New Mummy blog: At 31 Weeks We Got A Glimpse Of The Teenage Tantrums To Come

We’ve been living with a grumpy baby in recent days; a baby who, at almost seven months old, has decided it’s time we had a preview of the teenage years to come.

There have been emotional outburst, crying for seemingly no good reason, whinging at being put down, moaning when you pick her up and just general bad temperedness.

We’re a little beyond those early days of the simple crying checklist – hungry, tired, dirty nappy, colic. Honor’s demands and emotional needs have become infinitely more complex, with anything from boredom to overstimulation affecting her mood. Sometimes I think it could be that quite simply she’s having a bad day – you or I might, why can’t she?

But there was something in the way she’s been lately that’s been different. It hasn’t been teething – the problem most likely to get the blame in our household – because none of her other usual symptoms (nappy rash, constant dribbling, chewing whatever she can get her hands on) have been present. And she hasn’t seemed under the weather at all in any other way – no cough, no cold, no temperature.

I was at a loss. None of the usual tricks were cheering her up. I wondered if this was it, if my luck had run out and this wonderfully happy, fun and content baby I had been blessed with had finally found her darker side and was making up for it two-fold.

[New Mummy Blog: I don't know how to cope without my baby]
[New Mummy Blog: Moving our child to her own bedroom]

But then, as quickly as the black mood descended, it lifted – along with one crucial development. Honor started to crawl.

It turned out that the perma-grump we’d been experiencing was borne out of frustration. Honor’s valiant attempts to get on the move were exasperating her. We’d had weeks of rolling, kneeling and rocking, and even the odd backward shuffle as she tried to get mobile. And it seems all that effort, with little reward, had taken its toll.

I can’t blame her. It must be quite exhausting living in a world where you have to work so hard to be understood, to want to be on the other side of the room to reach that toy that’s calling your name, but with no idea how you can get there.

We probably didn’t help matters by constantly placing the objects of her desire just that little bit out of reach, in an effort to encourage her to get moving to retrieve them (we did always give in and hand them to her – we weren’t that mean).

It has, of course, been a great relief to see our happy, smiley baby return. But it’s also taken me down a peg or two. It was a bit of a shock to realise that it can still be a challenge to read my baby; after seven months I thought I knew her totally. But it turns out she’s still got the ability to surprise me, and there’s still so much to learn.

I have a feeling that she’s going to keep on surprising me forevermore. But that’s exactly what she’s meant to do, of course.