This will probably be my longest ever post, but a coupld months ago I wrote it because I was feeling like maybe if I wrote it all down it would form some sort of clear picture and have a solution. I was mistaken, but here is the story of my little one. I've renamed him "Pajama Monster" because that's one of his favorite nicknames. Here's my story:
I started this journey like many moms. I wanted a baby. I had hopes and dreams for that baby and a vague but firm acceptance that he would still be his own person. I imagined myself as a mommy who would read all the books, or at least skim them, and breastfeed and make my own preservative free baby food while little birdies chirped away in the blossoming trees. I imagined myself taking walks in the woods and teaching my baby about all the things we see. In short, I imagined perfection. While I realized that things can never be this perfect, I was wholly unprepared for reality.
In preparing for pregnancy I ate healthy foods and took my vitamins and avoided all medications, cleaning chemicals, caffeine and alcohol. Once pregnant I continued these healthy habits and started walking for exercise. I talked to my belly and attended numerous classes on birth and babies with my husband. I was already a marriage and family therapist with a specialization in children’s mental health. I believed that I was prepared. We were going to breastfeed on demand and swaddle and introduce the pacifier at exactly one month and use a SIDS alarm and introduce solids at exactly 6 months. I had everything completely figured out in a way that only someone who has never had a baby can.
And then my son was born. He was 9 and a half pounds of adorable. He was really here and I was finally a mommy. I jumped in feet first with the skin to skin contact and the nursing on demand and lullabies. The first few days were wonderful, but when we attended our first well child visit we learned that Pajama Monster was losing weight rapidly. I was rushed off to a lactation consultant and told that I was producing almost no milk. Pajama Monster was sleeping so well because I was starving him and he didn’t have the energy to be awake. I was killing my son through what felt to me to be my complete failing as a mother. I was crushed. I was hormonal and sleep deprived and in pain and now I was sure that I was a failure as a mother. I would need to start pumping every 3 hours round the clock and would need to give Pajama Monster formula. The next weeks are a blur of weight checks, pumping, and several times per week lactation visits. I was averaging a cumulative 3-4 hours of sleep per day and would have been hard pressed to tell you my name at that point. Even if I had been able to tell you, I probably would have started crying. I was still certain at this point that the warnings of the American Academy of Pediatrics were correct and co-sleeping meant certain SIDS death for my son. My husband once found me crying and tearing the couch apart searching for the baby I was sure I was accidentally smothering in the blankets and pillows. Pajama Monster was asleep in his bed at this point and I was so emotionally wrecked that even asleep I was afraid that I was failing him. Eventually it was discovered that Pajama Monster had an issue with extreme jaw clenching. He clenched so hard at each nursing that he cut off the flow of blood and milk to my nipples, damaging the tissue and leaving my nipples cramped and bleeding. I was taught infant facial massage to add to my routine of pumping, tube-aided nursing and never sleeping. After about 3 months it finally all came together and Pajama Monster was able to go off formula completely in favor of nursing. I breathed a sigh of relief because I had made it through the big problem. Surely now I would be able to get some sleep and become the Betty crocker/Martha Stewart/Donna Reed mommy I was sure I would become. Things were easier, except for the screaming.
From the time Pajama Monster was a couple of weeks old he would scream in the evenings. Starting at about 6 PM he would scream. He would scream and spit up. I knew the formula was probably part of the problem, and it did improve once he was off the formula, but I had to feed him and simply couldn’t produce enough milk as long as he couldn’t nurse effectively. Once the formula was gone, Pajama Monster settled in to a routine of screaming when tired, being tightly swaddled and athletically bounced/shhhhhhed/danced with till he fell asleep. He would sleep for about 40 minutes and then wake up screaming. This would repeat from around 6 PM until sometime the next morning. After that he would be up for a few hours before starting the cycle for naptime.
Little by little I began to fall into a rhythm. Pajama Monster was cooing, babbling, smiling, and hitting his milestones very early, much to my delight. Despite these joys though, Pajama Monster began to go through “phases.” We viewed each phase as separate from all the ones before it. There was the taking off his diaper and smearing poo phase, the biting phase, the hitting phase, the chewing each bite and the spitting it on the floor phase, the throwing things in the diaper pail phase, the sucking water from the sippy and spitting it onto other containers phase, the sticking his fingers down his throat and making himself throw up phase, etc. At each phase there always seemed to be someone in one of my many playgroups who had had their child do something similar once. I didn’t explain at length all the horrible things that Pajama Monster did, so I just assumed everyone was in a similar situation and just didn’t want to focus on the bad. If someone mentioned that their child had taken a diaper off during naptime, I took this as reassurance that it wasn’t just my child, even though my child did it several times a day, even with the backwards jammies that were diaper pinned shut. I just assumed that their child did it frequently too, and they just weren’t mentioning everything, after all, who wants to make a laundry list of everything their child has done wrong.
