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High Need Babies
Our son Jack turned one last month. Some days I didn’t think we’d make it. Like many babies, he is still breast fed and doesn’t sleep well. He grizzles and likes to be carried.
As a newborn he breastfed almost continuously, and cried almost every time he was put down. Even a sling was not close enough for Jack.
He was diagnosed with reflux, colic and neither. He startled at noise and strangers and cried often. Well-meaning family suggested he was hungry or in pain. Instinctively I felt he just needed close contact and tried to accept this was his personality.
But, you don’t want that to be his personality,’ one friend said.
But some babies are just high needs.
More than one mother has observed, ‘high needs babies need more of everything – except sleep’. These children tend to sleep fitfully, only at the breast, or close to it; or if bottle fed only in mum arms, a sling, or a moving pram. As they get older they tend to cling, sometimes for years, preferring to experience their world from up high, in the safety of mum’s arms.
On their excellent website www.askdrsears.com, Drs William and Martha Sears identify the high needs baby as, among others, a frequent feeder, bad sleeper, demanding, draining, and super-sensitive. These babies find it difficult to ‘change gears’. They are sensitive to their environment and don’t cope well with change.
Yvette O’Dowd has parented three high needs babies who have grown in to independent young people. Her youngest, son Keiran, was a frequent feeder and poor sleeper. He was also particularly sensitive to change. ‘Little things like having a bath or having his clothes changed were distressing,’ she says. ‘Even simple things like re-arranging the furniture took some time to adjust to. And infancy is change, change, change.’
Yvette says it is easy to feel like a failure when presented with a high needs baby who refuses to fit to schedule or society’s ideal. ‘You’ve spoken to just about everybody and they’ve all given you their personal opinion and conflicting advice. By that stage you feel completely overwhelmed and doubt your own ability to make decisions. ‘ She advises listening to your instincts instead of what other people are telling you. ‘Putting the child’s needs before your own needs is very alien to current society’s way of thinking.
Usually, if we can’t get what we want we set a goal to get it, and we do what we can to make that happen. But when we try to relate that to child rearing it’s doomed to fail.’
Pinky McKay is a lactation consultant and author of ‘Sleep Like a Baby’ (Penguin). Pinky says it is difficult to identify why some babies are high needs. ‘It may go back to a birth experience, or temperament,’ she says. ‘Maybe they’re sensitive to food, maybe it’s their environment, maybe it’s some sensory thing within their little bodies and they need more skin contact.’
One thing Pinky is sure of is that meeting the needs of your high need infant will help her to feel more secure and, in her own time, step out on her own.
In the 1960s developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth pioneered the first study of maternal-infant attachment during the first year of life. Her research formed the beginning of the attachment theory, which concludes that responding to babies’ needs leads to more content babies, and well balanced development through to adulthood. An early study concluded that babies who were indiscriminately soothed in their early months cried less by the age of one than babies who were not soothed.
High needs babies can be intense and draining and mothers need to get help and support from partners, family and a wider network. There is evidence to suggest that mothers of high needs babies, particularly poor sleepers, have a higher risk of developing post natal depression.
McKay suggests learning practical coping strategies. ‘I love baby massage because that helps parents slow down to the babies pace. It gives them eye contact and skin contact.’
It also reduces the stress hormone cortisol within the baby and produces oxytocin within the parent.
Oxytocin is the bonding hormone usually associated with breast feeding but it is also produced by skin to skin contact. And massage is something dads can do too.
High needs babies can be very scary for dads, but it is important that they get involved and take some pressure off the mother. ‘The more fathers have to do with bathing the baby or massaging the baby the more oxytocin they’ll produce. That helps them want to be with the baby more, so it’s a really good cycle.’
Parents can benefit from a mental switch as well. O’Dowd suggests that acceptance of your baby’s special personality is key to moving forward and responding to her needs. ‘Of course all mother’s have days when they wish their baby was not like this, when they think ‘Why me? It’s not fair.’
A support group or social time with parents with similar children or similar parenting values can help relieve this pressure.
On the brighter side, anecdotal evidence tells us high needs babies are very loving, and destined to be more intelligent or creative. Dr Sears writes, ‘This acute sensitivity to their environment can become a rewarding asset as a child grows. These children are ‘tuned in’ to what is going on around them. Their keen awareness stimulates their curiosity, which in turn stimulates learning. They become kids who care. They are bothered by another child’s hurts. They develop empathy.’
However, this may not be the high needs personality, but the result of attachment parenting the baby. According to Prof James McKenna, director of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame,USA, babies who co-sleep or bed share are better off as adults; showing higher self confidence and esteem, and higher levels of intimacy as adults.
In addition McKenna says these babies are the survivors. They refuse to be paid-off and keep demanding that their needs be met.
Yvette says Keiran is still very in tune with his body and his needs. ‘He can’t be told when he should be eating or when he should be sleeping. If he goes to bed too late the next day he will say ‘I’m really tired. I went to bed too late.’ This is his body and he works with it. And he’s been trying to do that since he was born.’
One theory is that these babies are a sort of rite of passage; forcing themselves upon mothers, couples and families, and demanding to be amalgamated into the dynamic in no uncertain terms. But much more importantly they demand that parents and siblings be present at every given moment, enjoying years which are over too quickly.
Jack has certainly made his mark within our family unit, but without his intense personality I’m sure we would all have missed so much special time with him because we were trying to cook, clean or watch TV.
Yvette says, ‘It’s such a short time really. Before you know it they are emailing you from abroad telling you they have just been skydiving!’ Then you wish they were back in your arms.
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