so little K Doggy just went through leap 4 of the wonder weeks and what an experience it was. I remembered reading about the wonder weeks while spending an obscene amount of time online waiting for K Dogg to arrive.
“Dutch doctors Frans Plooj & Dr Hetty van de Rijt came up with the term ‘wonder weeks’ to describe the mental developmental leaps babies experience in their first 20 months of life. These leaps occur at 10 specific times, and Plooj and van de Rijt found that the leaps they were related to brain and nervous system changes, enabling babies to broaden their perceptual and sensory awareness after each leap”
so leap 4 occurs anytime between 14.5 and 19.5 weeks and for K Doggy it was week 19 based on her due date not actual birth date. anyhoo so tuesday morning I was wondering where my usually happy, chatty and normal baby had disappeared to and why had she been replaced by this grumpy, fussy, crying, screaming, grunting, frustrated, clingy, hungry then not and unable to settle, crazy baby. was she teething? did she have colic? had she been bitten by something – we have quite a good supply of red back spiders on hand – or even worse was this karma getting me back for secretly gloating about how great she has been? so tuesday was pretty bad but wednesday really took me to a bad place. we were meant to go to our active parenting class at 11am and I was really looking forward to meeting some new peeps and giving K Dogg some time in the hydro pool…at 1030 she was still inconsolable so we sat on the lounge all day. I didn’t eat and I didn’t shower. the only reason I moved off the couch was to get K Dogg some more food – which she didn’t eat – and to change her nappy. I had some homeopathic for teething relief so I gave her some of that just in case it was teething and she slept solidly, but on my lap. I felt like some crazy person with wild hair and food caught in my teeth even though I hadn’t eaten since the previous night. imagine my despair when Mr B Badger.com messaged to say that he had been asked to work back…oh my god are you serious? why today? anyhoo so while I was sat on the lounge I was making google my friend and once again stumbled across the wonder weeks information. I think my google search was for “clingy, crying, screaming, 4 month old baby” and as I read the information and the comments from other mums it all came back to me….I just had to get her – and me – through the next days and she would be back to her old self but with some new mad skills to practise. so when my hard-working husband walked through the door at 5pm he took one look at me and said “go have a shower, love” I must have looked real bad cause he was really dirty and sweaty and having worked in the same industry the last thing you want to do is spend anymore time than is absolutely necessary in your heavy uniform covered in steel dust and sweat. so I hoovered down a chicken sandwich and washed the stink off me and armed with this new information about little K Dogg and her new leap I felt less anxious and able to continue for as long as it takes.
by saturday she was back to her old, but new and improved, self. she has a nap in the morning now….not for long just a 45 minute break but then she is able to box on for quite a while. she is very chatty and even more observant than before. her grasping skills are better and her ability to get something into her mouth without stabbing herself in the eye has improved. she is starting to notice how the things that she touches move and she repeats this. but she is not so good on her tummy…she does a mean superman and rocks back and forward on her tummy but the mini push up she should be executing is yet to come…maybe she wont be a crawler, preferring instead to just walk. in all honestly that would be more hygienic given the tumbleweeds of Mr Roobens hair that roll around our floors we may end up with two fur kids if we let her loose on these floors…
barrybadger.com 