Sitting

Edith wants badly to be able to sit, and is constantly working her abs trying to haul herself upright. She no longer enjoys being in a supine or prone position and will start to whine if I leave her too long, and escalate to wailing if my assistance is not forthcoming. What she prefers is for me to hold her propped in a sitting position, which requires both of my hands, and so results in my staring at the back of her head for as long as she wants to sit there, attending to her own business, which can be an hour. Sometimes I tire of this, and put her in her bounce chair or donut.

Regular readers of this blog will know I love to torment myself with an expert opinion, so I have of course consulted the baby books about the benchmarks she should be hitting at this point in her development, and they all say that I should not prop her into a position she can’t hold on her own, and I certainly should not let her sit in a bounce chair or donut if at all possible, because she needs to be incentivized through frustration to develop the muscles necessary to support herself in a sitting position.

At first, I panicked a bit about this, but then I realized…what the FUCK are they TALKING about? There’s no epidemic of 25-year-olds who cannot sit independently because their parents propped them up when they were babies. Everybody learns how to goddamned sit, this is not something I need to be worrying about at all.

In other news, Edith collapsed onto her forearm during tummy time today and sucked on it so hard for so long that she gave herself a hickey. This behavior is not referenced in any of the books, so I’ve decided it means she is especially advanced.