Day 22: The Mental Toll It Took on Me That My Baby Was Developing Differently Than Other Kids
My daughter was going very slowly while developing.
Social Media is a very big influence in everything we do nowadays and back when my daughter was in the NICU I desperately looked for moms to relate to on Instagram, TikTok, etc.… I found many parents going through the same thing and that made me feel like I wasn’t alone.
However, when they discharged my daughter from the hospital and I took her home, I was noticing that other babies online that were not premature that were her age in months, looked a lot different than her in size and in things that they could do.
This was due to the fact that she had a 3-month delay due to being born three months early, so when she was 4 months old and looked and acted like a 1-month-old. Which was shocking and everyone that didn’t know she was premature always asked why she was so tiny. Then when she was 6 months old, she was supposed to know be sitting up and rolling over both ways, but she was nowhere near doing none of that stuff she was doing things of a 3-month-old and was still wearing newborn clothes.
At 6 months old a baby also starts eating solids and no matter how hard I tried she just didn’t know what to do with the spoon once it hit her mouth and wouldn’t open her mouth either. She started eating solids at 10 months old. Fast forward to now she is 21 months old, three months away from 2 years old and she still can’t walk or talk. The therapists say she tested that she is doing things at a 9-month-old level.
This really destroyed all my hopes and dreams, and it was not healthy that I kept comparing her to other babies on Instagram and how they were doing. I was also told by many neurosurgeons that she may not walk ever and now that she is almost two and not walking or even standing, it huts me hard as a mother. I feel like I have failed her and this eats away at me day and night, all I do is cry at night that she has to live this way and not enjoy things or understand things other kids her age can.
