Parenting my rainbow is hard. Since my first son died and my rainbow arrived safely it's like I can't envision my life going well so with my living child I worry about (obsess over) his development. He seems to be developing fine (only a few months old) - not the quickest, not the slowest, but no matter what I convince myself he's behind everyone else and there's something seriously wrong. It doesn't help that there's so many braggy moms on social media who claim there child is doing EVERYTHING at a very young age. I want to enjoy my son but I can't. I just can't see my life going well - all I can focus on are things he's not doing yet. I stress out so much my life is miserable. Anyone else have this problem?

You're not alone. And I wish I could say it gets better but it hasn't. We don't have any sort of special protection. We know that. Our kids are vulnerable to anything and everything. I hate that I am losing out because I am always evaluating. I hate that they know I'm always anxious over them. There ain't some point where we will stop worrying, because we know something could go wrong the next day. The only thing that has been suggested to me is therapy. I avoid social media. Maybe you should get off? I always thought it was strange, from the very beginning, we size up and evaluate babies on stats. Weighed this. Doing this. Who cares?

Had to smile. I've never used the word "ain't" but my auto correct found it. Anyway, hang in there.

I think it's completely normal to worry. I agree with Elaina, maybe get off the competitive parenting of social media for a while? And I think if you're worried, talk to your son's pediatrician too. My rainbow son is late on a bunch of gross motor skills (he didn't roll until 6 months, isn't crawling at almost 12 months...) so the pediatrician referred us to our area's early intervention program. They came to do an assessment and an occupational therapist has been coming to our house to work with him for several months and it has helped. It helps that she comes too because every time she asks if I have questions, if I'm worried about anything, and if she notices anything, she says something. Fortunately, every time, it's been, well we still need to work on the gross motor skills but she's never seen anything else, in fact she keeps saying that on the cognitive/fine motor skills, he's more advanced than other children his age that she sees. That's helped my stress on all of this because if he's fine on everything else, a little delay on this doesn't seem like as big a deal.

Thinking of you and sending a big hug.