By 6 months I was sure that parenting was much harder that I had expected, and convinced that the authors of all the parenting manuals I’d read were insane. My son was hitting developmental milestones long before the other children while remaining completely immune to all my attempts at correction and redirection. I decided that my pediatrician was obviously a sadist because she would say things like “Try to get some sleep when he sleeps” even though he never slept for more than 40 minutes and it took 10 to be sure he was asleep enough to set down, at which point I was supposed to use the breast pump. Her other gems were “set him down for a nap drowsy but awake.” and “Let him cry it out. Just check on him every 10 minutes but don’t pick him up.” I tried those last two, thinking she must know something about babies that made this magical notion possible. He screamed. He screamed as I hung, half conscious over the rail of his crib, singing lullaby after lullaby to his screaming red little self. He screamed and I sang for 3 and a half hours. I finally asked the pediatrician at what point I should give up and take him out of his crib. She said not until he had slept. I countered that he would at some point need breakfast and lunch etc., and it seemed unwise to leave him in his bed screaming for more than 3-5 hours without feeding and changing him. She looked very confused and told me he wouldn’t scream that long. I’m not sure she ever really believed that he did.
Pajama Monster grew and grew. He learned the alphabet in several languages and was beginning to master his numbers. He knew his colors and was already showing a blossoming creativity. In play he preferred to hang back and study the situation before joining in, but I was confident that this was just a natural part of his personality. As for the phases, I kept reminding myself of his developmental stage and the certainty that he didn’t really understand my feelings or perspective and so therefore couldn’t be doing any of these things out of malice. I was sure that he just didn’t understand the impact he was having and would stop as soon as maturity gave him the ability to understand that there was such a thing as outside perspectives.
When Pajama Monster was 18 months old I became pregnant again. This time we were going to have a little girl, my sweet Peep. We launched into preparation mode, expecting that things would go just as they had with Pajama Monster. We prepared Pajama Monster by reading him big brother books, reading his baby book to him and writing a special book with photos explaining what Pajama Monster could expect about the pregnancy, delivery and new baby. I bought a gift from baby sister for Pajama Monster and planned and planned to make things as smooth for Pajama Monster while lavishing him with attention and making him feel special. Toward the middle of my pregnancy Pajama Monster refused to sleep in his bed and began throwing screaming fits at bedtime. He demanded that he be returned to his crib and no alterations of the crib were acceptable to him. Bed time became a constant battle. I found a second crib from someone willing to pass it on for free, but Pajama Monster then began sleeping in the baby’s bassinette, though his head and legs stuck out onto the floor. He also often asking to be rocked while drinking from his sippy. I accommodated, believing that he simply needed a bit of time to adjust to the idea of someone else also being my baby. I reassured him that he would always be my baby.
As I grew larger, Pajama Monster became increasingly difficult to handle. He would hit and kick and bite me. I didn’t understand why all of this was happening, but was sure that it must be something I was doing wrong. I tried harder to be loving and patient and set clear limits and offer rewards. I lost my temper, but I was really trying. At one point, a month before my due date I ventured out to a thrift shop to find anything that would fit. I had outgrown most of my maternity wear at this point. I was a large, uncomfortable whale and Pajama Monster decided he didn’t feel like being in the store anymore. I tried playing a game with him, then tried a visit to the toy section, nothing was working. I even tried pulling the cart from the other end, but that only gave him free range to grab things off all the racks as we passed. At one point a woman came over to chastise me for daring to have another baby on the way when I was such a terrible mother to my son. At that time he was in the shopping cart screaming and pinching and flailing at me while trying to bite my hands as I pushed the cart. I had put one hand on his forehead to hold him at bay while I blocked my pregnant belly from being kicked. Apparently this woman was under the impression that as Pajama Monster lunged against my hand in his manic attempts to bite me again, it could put a strain on his neck which would do terrible future damage to his spinal cord. I asked her what exactly she thought I should be doing with my crazed son and she responded that I shouldn’t let him act like that but shouldn’t criticize his behavior or physically restrain him either. You may wonder why I hadn’t left the store at the first signs of Pajama Monster acting up. The reason is simple. Pajama Monster always acted like that. This was standard behavior and if I left the store over it I would quite literally have never ever bought groceries, maternity wear, soap, or any of the other items necessary for daily living. My husband worked on salary and was working ridiculous hours and often weekends at this point. I had no family living locally. There was simply no alternative and so I gritted my teeth and foraged on.
