This morning the hubby asked me a question.
“Do you think Ruby was born too early? Like, do you think she was actually premature by 3 or 4 weeks?”
I scratched my head for a second, a little confused by the question, trying to remember how her birth date related to my due date (all mine were a little “early”).
“Umm…. no, she came about a week before my due date. Why do you ask?”
“Well, it just seems like she hits the milestones about 3 or 4 weeks late.”
“Late… according to whose timetable?”
“Well, according to what’s… normal.”
I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went after that. I said something about how babies are on their own timetable, and that she was doing fine.
I mean no disrespect towards my husband. However, but the mama bear in me came out just a little at the thought of our precious baby being compared unfavorably to millions of other unknown babies.
It turns out that part of my husband’s concern was coming from these cute little “what your baby might be doing now…” type of emails I had been forwarding him from a large, well known baby website ever since we were pregnant.
Those same emails say that it’s perfectly normal for baby to walk at 14, 15, even 16 months old (Ruby is 13 months).
But he wasn’t seeing that part, he was only seeing that a lot of babies are already walking.
Interestingly, sitting on our living room couch was a children’s picture book, a biography of Albert Einstein… who hardly spoke until he was 3.
I think my husband’s comments reflect a fear that so many parents have about their children.
Even when speaking of our infants, our culture seems obsessed about keeping up with baby Jones.
We want them feeding themselves, rocking themselves to sleep, and reading by age 18 months, it seems.
As soon as our babies are born, the questions come.
Are they sleeping through the night yet/rolling over yet/crawling yet/eating solids yet/weaned yet/walking yet/graduating college and settling down yet?
I don’t remember having these worries, even with my first child. Caleb didn’t walk until he was 14 months old, but I don’t remember being concerned.
I reassured my husband that anywhere between 9 and 18 months is “normal” for walking. And technically, our youngest does walk – for several weeks now she’s taken anywhere from 1-4 steps independently, she just hasn’t taken off walking.
Is anyone else just NOT in a big hurry for baby to tick off milestones, like a neverending to-do list that begins at birth and ends at the grave?
