When my daughter was 9 months old, I noticed she became more cranky than normal and I couldn’t figure out why. It turns out it was more teeth- #7 & #8. Before they fully broke through, she started to scrape me with them when nursing. OMG..it was horrible, and I got little cut marks from it. To help with that, I switched to the football hold position, and that gave me some relief. She’s so tall though, so it looked really funny trying to fit her legs “behind me” in the rocking chair where I nurse her. I guess the football hold isn’t meant for older, longer babies, but oh well, this worked for now. Another thing I found that helped with her scraping her teeth on me is to hold her head really close into me, so that she doesn’t have room to pull her head back and scrape me- in other words, so that she has a deeper latch onto me. She resisted this and didn’t like me holding her head there, but I’m the mommy. She gave up fighting me after 3 nursing sessions like this, and didn’t scrape me anymore. As for biting, she has tried a few times to bite me lightly, but I said “NO!” really loud and stopped nursing immediately whenever she did it. I noticed that the times she would bite me was at the end of her feeding session, like when she wanted to play around. So the trick is to end your session the moment you can tell they’re not hungry anymore. At nine months I dropped her down to 4 nursing sessions a day, and she was doing well with that schedule.

My baby also started to show a really nasty temper at this age. Even more “diva-ish” than normal. She would get so mad if I took something away from her, if I left the room, if I put her down when she wanted to be held, and especially when I laid her down on the changing table. She would get pissed! Her face would get bright red and she’d scream this mean scream as if saying, “Oh you better not put me down!” I remember when she was a newborn and she loved the changing table. Not anymore. The worst is when I’m trying to change a poopy diaper while she’s having a temper tantrum and she’s trying to roll and turn onto her stomach to avoid me, and meanwhile her flailing legs land in the dirty diaper. Ah, not fun. If she’s having a temper tantrum when I’m holding her or while sitting down by herself, she’ll sometimes arch her back and throw herself backwards, and that’s scary when she’s sitting on the ground by herself because she can hit her head, so I catch her and lay her down before she can slam herself backwards. At night this happens a lot because she’s tired, so when she’s in the tub I have to keep my hand on her back the entire time because she loves to buck back while she’s yelling. I hope this isn’t a prediction of what she’s going to be like as a toddler with the terrible 2’s.

A great milestone for her was starting to stand supported, if I stood her up first. She couldn’t pull herself up to a standing position, or chose not to, so we would stand her up and have her hold onto the couch and she held her weight fine. Her doctor thinks she’s just being lazy and that we should try to entice her to pull herself up. I’ve been using toys, her pacifier, and keys up on the couch to get her to pull herself up, but she gets frustrated and starts to have a temper tantrum when she can’t reach it. I’ll keep trying though.

I still can’t seem to find any relief for her Eczema and Cradle Cap. I use the Aquaphor lotion, but it doesn’t seem to help. If anyone knows of any good lotions/products to use, please let me know. The cradle cap is especially bad, and I do the combing out thing before her bath, but the cycle starts all over once I wash her head. (I do use organic, gentle baby shampoo.) Is there a certain product I should be rubbing into her scalp after the bath? I would love any suggestions. I’ve read that it’s not supposed to last past age 1. I hope so.

My daughter had 2 more teeth cut through at 8 months old, bringing the total to 6. To get her to open her mouth so I can see them all, I like to sing to her while she’s on the diaper changing table (she always sings when I sing and opens her mouth wide while doing it). I tested out Bohemian Rhapsody on her, and she cracked up at the up-tempo part. Probably because I looked & sounded funny doing it since I did all the different pitches and accents. She also finally started to roll from her back to belly, so she could now roll fully around like a steamroller- meaning I had to watch her like a hawk from now on if she was on my bed because she could easily roll off. She once was sitting up on the couch next to me playing with a toy and I leaned in the opposite direction to pick a different toy up from the ground, and when I sat up and turned towards her I saw her leaning forward off the couch about to fall. She did fall. She dropped her toy off the couch and leaned forward to get it and winded up doing a somersault, but her head hit the hardwood floor as she tumbled over. It was slow motion to me and I couldn’t get there fast enough, and the thud is etched into my memory. Then I panicked hoping she’d laugh or something, but instead she did that silent scream with her mouth open, where it’s building and building and she’s turning red and you’re dreading the end result of all that energy. She screamed so loud and my heart truly broke. I became _that_ mom who dropped my child on the head– the one that we all have jokingly accused our own mothers of being at one time or another. “Why can’t I think straight mom? Did you drop me on the head when I was a baby?” Only I actually did let my baby fall on her head! She didn’t cry very long, actually not long at all, and she didn’t get a bump or bruise, but I kept an eye on her the rest of that week to be safe. I really felt horrible. I remember a few years ago my friend told me her baby rolled off the changing table while she turned the other way, but she luckily had a pile of laundry on the floor that he fell into. I hate my hardwood floors.

About 2 weeks after the falling incident, I noticed that my daughter started to tilt her head to the right. It was a constant head tilt and it was especially noticeable when she was sitting in the highchair. At first I thought it was just a preference, and that she just liked to lean to the side of the highchair to be comfortable, but then I noticed that her head was cocked to the side even when she was sitting on the floor with nothing supporting her.  I thought maybe she just slept on it wrong or pulled a muscle. After about 7 days it went away, but then a week after that it came back again, only this time it was REALLY tilted and looked really odd. It was like her right ear was almost touching her right shoulder all the time. We called the doctor to get her looked at, because I figured she must have an ear infection or a muscle pull or something. I also looked online before going, and I read that it could also be Torticollis, which is basically when one side of the neck muscle is tighter than the other, so you have to do physical therapy to help fix it.

