Touchy Touchy

Today I took Sadie in for her regular PT session, and it didn't go well. At home she's been so great -- crawling everywhere, being cool with me moving around the house. This week she began cruising, although she's still very tentative about it and will only do it if I'm standing nearby. She also pulled up successfully a few times on the couch and coffee table.

At PT, though, she's a mess. She immediately wigs out if I try to move away from her, or if she gets frustrated by not being able to do something, and goes into complete shut-down mode, screaming. She stiffens up all of her muscles, grabs whatever toys are in reach, and hurls them across the room. Usually she can be distracted out of her crying, but today it just got worse and worse. Eventually she went into full meltdown, crying hysterically. It was so hard to watch her physically shut down, so that even though she was standing up playing with toys, she wouldn't sit down so she could crawl over to me. Joy had to move her into a sitting position by hand, after which she crawled over to me, wailing dramatically, buried her head in my lap, and refused to move.

Joy and I had a talk afterwards. I explained that while she's cool at home, social situations often cause her to freeze up. Even if she's more curious than fearful -- like, for instance, if we're at a baby gym or at someone's house on a playdate -- she still would much rather sit in one spot and watch the action around her than explore, experiment or join in.

I know that I'm making it sound like I'm expecting too much of her, and maybe I am. On the other hand, this is all tied together to her behavior at day care, where she would get upset and, rather than try to find a solution on her own, go into immediately hysterics and stay in that hysterical state until someone picked her up and soothed her, gave her a paci, let her hold her special blanket.

Joy has recommended that we take her to a developmental pediatrician. Apparently there's a woman who works out of the Pasadena Children's Center who is supposed to be very good. I talked with Scott about it and his immediate reaction was, "If they want to put her on drugs, we're saying no." I agree with him, of course, and I feel torn about the whole thing.

We know that Sadie has no physical conditions that will prevent her from learning and growing. We know that with Selena, her nanny, or with me or Scott, she's curious, content and happy to learn and play. So maybe she's not the most adventurous baby -- is that really such a bad thing? Should I just let her grow up the way she pleases and just accept that she's emotionally...rollercoaster-y?

On the other hand,  I see her get furiously upset over nothing. I see her react to Joy with utter rage, the way she used to react to the women at Happy Star when they wanted her to play by herself independently or sit calmly in her high chair like all the other babies. I see this behavior, and I want to know how to fix it -- or at the very least, find out what's behind it. I'm not the kind of person who accepts that some things just are -- I always want to know why, and it's killing me that I don't know.

Today Joy became the second person to posit the theory that maybe something happened to Sadie when she was younger that traumatized or frightened her (Rose was the first), which might explain why she gets so panicked when I'm not around. I know it's nothing that ever happened at home -- she's been a lucky baby in that she's never even sported so much as a lasting bruise. Could something have happened to her at day care, something they never told me about or never even knew happened to begin with? If that's true, then how could a problem like that ever possibly be fixed?

Well...regardless, I guess the next step is to call the developmental pediatrician and take her in for yet another evaluation. At what point do we just acknowledge that she is who she is, for better or worse?