A Case(y) study: Part 1-getting to know Casey, the early years.

Casey Stefan was born on August 3rd, 2003, at home, our third child, younger brother to Mickey who was 3 and Greta who was 6. We tried for 20 months to get pregnant with him, and we were overjoyed to welcome him into the world on my own mother's birthday, no less--without surgery, hospitalization, or any fears of not being "ready" for this child. We had an old 5 bedroom bungalow that was filled with happy accoutrements of early childhood, toys, homeschool supplies, books, etc, and really, nobody could have been happier or more prepared for a new baby to come into their lives than we were for our Casey.

He was an easy enough newborn, meaning, no colic or anything, but he did nurse alot and with great intensity, 'round the clock, I do remember that much. But other than that, he seemed cheerful and contented enough, nothing out of the ordinary as far as babies go. We did not vaccinate him, having read up on the dangers of that, and, at the time, being homeschoolers, he was a healthy baby who never went to the doctor. He was very big when he was born, eleven pounds, and he grew through his clothes at a very rapid rate.

When he was about 4 months old, he seemed bored--truly. He just gave off this aura of wanting something more, much more, funner, more interesting, and so we put him in the doorway-jumper and, unlike his older brother and sister who just sort of hung there innocently until they were MUCH older, Casey really and truly was JUMPING within a few days.

when he was 5 months old, and I have video to prove it, he was already doing a modified army-crawl. He would yell and growl and actually get somewhere at an age when his older brother and sister were barely, barely rolling over from back to front and then crying from the excitement of it all, little Casey was trying to get somewhere...was he going to his blankie or perhaps a teddy bear? Oh, no-- Casey the five month old wanted the TV/entertainment center, and he wanted it bad. Was this some kind of joke? Babyproofing for a five month old? Sheesh! We put a few pillows in front of the TV stand.

Ha!

He had those thrown to the side like they were kleenex. He also had another obsession: to scooch over to the electrical outlets and pull out the safety plugs and jam them down his throat. Huh?

I got an Ergo Carrier when he was about 8 months old, and could wear him on my back for long long periods of time. He seemed really happy to be on me, with that nice high vantage point, but he would pull my hair and jump--yes jump--and it was hard on my back--and scalp! but he was a very happy baby in the Ergo, singing and cooing and laughing--great big belly laughs.

He hated the car--another curve ball--seeing as, the car, for us, like so many other parents, was the magic machine that put babies to sleep, right? No, not mister Casey. He screamed bloody murder most of the time we were out--and if not, he was wide awake, never ever did the car put him to sleep, ever. That put a damper on our homeschool field trips and we started doing things alot closer to home for a while there. Mysteriously, when he was about one year old, though, he would ONLY fall asleep in the car and we had an annoying stint where we would drive him around the blocks for ten minutes and then carry him (SHHHHHHHHHH Mickey!!!!!!) to his bed. Stress!

Sleep--yikes--he didnt do too much of that after the newborn weeks--but not in a walk-the-floors-with-baby colicky sort of way, I am talking wide awake party-boy, just was not tired! I slept with him, as I do with all of my nurslings, but instead of cozy times at Mama's breast, it was all night hyjinx--patting me, laughing, biting, climbing, poking me up the nose, in the eyes, and really hardly ever settling down/nodding off --ever. I was BEYOND sleep deprived, and we "kicked him out" of our bed at the youngest age of any of our children--by nine months old he got the full "Ferberizing" treatment--but he was a stubborn little thing and it took a full week to get him to lay down in his crib and figure out that this was his little bed and that everything was ok, etc. He would sleep alone in his crib for about 4 hours and then he would cry and we would bring him back in with us, and then and only then would he seem to be willing to have some milk and then sleep nicely with us. Again, this was all new to us and nothing like our experiences with the oldest two who only fell asleep for nursies or carrides and who were very cuddly bedfellows for the first year (or a little longer) of their lives.

