it dies out (because if the question is "what happens when I do this", the answer "it is boring and always the same" makes the question lose its relevance faster, iyswim? and babies absolutely do stuff more that gets stronger emotional reactions). Which is hard if one is finding it especially physically/emotionally challenging oneself. I found "Parenting from the Inside Out" useful at a couple of points when I found particular behaviour non L's part especially difficult. (Actually I should probably re-read it now he's getting a bit older.)
I definitely found 9-18 months the hardest bit in a lot of ways -- for me the baby-baby bit was physically demanding but pretty straightforward (feed/sling/change nappy/play/redo from start), and once L could talk he started becoming possible to reason with (....uh well sort of....or at least I had more idea what was going on), but in between was this proto-toddler stage with lots of desires but not a matching quantity of communication, despite our best efforts.
I hope you got a decent sleep after all that.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-31 09:36 am (UTC)Yeah, I'm so looking forward to speech, but these early days of rapidly increasing comprehension and interaction are so exciting! They've started signing Cat and we've been playing animal spotting games with books, with us naming an animal (cat, dog, bird) and them pointing it out on the page. Utterly thrilling, I'm so glad to be getting to experience it and am not in a hurry to rush past this bit!