We go to the Pediatrician and he says he’s not sure what it is because of how it went away & then came back again, and he called another Pediatrician in to get her opinion also. She said she doesn’t think it’s Torticollis or a muscle pull and they both said we should go to the hospital to have my 8 month old baby get a CAT scan because it could be a brain tumor. A freakin’ what??? I thought this was going to be a quick visit to the doctor to get some ear drops or neck stretching exercises, and now my poor little baby has to get a CAT scan to see if she has a tumor? My husband and I were freaking out, and on top of that, the Dr. said we have to go to this special hospital where they can put her to sleep so they can do the scan. At the children’s hospital the doctor there said he thinks it IS Torticollis, but he’s going to have the scan done anyway since the Pediatrician wants it done. It turns out they didn’t have to put her to sleep for it, which I was very thankful for, so they rolled up all these towels to try to prevent her from moving too much. Halfway through she started screaming and moving, but I guess they got enough of what they needed because they didn’t say anything. We waited for a full hour in the hospital room for the results, but it was worth the wait because they said she’s fine and there were no tumors on her brain. I felt SUCH relief! I think I even cried a little. I still feel horrible that she had to get all that radiation from a CAT scan at such a young age, but I guess the doctors figured that it was worth it. I just hope that it doesn’t affect anything with her in the future.

They determined that it was Torticollis and that she’d probably have to get some physical therapy done to stretch out her neck muscle. My husband and I looked online and found some specific stretches that are supposed to help with the condition, so we did them for about a week. Well, her next doctor’s appointment for her regular 9-month old checkup was a week after that, and by then her neck was fine. In fact, the doctor said that she looked fine and she probably won’t need any therapy. I don’t know if her rolling off the couch caused it, or if it was a mild case of Torticollis that didn’t show up until she was 8 months old, but I’m glad that issue is over with. I was really scared having to bring my baby to the hospital, especially for a CAT scan, but many parents tell me that this is only the first case of many “scares” that come with being a parent.

Once things finally started to slow down a little bit and my baby was actually taking a few naps, I had time to reflect on what was going on around me and in my life. My daughter was almost 7 months old already, I became a stay-at-home mom when she was born, and my past life was history. And I missed it. I had a B.A. and was very successful in college, I finally had a career going at a great company, and I was a concert loving girl who would go out and party with friends at shows throughout most of the North East part of the country…and Ohio once. (I once road-tripped from NJ to Cleveland to see a Live concert, and went back to NJ that same night because I had to go to a housewarming party by 4pm the next day.) I loved the adrenaline I would get from live rock shows and the feeling of truly living life and having fun. Now, I haven’t been to a show since I was around 8 months pregnant, and I miss it. Instead, I sneak in a few moments on the computer where I can catch someone’s YouTube video of clips of a show here and there. I try to pretend I’m there, but it doesn’t really work–especially when my baby starts crying to let me know she’s up from her nap. And -SNAP- back to reality I come. I do love and appreciate my new life, and I’ve also accepted it. It’s just every now and then I’ll hear something about a band or artist I love and then it makes me wish I could just go to a show. The reason I can’t is because I’m breastfeeding so I’m literally connected on a chain to my daughter who wants to eat like every 3 hours. I could pump a few days before and leave a bottle for my husband, but I am not bringing a breast pump to a show for when I get “full” from missing a feeding. I don’t think so. Can you picture me going to a show at Maxwells in Hoboken, NJ or the North Star Bar in Philly and trying to use their single-person bathroom for 20 minutes trying to pump? Oh and then carrying around a bag of breast milk during the show? Now that’s classy. haha. Plus, my husband would freak out if I left him with “the Diva” for that long, and unfortunately no one we know would babysit and stay overnight for it.

Since I can’t go to shows for the time being, I fill that void by singing to my daughter the songs I’d like to hear at a show again. Of course I don’t do them justice, but she doesn’t know that. She laughs and “sings” along with her deep sounding, off-key “ahhhhhhhh.” She always does that every time my husband or I sing. Our little harmonizer. As for milestones, she’s finally starting to sit up on her own a little bit, but we have to do the pillow thing where there’s a sea of pillows 360 degrees around her, for when she falls back or does a face plant. She is no where near crawling yet, but I read that only 50% of babies can crawl at 6 months and by 11 months 90% of babies can crawl, if they do at all. She’s a really big baby (95th percentile in height & weight) so I think she needs a lot more muscle to carry around all that extra weight. The one issue I can’t seem to find a solution for is her eczema and cradle cap. The eczema is really bad behind her knees and it looks painful and red, but the doctor says it’s not bad enough to give her medicine for it yet and to continue using the Eucerin Aquaphor ointment. As for the cradle cap, I keep putting the Aquaphor on her head, combing out the flakes, and washing her hair with gentle shampoo, but it’s still there. I’d love some suggestions if anyone knows of how to combat the cradle cap. I thought cradle cap was only a newborn baby issue, but apparently not since my daughter is just about 7 months old.

To think that about 9 months ago I was at an Ours show dancing and rocking out to “Live Again” and now I’m talking about combing out cradle cap flakes. Times do change, huh?