Casey was really surpassing his older siblings in physical milestones, and, even though he was so large at birth, he was starting to show signs of slimming and slowing down, alot compared to them. The "Giant Baby"--you had an eleven pound baby, HBAC (homeBirthAfterCesarean)--was turning into our little itty bitty and showed no signs whatsoever of being the extraordinarily fat roly-poly that Greta and Mickey were. Mickey was so fat he couldnt hardly move--he had SIX "links" on his little arms, and couldnt fit into anything that was the appropriate length for him. Casey by age 9 months was our first baby who could actually wear the size of clothes that corresponded to his age--in fact, he wore size 4 diapers and size 9-12 months clothes from age 3 months until he was one year old! I think that is bizarre.

Casey could pull up and stand at age 8 months, and was our only baby to walk anywhere even close to one year--in fact it was on his eleven month birthday that he took a few steps. (Greta, Mickey and Charlie were all 14 to 15 months old when they walked)

He didnt care too much for the things that his siblings were into at the various ages, he didnt want to cuddle in for a nice storybook, thats for darn sure! He would crawl/walk/run up to anyone who was trying to read a story and smack the book out of their hands, or rip the pages, or throw it--he loved to throw stuff--including food. Wait, dont those food-throwing kids have those bad parents? Hmmm we were starting to see dear baby Casey as a study in humility, and we found ourselves much less judgemental of other families as he plowed through one naughty/frustrating behavior after the next, us wiping and scrubbing and locking and "putting up" more and more things each day...bookshelves were moved to the KITCHEN, baby gates were stacked double, our TV/vcr/dvd/video game/stereo system were all up on a dresser now, the futon was turned backwards so he wouldn't unzip the mattress cover and climb inside and rip the foam...I would make the morning ritual-rounds before we got him out of his crib or high chair of laying down all the dining room chairs (he loved to tip them over and try to kill himself) and putting the piano bench in the laundry room (he climbed in onto the piano), I would have to do and buy so many things just to keep him vaguely safe--phew this kid was intense!

Speaking of high chairs, I am a huge proponent of them. I find families whose toddlers tot all around at mealtime ridiculous, and we keep our children in a nice safe secure high chair of some sort until they are 5 or 6 years old. They paint, eat, work, read, draw, lego, play-doh, you name it in there, but good ole Casey, well, he would shimmy right up and out and onto the table by the time you went and fulfilled some other little angel's request for "more juice". We bought a deep clip-on chair with a five point harness system. Wild kids get expensive! It helped alot, but he quickly learned that he could buck and buck and shake the entire table, which made Greta and Mickey scream, which made Casey quite thrilled. Arggggg.

Ok, so, those of you with more than one child, you know that age when the new baby starts to mess with the older child's creations? Block towers, special race tracks, little works of art that used to be perfectly safe right there on the coffee table or floor now are in peril?--ok well Casey didnt just accidentally bump anyone's lovingly constructed little tower, he sought out and destroyed. (Greta by age going-on-seven could deal with this, but Mickey at 3 1/2 would lose it completely. This, by the way, was around when Mickey started to be not a very nice brother to baby Casey, and this is something that we are still working on to this very day. In Mickey's defense, Casey was an EXTREMELY destructive baby and toddler, but I still think there needs to be a whole lot more I-Love-You-Because-You-Are-My-Brother.) Casey wrecked everything he could, with the thrill of wrecking seeming to be his true intent--and thats what really bothered all of us. He didnt want your blocks, he wanted to wreck your tower. : (

I started to "gather" stories from as many people as I could find willing to give me any in regards to "Wild" kids. I loved the stories about so-and-so's Uncle Billy was a climber, or so-and-so's little brother drove poor Mom batty..and now he is a doctor/lawyer/astronaut/philanthropist/so-don't-worry-too-much. I tried and tried to find anyone who would tell me that the Wild Child in their particular family was now in prison, but, in the sample surveyed, nobody had anything really long-term-negative to tell me except good luck and bless your heart and things of this nature.

Casey's first birthday came and it was an extremely emotional and meaningful event for me, as it symbolized the now-mythically-important-in-scope victorious HomeBirth. His cake had a little house on it, and even though not a single one of the guests even commented on my house-cake, Steve and Greta knew, and it was a very wonderful day.

