We have a baby girl named Julia. At least she's our baby but at nineteen years of age and married some might think we need to move on. When she first went to school, she loved it until in the first grade she realized that some of the other kids didn't always obey like she did. Sometime, in fact, the teacher would have to "raise her voice" to get their attention. Well, this made little Julia nervous and sometimes she would end up crying uncontrollably or even hyperventilating. At first, we were mortified until we spoke with our doctor who assured us that this was a phase that would pass but that we'd all just have to deal with it.
Unfortunately, it got a little worse. When Julia heard her teacher sometimes yell, she'd try to comfort herself by swallowing. She'd swallow air. Then we started receiving phone calls from the school that Julia didn't feel well and we'd pick her up only to find that her little tummy was bloated. Again, we took her to the doctor. It took us awhile to figure out what she was doing because she didn't know that it wasn't good to keep swallowing air. Finally, we figured out that Julia was doing it to herself. Sometimes I discovered that I could calm her down using a bit of humor and started calling her the "big fat belly woman" (sounds cruel I know but it worked) and that seemed to distract her a bit. Even as a little girl she'd have all sorts of emotions and when we'd ask her what was wrong she'd just cry and say, "I don't knoooooowww"!
Later, once the initial concern about her condition was over, I'd sometimes catch her swallowing air again! I'd ask her, "Are you still a big fat belly woman?" "No! I'm not a big fat belly woman!"
No she's not. :)
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