Guess What!!!! I love My daughter!
She has always been a source of pleasure and delight to me
She was a pleasure to bring up
She was the sweetest daughter you can ever hope for..........
N O T !!!!!!!!
My daughter was a battle from the second she was born!!!!
She screamed, kicked, argued, slapped, stamped her way through childhood
But now after all the feelings of failure and inadequacy, I am so proud of the woman she has become.
My daughter was born 3 weeks overdue, it was a traumatic delivery, and I almost lost her in childbirth, but after a thorough check up from the paediatrician, i eventually was holding my beautiful baby girl. It had been a scary birth with her heart rate dropping right down to only 20 (it started at 140!!) But here she was a little girl to spoil, play dress up and to do all the girly things I had been dreaming about doing with a daughter.....
It didn't take long to see that my daughter hadn't had the same dreams as me, I started breast feeding but it was hard and frustrating, my daughter wouldn't feed, I could express and give it her in a bottle but she wouldn't take it from me
I felt totally rejected! She would not allow you to cuddle her unless it suited her so very soon all feeds were happening with her sitting in her bouncy chair and me holding a bottle to her mouth, with no contact!!!!!
As a family we all felt she was the epitome of the Nursery Rhyme...
There was a little girl, who had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead
Now when she was good
she was very good
But when she was bad she was horrid!!!
She didn't need sleep!!!!
I did but she didn't
She was in a bed instead of a baby cot at only 9 months of age, I kept finding her perched on the top of the bars, holding onto the walls, balanced right on the edge, I decided a bed would be safer for her if she did fall. But once in a bed that was the end of my evenings for several years. Our nightly routine would be myself spending all evening, every evening, marching her back to her bed as she had climbed out once again. I seriously counted one evening, which was a typical evening, taking her back to bed over 70 times in a 3 hour period!!!! Once asleep she would once again wake up around 2-3 am for another "play" session, it would be common practice to find her lying asleep in the hallway with a dolls tea party spread around her that I had missed through sheer exhaustion.
She used to have the most terrible temper tantrums, I was slapped, pinched, spat at and kicked many times. The word No to her would more often than not bring on a tantrum that could go on for hours, I programmed myself to zone out of these times, as long as she was safe, I could shut down and ignore her as she lay there kicking and screaming. Quickly she learnt this was not the way to get attention and the tantrums fazed out.
The children you see on the TV show Supernanny had nothing on my daughter
She could also be the sweetest child imaginable. She could be loving and gentle and have an incredible kindness about her. She could be so affectionate. I loved those moments with her, but they could never be orchestrated by me, those moments only happened if she planned them herself
She could be so innocently funny too. i once found the goldfish floating dead in the fishbowl, she soon told me the details of the poor fish' tragic life, she had taken it out of the tank to read it a story......it wouldn't keep still for the story.......so she slammed the book shut !!!!!! She didn't think she had done anything wrong and was heartbroken when explained that taking it from the water and slamming it in a book was probably what killed it!!!!!!
My daughter was able to pull me into extreme emotions
One minute feeling the most loved and confident mother in the Universe
To, at the flick of a switch, I would feel completely useless and inadequate
The only thing I learnt through all this......
Every 'good' moment was worth the 20 'bad' moments
She had boundless energy, she just didnt need hours of sleep (unlike me
)
My moaning about it wasn't going to make a bit of difference
This was my daughter
I couldn't change her
I could just take enormous pleasure from the happy times
And not take the other dramas personally
Allow her to be her
(August 2007) (