By that fall and then Christmas, the 16 month old Casey was an actual lunatic. He was SO WILD, it was like nothing I had ever seen or known. In a lifetime of babysitting and working in the church nursery, and at a daycare center and nursery school, I had little to no experience of a child like this. He was completely merry, but just--wild. We had to do this huge thing to our Christmas tree and put it in a very odd place in our house, behind (yet another expensive) a double wide baby gate just to even have a tree that year. (some well meaning relative suggested that we don't do a tree that year but i mean, come on, a seven and a four year old with no tree? How much more into the magic years of xmas can you get? No way we weren't having a tree...but it did suck how much effort was involved in such a heretofore normal event). So little flip-flop-somersault-tazmanian devil baby continued to live his life as an acrobatic hooligan and we tried to keep up as best we could.

Casey did like stroller rides, surprisingly, and that fall I got really into some serious walking-for-exercise-and-weight-loss. I would take him every time and this was a great time for him to be still. Ironically, I had to be in motion for him to be still but hey who cares, right? Our old neighborhood was less than perfect, but it was sure nice for long walks, and we were up to 3 miles in no time. I was feeling sassy and healthy in my new found weight loss, and just like I was at the tip of the iceberg with "getting it back together" when....

at 17 months old I found out I was pregnant.

No matter what people have concocted along the way to appease themselves or to "make sense of" my life, this news was truly shocking. I wont go into too great of detail here as this is not my Breast and Belly blog, but lets just say that everything they ever told you about fertility charting just DOES NOT APPLY when you are breastfeeding. Your hormones are still too funky, your prolactin levels are too unpredictable, and what looks like it is one thing might not really be and boom the system that you used your whole life now just got you a surprise baby spaced WAY too close for comfort...here we go again!!!!!!

BEING PREGNANT WHILE TAKING CARE OF A ONE YEAR OLD IS A NIGHTMARE.

BEING PREGNANT WHILE BABYSITTING IS A NIGHTMARE.

BEING PREGNANT WHILE HOMESCHOOLING, BABYSITTING, AND TAKING CARE OF A ONE YEAR OLD CASEY WAS A VORTEX FROM HELL'S BOWELS.

Holy #$%&*&%$# was I sick. Sick sick sick sick sick. Hospitalized for hyperemesis twice. Still nursing, still night nursing.....oh that was a long, long pregnancy.

That was a hard, hard pregnancy and the fun-stroller-walking-Mommy who was kind of, kind of keeping up with little Wild Casey was now just a vomiting zombie on the couch, which did not go over so well. I did alot of yelling. Alot of driving around just to get to sit in a chair (now I know this is an extremely common Mama's secret activity but at the time I thought I was horrible, of course) and, well, I think it was really hard on Casey and all of us. The vibe became "Casey is Bad" and Greta and Mickey picked up on it. What was "Wow he is so active!" became "Wow he is so horrible!"....I dont know how much of this Casey absorbed, but he did absorb it, and worsely, Greta and Mickey did, too. It was hard. It was all of 2005, truly, as I got pregnant in January and had the new baby November 1st, it was all of 2005 for all intents and purposes.

Casey did not take too well to his new brother. I knew he wouldn't. He was still nursing frequently when I had an unexpected c-section and was gone for six days. He barely even understood that I was pregnant, let alone going to be gone for six days and then returned completely decimated with some random new brother at his nursies...dont climb on mama, she has a boo-boo tummy...When I came home I was beginning the darkest days of my life, and my little Casey was just about as haunted as I was. I scarcely remember anything from that time, but I would wince and hope that Steve could somehow hold us all together without being too mean to Casey, as tall of an order as that was at the time. Like I said, those were the absolute most heartbreaking, harrowing, scary, lonely (!!!!), Earth shattering soul shattering blackest days I have ever known, so dark and so searingly disappointed and shocked I was, we all were, at the events around us, that I with my awesome memory can barely, barely tell you one thing from November or December 2005, and I can cry anytime, anywhere just thinking about that period. Shudder. NOT a cool time to be 2 years old.