The Land Of The Loo-Loo's: Night Terrors

Friday, August 7, 2009

Night Terrors

I was reading this post http://johnson-mccormickfamily.blogspot.com/2009/08/starvation-and-deep-destitute-poverty.html and thinking about Mr. C and his night terrors. They are better as he gets older, less often. But this Mom (above post) was privileged with some info about her twins and their experience in the orphanage that may be insightful for us too. With Mr. C and Miss M much is a question mark related to what happened? in their early life. The evidence is there for both that it wasn't good but they can't remember verbally to talk about things yet the horror lives with in them.
Mr. C has always had sleep issues and eating issues. To this day he crams food in like someone is going to take it. We worry that he will choke, verbal reminders, etc. but in the grand picture we have bigger fish to fry and this is how he eats. I know that in his orphanage they had 75 to 100 babies and children up to age 4 and 10 caregivers. Doing the math you can understand that these women moved fast and with a purpose. The food was shove shove shove done and then they moved on to the next baby. So we are pretty clear where the cram it in eating habit formed.We know too that he did not get enough to eat. At 10 months old when I met him he was the size of a 3-month-old baby and wore a newborn cap on his head. He was not much bigger than a stacking toy at 10 months old.

Miss M was "clinically malnourished" at 2 years old and weighted 18 pounds, wore size 9 to 12 month clothes and a size 2 infant shoe. She had fragile bones that felt like you could just break her by holding her hand. Her head looked too big for her body and her tummy was very bloated with gas from finally getting some nutrition. The picture below with no shirt on you can see that her cheeks are full of food and the wrappers are near by. I was not going to tell her no to food. She kept saying "mas, mas, mas". It was one of the few words she said at 2.