I know that it has been quite a while since I have last published a post on this blog but due to the fact that my smallest baby (my 6 month old, at the time) has been recovering from a bad case of the flu, my attention was with her. I know you all will understand.
So anyways, I guess I’ll get to the point of the post. (Heh heh, that was funny. This past Halloween my oldest son, who is a boy scout, assisted the church that sponsors his scout troop with running a safe Halloween carnival in the church’s gym. I decided to take my three children to the carnival so they would have fun for the night and to support the troop. (all funds from the carnival pay for the boys to attend a week long summer camp for free. An estimated cost of $300.00 per camper that we parents don’t have to pay). While I was there, I was wearing my now 7 month old daughter on my hip while I was talking to another parent. During our conversation another woman about 3 yards away began to wave and play with her. She then came over and asked if she could pick her up. My daughter usually shies away from strangers but she was smiling at this lady so I allowed her to pick her up. As soon as the woman picked her up, my baby, who is breastfed, leaned over and bit her on the breast. I was shocked and a little embarrassed because she has never done this to another woman before. I didn’t know what to say other than “ I am so sorry. I just don’t know what has gotten into her. She usually tells me when she wants to nurse. She showed no signs what so ever”
Then the other woman says “it’s ok. I nursed my babies too. She was waving at me so I waved back and she begin to grin this big grin so I just wanted to pick her up”
Then it all became so clear to me what was going on. I have been teaching my baby some baby sign language just to see if it would help with communication. The very first sign that she learned was for milk, which is like opening and closing your hands and it kinda does look like the baby is waving at you. When she did this hand motion I was not paying too much attention because I was talking to another person and the lady thought my baby was waving at her. When the woman waved back, my baby took this as a sign that this woman was going to give her what she wanted so she smiled at her and when the lady came over, she tried to get her some milk.
When I explained to the woman what happened, she was so intrigued with the idea of baby signing, we spoke for about 35 minutes on the subject. The only problem is I didn’t have the names of any reputable systems or web pages to recommend to her because I was given a set of 100 cards by a speech therapist friend of mine that she made specifically for me to use. She also gave me the idea to begin baby signing as she uses it in her daily work with special needs children and assured me if it could help her clients, then I should give it a try. If any of you guys reading this blog knows of a good resource for me to pass on to this interested parent, please leave me a comment so I will be better informed next time.
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