When #LivyLu was just like a week old she got pink eye and the flu. Then for the next 6 months we just seemed to pass it around and around and pick up every dang flu bug out there. By the time she was 8 months she had had something like 11 ear infections. Her pediatrician seemed to think nothing of it, but I just had this feeling that there was more going on. So we made an ear appointment at a local ENT. They put this sensor in her ear and within seconds the doctor could tell that she had water trapped behind her ears. (Take that, pediatrician! Don’t you go questioning my mother’s instincts!) She had ear tubes put in when she was 9 months old and has yet to have an ear infection since!!!
At that first ENT appointment the doctor told us that her hearing was around 30-50% decreased and that she may have some minor delays in speaking. Well, was he ever wrong. Miss #LivyLu was talking up a storm in just a few weeks of getting her ear tubes (by this I mean animating every animal noise, shouting “MOM MOM MOM” every time she needed something and trying her very best to repeat things we would say, ya know, normal baby talk, but still much better than we had anticipated). You would never know that there could have potentially been a delay.
With my daughter #ClaraBelle it was a very different story. She had no ear infections, she never tugged at her ears, and she never once gave an indication that she couldn't hear.
Around the time she turned a year old things just got really tough with her. She became super dramatic (like throwing herself to the ground screaming blood curdling screams and just refusing to calm down till she worked herself to the point of puking). She just seemed to have super selective hearing (one second she would respond immediately when I would call to her from across the room, the next moment she wouldn't even flinch when I would shout her name as she sat on my lap). She rarely wanted to cuddle (she was a super cuddly baby so this was heartbreaking), she had no patience (seriously she would flip from being happy and laughing to just screaming her head off in less than a second), she just seemed to be frustrated all the time (at the time we attributed this to #LivyLu being very possessive of all the toys). There were so many days that when she would finally fall asleep hours after bedtime and Adam and I would drop on the couch dead tired from the day; I would turn to him and say “I love my daughter, I really do and nothing could change that… But today I just did not like her”. And as a mother, you never want to say that. But I did. More days than not.
Finally one day I just broke down to her pediatrician (we were in for her 18 mo check up). He asked me a simple question like “How’s everything going” and I started with “Not as well as I would have hoped”. Then I just started venting all my stresses and frustrations with #ClaraBelle and how she was just such a hard child and I didn’t know what to do (I think I may have said it all in one breath). I looked up at my poor doctor who had a look that was a cross between shock and sympathy and was probably was not expecting to open that can of worms; I immediately assumed that he was going to say something like “Well you have three little kids three and under, it’s only natural for one of your kids to act up”, so I jumped in to shut that down before he had a moment to really react to everything I had just dumped on him. But then he let out this big sigh and said, “Let me check her out again”. He looked for teething, and looked at her tonsils than he looked at her ears. And than recommended we make an appointment at the ENT to check for water behind the ears.
Sure enough, that’s what she had.
In March she got her ear tubes, and in June I was back at the ENT venting to the doctor that it fixed nothing. She was still just this really hard to like difficult child, with a few good moments, but only on really good days.
He looked in her ears, told me that the tubes were really backed up and then told me the treatment plan which was less than desirable. To make a long story short(-er than it could be), the treatment worked and she was suddenly becoming the sweet little girl that I used to know before she turned 1.
When we went in for that initial ENT appointment with #ClaraBelle the doctor told us that her hearing was about 80% decreased. Now, #LivyLu got her tubes at 9 months and was only 30-50% decreased in hearing, so with #ClaraBelle being 80% decreased at 18 months I didn’t expect her to start talking as soon as #LivyLu did.
But y’all, do you know how hard it is to try to communicate to a almost two year old who can’t communicate back to you?
I mean she’s been saying “no” like it’s the trendiest word for months, but outside of that she has barely spoken two words (let alone one word on a good day) up until just a couple weeks ago. And I’ve found myself in most moments of attempting communication fighting back frustration as #ClaraBelle, in her own frustration, throws herself to the ground screaming. But that all changed this week. Suddenly my daughter who hardly says a word has been quietly repeating sentences (not just one or two words, but whole sentences!), grabbing my finger and pulling me to the fridge to say “I like juice, eeeese”, and saying thank you 9 out of 10 times that I give her something (all on her own).
And then today, she blew me out of the water.
#ClaraBelle turns two this week, so we celebrated today by going to the zoo. #LivyLu threw a massive (embarrassingly massive) tantrum, so she and Adam spent half the time in the van while I wheeled #OBoy and #ClaraBelle around in our way to big, hard-to-maneuver double stroller by myself for 20-ish minutes. Each time we would stop at an exhibit she would whisper things like “pretty pink birds”, “where did he go” when the animals would go out of sight, “ Duck, quack quack”, and “Mommy longer” when she wanted to watch the monkey’s just a little longer. And of course through all of this, my mama heart was melting and I just wanted to squeeze her in a little tighter. Seriously guys, all the feels.
You know, I never expected to have the same experiences with each of my children, but I never thought that one trial would be so drastically different with each child. And honestly, when we were going through the worst of it a six months ago, there were days I thought that things would never get easier with #ClaraBelle. But you know what I am so grateful for? Perspective. I am so grateful that today I got some one on one time (well almost, #OBoy was there, he was just half asleep in the stroller) with my daughter so I could get down on her level and just admire her growth. I’m so grateful that I can look back and see the growth of my daughter and recognize that it is not always easy to “like” our children, but to know that I will always love my children and nothing could ever change that.
And that is key.
Mommyhood is hard, like it’s really hard. It tests our patience, our endurance, our strength (physically and emotionally), it stretches us in all kinds of ways and is just down right hard. But it’s when we take a minute to look back and see how far we have come, the trials we have endured, remember the good times, and when we get down on the level of our kids, that’s when we get that “your doing a good job” kind of perspective.
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