It's late so I'm just going to give a summary.
SMILES
Today we saw Gray smile quite a bit. He may have smiled before but I'm going to remember August 17th as the first day he smiled (approximately).
It's so nice to see him smile. He's so cuddly and sweet and I like the idea that he's feeling well.
SCARES
One day not so long ago I mentioned to John that Gray doesn't look into my eyes the way Ecco did. I don't know when we noticed that Ecco loved to look into peoples' faces, but it seemed immediate.
I hadn't been thinking about it too much after that (not that I wasn't thinking about it - just not too much) until John brought it up again today. After he mentioned it, I became obsessed. Gray looks almost at your eyes all the time, but usually just above or over your shoulder. Sometimes he strains his head to look to the side.
Suddenly, this became the focus of my evening.
The main thing I learned while intermittently staring at him and scouring the internet for info is that it's not fun to look at anyone that way! He suddenly became a possible victim of something. It's not a nice lens to look through, but I couldn't stop looking for data.
There's a lot to say because there are several things I'm wondering about (reflux, grunting and groaning, lack of direct eye contact and the fact that he's ridiculously easy - all potential symptoms of conditions on the autism spectrum) but the bottom line is that I finally found some information that calmed me down somewhat.
Scroll down if you're interested in what that was.
In the meantime, I'm going to try to remain patient. More importantly, I'm going to continue adoring and oggling this kid who I'm just absolutely and totally in love with!
http://www.cnn.com/2007/
Eye contact
(between 6 and 8 weeks)
This is one of the first milestones you'll notice, and it's a big deal not just because your baby is finally paying attention to you, and following you with her eyes, but also because it indicates that her neurological growth and ability to communicate are on track. She's demonstrating that her brain is registering a familiar face. In a sense, she's saying, "Hey, I know who you are."
Laura Weber was worried when, at 4 weeks, her infant, Nicole, never met her gaze. "Whenever I tried to make eye contact with her, she'd look over my shoulder instead," says the mom of three from Fredericksburg, Virginia. Fueling her concern was the fact that her first daughter, now 4, hit all the milestones on the early side of "normal." When Weber voiced this at Nicole's checkup, her pediatrician stressed that with milestones, there's a wide range of normal. Indeed, Nicole reached this one at 3 months, the late side of normal. If Nicole hadn't begun to make eye contact after 3 months, her doctor would have suggested vision testing to rule out eye disease. The next step would have been to look for signs of attachment or behavior problems. But experts urge parents to refrain from jumping to the worst-case conclusion. "You have to be very cautious about assuming your child has a certain condition. It has to be taken in context with so many other things," says Martin Stein, M.D., director of developmental-behavioral pediatrics at Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, California. The more likely reason for no eye contact is that you're looking at the wrong times. "An infant needs to be in a quiet but alert mental state to respond in this way, and most of the time an infant is awake she's tired or hungry," says Dr. Stein. The lesson? Be patient, and keep your eyes open.
Marty Stein was my pediatrician!
ReplyDeleteps. it's only august.
ReplyDeleteI love how you do research and what you found out about Gray's possible lack of eye-contact. I hope it makes you feel better! It sure made me feel better and I'm not his mom.
ReplyDeleteFrom experiencing my nephew, Nate and his cousin Olivia (only 3 months apart) it is so very apparent to me that boys and girls develop on completely different schedules. There were so many things that Nate did before Olivia and she's 3 months older, there were also things that she did and then his mom expected him to do them 3 months later but it took him a long time to "catch up" - but catch up isn't the right phrase because he was just on his own schedule. So, not only do you have 2 different humans who are close in age, but you have two differently gendered humans as well.
Even now - Olivia just turned 3 and Nate is not yet 3 they behave so totally different and it’s sometimes tempting to people to think that Olivia is "better" or "nicer", she is quieter. At her birthday party she played with other little girls in a very social way while Nate and another little boy stole toys from each other, jumped on each other w/out getting all upset and completely ignored directives from their parents. I was glad that the kids’ parents got to see it because his mom said she finally gets it that there's nothing wrong with Nate! He's a BOY. What happens when Nate & Olivia play is that Nate's “boy play” hurts Olivia's feelings and so Nate ends up being "the bad guy" because he made her cry!
Nate is and always has been a lot more verbal (fancy that, leave him with Nancy talks a lot and his Gramma who also talked to him all day) and seemed to identify objects earlier.
They may have started walking around the same time, but Olivia learned gracefully while Nate tumbled around like a weeble!
I hope this helps a little. Thanks for the opportunity to think about this.