Patience

I called my sister Nicole last week to ask for her professional opinion on something that had been nagging me. Isaac scoots, rolls over, says "hi" and waves, claps his hands and I swear says something that sounds like Isaac "Eye-ek". The thing is that he doesn't crawl. At first, I shrugged off that fact by normalizing his development and saying to myself--he seems so normal in everything else. But as the days have passed without any more progress toward crawling, Isaac's non-crawl has gotten to me. When I drop Isaac off a daycare, it's hard not to notice the children his own age and younger who are crawling all around him.

So I called Nicole, who is an occupational therapist and has worked with children with delays to get them to crawl, or do other normal baby things. She said Isaac was fine and that I shouldn't worry. There were a few exercises that I could do, but basically I just needed to wait for the inevitable thing to happen.

Since that conversation, I have put Isaac through "his paces" as Josh says. I put him on his belly with a toy in front of him and I lift his hips and pull his knees in. He hates this. Sometimes he tolerates it okay, but most of the time he cries and puts his head on the floor (like, "why are you making me do something that is so hard?"). It literally breaks my heart when we're doing this. I'm trying to do the right thing, but I don't want to push him too hard either.

I recognize that the way I feel right now--fear and anxiety about Isaac being normal--will not go away. When I imagine myself years from now (when Isaac can walk away from me whenever he wants), I predict I'll be fretting about something... his socialization or test scores or why he can't shoot a basketball like someone else. I know it won't end with crawling or walking.

I searched on Google "late crawler" and almost had a heart attack. (By the way, do NOT use Google about any questions on pregnancy or babies! People write some scary stuff). I did somehow find my way to the Berkeley Parents Network and read some really encouraging notes there. Some parents wrote about their babies starting to crawl at 12 months and being totally normal older kids. Some parents said their child was late to crawl, but was an early talker (that's Isaac). Others said that their baby seemed unmotivated and even lazy, but eventually got the hang of it and now is totally active and normal. Also, my sister Jenn told me that her daughter didn't crawl until she was 11 months and then waited a few months to walk.

The best piece of advice was in the form of a question: how many 5-year-olds do you know who can't walk or crawl?

I've never been good at waiting. I over-think everything. I believe that results eventually come with hard work. But Isaac isn't a project in the lab or a chore I have to tackle. He's my wonderful, happy, loving, little boy. He'll eventually crawl--this I know. In the meantime, I need to stop using Google and listen to my doctor who said just last week (during Isaac's sickness) that we shouldn't be worried and get a little patience.

PS--I almost simply put in a Guns'n'Roses reference here until Josh admitted he didn't know the song, "Patience" and I found that fact more interesting than the reference. He said he wasn't allowed to buy GNR albums and that I was cooler than him. How can this be? Josh is my pop-culture maven. Is this song a girls' song or was Josh hiding under a rock in 1989?