Natalie’s Blog

I like to think of myself as a pretty easy-going person. Flexible. Not one for bullying. I don’t think of Chris or myself as “authoritarian” in any way, but especially not as a parents. We’ve long since given up the sleep battle—we’ve accepted that we cannot force Natalie to go to sleep. She’s a strong-willed girl and sleeps only when she’s good and ready. We’re okay with that. Natalie is pretty free to do what she wants, as long as it’s not dangerous or disrespectful. We follow her lead. But there are limits. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that changing diapers, getting dressed, and bathing are not optional activities. These are our battlegrounds.

As an infant, Natalie was never more happy than when she was on the changing table. Oh, how I long for the days when we’d lay her on the changing table and she would reward us with coos and smiles. The smiles have been replaced with an arched back and stiff legs; the cooing with annoyed grunts, cries of protest, and shrieks of anger. We’ve tried distracting her with toys, books, singing songs, tickling, making funny faces etc. Sometimes she calms down, but usually not for long. The funny thing is that Natalie often tells us that she needs changing using sign language. Today, she actually came up to me and said “poopy” (I’d been teaching her that word in another failed attempt to distract her on the changing table). But even when she initiates the diaper change, she still ends up in tears. Once we’re done changing her, she’s fine.

Same thing with getting dressed. It goes a little better when we involve her in the process, including letting her choose between two shirts, but sometimes we have to just strong-arm her into her clothes. It feels horrible to shove her (while being as gentle as we can) into her clothes while she’s upset and crying. But the way she carries on, you’d think we were trying to hogtie her. And it’s not like getting dressed is a new thing—we’ve been dressing her every morning since the day she was born. I keep reading that routines make children feel like their world is safe and predictable. But every morning Natalie reacts to getting dressed as if it’s some new form of torture.

Bath time is great fun for Natalie. She’s so eager to take a bath that she tries to climb in the tub with all her clothes on. Everything is lovely until we break out the washcloth. As soon as she sees it, she starts crying and tries to climb out, while frantically signing “all done.” So in order to get her clean, we have to force her to stay in the tub while we wash her. She never really minded getting washed before, so I thought maybe the soap was irritating her skin. But we’ve used the same Burt’s Bees baby wash since she was born, so I can’t imagine that all of a sudden that’s the problem. Washing her hair is even more of a struggle. We bought this special bucket to keep the water out of her eyes, but she thrashes around so much that we’ve taken to dumping water right over her head to get it over with as fast as possible. While she was never crazy about getting shampooed, she’s never taken her protests to this level before. I felt slightly better when I read that other babies around Natalie’s age go through this phase.

I have sympathy for Natalie. It’s hard to be a baby. As nice as it is to have people catering to their every need, babies also have people trying to control their every move. It must be frustrating to have activities imposed on you that you don’t like. I understand that Natalie doesn’t enjoy getting dressed, having her diaper changed, or being washed and that she had limited language with which to express her thoughts and feelings. At the same time, I feel frustrated when she acts as if by forcing her to do these things that I’m trying to sever one of her limbs. I’m not sure how to handle her protests, either. About half the time I try to acknowledge that she’s unhappy while reminding her of the routine and reassuring her that it will be over soon. The other half the time I ignore her crying and try to distract her. I always try to finish the torture as quickly as possible. All the while, I try to reassure myself that it’s just a phase…and I try not to think about the battlegrounds we have to look forward to when Natalie becomes a teenager!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Challenges. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.