By this point I was beginning to realize that something wasn’t just like all the other parenting experiences I’d heard. If any parent I knew had had a behavioral problem, I’d struggled with a worse version of it. I didn’t understand. I thought I was doing things right, or at least as right as I could. What was wrong? Why was he doing these things? He never seemed to throw out of control tantrums, but rather seemed to be enjoying the behavior, smiling and laughing, even as his father and I struggled to restrain him or clean up his messes. He usually continued to smile through consequences and even asked for them at times.
I had to find a solution and I was sure that there couldn’t be anything really wrong with my precious boy. Maybe the problem was that Pajama Monster was having trouble expressing his feelings and desires. Pajama Monster had developed an extensive vocabulary, but most people meeting Pajama Monster believed that he had not yet learned to speak. Pajama Monster would fold his tiny hands before dinner and say something like, “ Dit-dou Dod bo be a be a be ah brus ae, Ma Mo.” For those of you who aren’t Pajama Monster’s mommy that probably sounds like gibberish coming from a child who cannot yet speak. I however knew that it translates to “Thank-you God for bean and bean and bean and milk and Amen.” I’m sure you’re wondering if this is just wishful mommy thinking, but I assure you that if asked to repeat any of those words he would say them in exactly the same way. They were completely consistent and almost completely unintelligible. It took three evaluations before I got a speech therapist who would listen. Each evaluator would run Pajama Monster through a list of sounds, check off that he could make all the age appropriate sounds and was even advanced in some areas and then send me on my way, with a note to wait 6 months before I could ask for a recheck. One even told me I was an “overly anxious mommy.” and that Pajama Monster was completely normal. On the third evaluation I put my foot down. Pajama Monster’s behavior was becoming unmanageable and I thought better communication might help. I refused their evaluation and bargained that I would go away and stop pestering them with my concerns if they would just close their test book and TALK to my son for 5 minutes and still tell me that everything was fine. Three minutes later I was told that Pajama Monster had a very severe and completely atypical speech impediment. We attended weekly speech therapy for a year before Pajama Monster became able to express himself with anything approaching age appropriate intelligibility.
After Peep was born things finally hit the breaking point. Pajama Monster seized every opportunity to claw at Peep’s delicate baby skin, leaving a couple scars on her chest which she will always bear. Without any seeming provocation he would hit her and tear at her hair whenever he had the slightest chance. We had to keep them physically separated which meant that I had to separate physically from Pajama Monster while tending to Peep. I spoke to his pediatrician and asked about the violence. She said it was perfectly normal for children to hit when jealous of a new sibling. A few weeks later in desperation I sent one last e-mail to the pediatrician stating that it didn’t seem normal for him to attack her multiple times per day and smear his feces over walls, toys and carpeting multiple times per day as well. As I had previously told her, he also seemed to be struggling in his gross motor skills, even though his cognitive and fine motor skills were exceptional. I received an immediate referral to a pediatric psychologist specializing in 0-4 year olds.
My husband and I waited the long 6 weeks until our appointment. We waited through Thanksgiving, my son’s 3rd birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s, hoping the whole time that this would be the end of the long march. Surely the psychologist would see the problem and tell us how to fix it. Soon everything would go back to the idealized future I had hoped for.
I should add at this point that in addition to smearing his poo and shredding things, hitting, biting and general destruction, Pajama Monster was a charming little boy. He was handsome, he was creative, he was funny, and he was very very bright. We delighted in Pajama Monster, until he turned on us, destroying the house and attacking family. I should be clear that Pajama Monster didn’t really wildly attack. He didn’t appear angry. He clawed and bit with the excited smile of a child swiping a cookie or playing a fun game. He appeared to be delighting in his destruction, dancing in his own filth and chanting “Poo! Poo! Poo! There’s poo! Poo!”
That should bring you up to date with the start of all our specialists. Feel free to weigh in with your opinions and suggestions and own experiences or even rants. I am open to considering anything at this point and certainly willing to provide some emotinal support to all you other mommies out there going through similar struggles.
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