Curve Ball Baby

My third baby is throwing me for a loop.  Daily.  As soon as I think I have her figured out, BAM, she switches it up.  I recently wrote about life with three children, and basically concluded that it was easier for me to transition from 2 to 3 children than from 1 to 2, but that having a tiny baby in the house (whether first or seventh) is still crazy hard at times.  I still think that's all true for me.  The balancing act is a little more fine-tuned these days, but it's basically the same balancing act that I developed when we added our second child so a lot of the work this time around was just in implementation rather than strategy.  However, I am here to say that Hazel is officially my hardest baby to date.  Yes, she even beats out Princess with her reflux and inconsolable daytime crying resulting from (what I had no idea at the time was) discomfort that likely caused.  And Smooch's late night, often very drawn out, "witching hour" (or three) has nothing on this kid.   It's very strange to say that Hazel is my hardest because she has (by far) the most settled stomach of all my kids, so that's a non-issue, and she outgrew her short evening witching hour very quickly (by about 7 weeks I'd say).  She sleeps pretty good for her age (4 hours plus 3 hours on average).  There are no major things that make her hard.  It's just this one little thing...

She's not particularly flexible.   And that adds up to a lot of little things.

Pacifier for soothing between feedings?  HA!  Not a chance.  Occasionally she chews on it so it momentarily distracts her.  However, it does not soothe her.  The girl wants skin.  Breast or some part of the human hand thankyouverymuch.   My saving grace is that she has recently been finding her own fist once in a while.

Bottle for pumped milk?  Nope!  No breaks for mommy.  And I'm not about to go out and buy ten different kinds of bottles to try.  We've been down that road with the pacifier already.

Car seat?  Hmm.  We recently learned that she does okay on long drives because once she's out she'll sleep until she's hungry.   However, around town, she's awake and screaming at every red light, often for the whole car ride since 15 minutes isn't long enough for her to settle into a nap.  As she has started to get a little bit older (She turned 2 months last week), she's beginning to have some quiet awake time in the car...if she's in the mood for it.  Typically though car rides = incessant screaming.

Naps?  In Mommy's arms.  Occasionally she'll sleep in the swing, and usually once a day I can get her to take a nap in the bassinet.  (Thankfully at night she will sleep the first chunk of her nighttime sleep in the bassinet, then it's snuggled up with mommy for part two.)  Baby wearing can only go so far during the day, and my back thanks me for a break.   We made great strides in this (no, I did not do "cry it out") so that she was beginning to nap pretty good without being held, but when she got RSV at about 5 weeks old, she wanted to be in my arms 24/7 and I was most comfortable with that as well so I could make sure she was, you know, breathing.  Now we're starting all over getting her used to napping once in awhile without me.  She's doing well, but she sometimes makes me wonder if she would actually like to crawl back into my womb rather than be out of my arms for 5 minutes.

Each week I'm dumb optimistic enough to try another solo outing.   Each week I come home feeling defeated, frazzled, depleted of energy, and frustrated.  Today I forgot to bring my Moby Wrap to the grocery store and I paid for it.  If I had toted Hazel around in the wrap, she probably would have been fine.  But no, I had to leave her in the car seat and clip it onto the shopping cart.  Amazingly, she had fallen asleep in the car and was so tired from fighting sleep while out and about all morning that she actually stayed asleep for a full 10 or 15 minutes at the store.   Miracle of miracles.

I must have looked like a joke racing around the store like my very life depended upon gathering all the apples and eggs I could in the shortest amount of time possible.  I was too focused to even notice whether or not other shoppers were giving me the strange looks I am quickly coming to know well.  Pity?  Disgust? Amusement?  Some of each a suppose.  If so, I was ignorant to it.  Princess and Smooch were mostly angels.  (I bribed them with snacks and the promise of a lollipop in the car.)

Then it happened.  Hazel woke up with all the wrath of an angry lion in her high-pitched "get me out of this car seat before I die" scream.  The one that causes random people to kindly suggest to me that my baby is perhaps hungry.

If I had a quarter for every time I have tried to explain to a perfect stranger that my baby has just recently eaten and is in fact just protesting the running of errands....

It's a wonder I take her anywhere by myself.

However, last night my husband and I dragged our entire entourage to Starbucks' and Hazel was happy the entire time, minus the drive.  My husband was there to help, and that makes a difference.  But the biggest difference is that, upon arrival, she was plopped into one of our laps and perched in one lap or another for our entire stay.  And therein lies the key to Hazel's happiness.

You see, she isn't an unhappy baby.  At home she grins and coos like a very sociable, contented, dreamy thing.  She really isn't a particularly fussy baby either.  (But don't touch her with cold hands.) And we don't hold her 100% of the time.  Just 90%.  ;-)  (Which is a vast improvement from 99%.)  She's even spending some time on her tummy on a play mat and other things.  Sometimes for a whole 10 minutes at once!  Yes, I'm making fun, but it is just unreal to me how much she demands to be held.  And how loudly she demands it.  And when we go out, particularly me by myself with the kids, we can't always hold her or wear her the whole time.

In retrospect, both Princess and Smooch showed very clear signs of their temperaments from birth.  Certainly, there were strong clues by two months of age.  So what I'm saying is that I may look back on this and think "Wow.  Hazel was kind of a demanding baby.  I'm glad she outgrew some of those things."  OR I will look back and wish I would have picked up on the hints that perhaps maybe the Lord saw fit to give us a touchy, demanding sort of child to raise.   Time will tell.

One thing is for sure, she is just as precious and brings us just as much joy as her sisters before her.  I can't wait to see who she becomes, as each facet of her personality blooms almost as quickly as she grows.  She may not be the most easygoing baby I've had, but I sure love her just as much as the more laid back ones. 

  (Pics taken Feb. 25th, from my trusty old phone. :-))