The C Word

"HA! Now that is divine payback. You cried every night from 12am-6am when you finally just passed out. I remember being so hopeless because I couldn't help you at all.... actually, I feel for you, and I don't wish this on anyone".

I don't know, mom, look pretty happy.

This was my mom's response to when I pulled over in the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot and called her with a weird, hair-brained enthusiasm to tell her Noah was diagnosed with the dreaded C-word.

Colic.

Also known as your worst nightmare.

It started around 3 weeks, and I thought it was run-of-the-mill fussiness. But it kept going. It kept getting more intense. It seemed all of his needs were being met and he was still throwing a fit. I gobbled up as much of what parenting forums, articles, experts, and friends had to say about fussiness. Anyone with a newborn eventually stumbles across the "wonder weeks", which are (supposedly) major developmental leaps that every child goes through around the same time in their lives. They are characterized by a "stormy" period, which ends within a few days or a week once baby gets through their "leap". That MUST be it! I hurriedly bought the book on Amazon hoping it would have some answers. I read the first 50 pages that walked the reader through developmental leaps and what to expect for the first one as soon as I got it. The first "stormy" period happens just before the leap at 5 weeks... but Noah was early for that... but maybe he's just advanced?.... right?..... RIGHT???.....

It only got worse. Eventually, I realized how long I had been saying he was going through a fussy phase. Maybe it wasn't a phase. 

I left Noah with my mom so I could go for my 6-week postpartum checkup. He was great for the two hours he was with her. I got him home around noon and he screamed/cried nonstop unless he was nursing (and maybe for 10-20 minutes after eating). It didn't stop until 11pm. I finally broke down and called the pediatrician. I didn't even bother trying to triage this with the nurses, I just made an appointment for him. So, just after turning 6 weeks old he was officially diagnosed with colic. What is colic you ask?

No one freakin' knows.

It's characterized by excessive crying, and many doctor's won't call it colic until the baby cries for 3+ hours a day, at least 3 times a week, for at least 3 weeks. It's not just average baby crying, either, it's inconsolable crying, often accompanied by clenched fists, scrunched up legs, and a red (almost purple) face. They can be fed, burped, freshly changed, in a comfortable environment, held skin-to-skin, and they'll still let it rip. No one really knows what causes it, but the common thought is an immature digestion and/or nervous system, maybe something similar to irritable bowel syndrome, that causes discomfort. 

Noah gave his pediatrician a show while we were there, and I was so proud of his performance. My fear was we would go in there, he would act like an angel, and I would have to beg and plead with her to get her to believe something must be wrong. She gave us some tips that "might help, but probably won't, but you can try them anyway". I clung on to each of them. I would steal the tears of an angel to brew the magic medicine if she told me that would help him feel better and stop his crying. If it has even a 1% chance of helping, then I'm freakin' doing it. But alas, the only thing that cures colic is time. 

"The good thing", our pediatrician said, "is that it almost always disappears completely by 4 months." That was supposed to make us feel better. Adam and I looked at each other with our tired eyes, bruised psyches, bleeding ears (not literally), and gave a half hearted "yippee" in response. But, liked I said earlier, I called my mom with hair-brained enthusiasm after we left because I had proof that he wasn't your average fussy baby. I had been terrified that they would just tell us nothing was wrong and we would just have to deal with it. We still just have to "deal with it", but at least it's "something is wrong, we don't know why, and you have to deal with it".

So what's it like to "deal with it"?

Exhausted, in our hot house, doing squats while
watching the Ellen show to keep him asleep.

The crying and screaming is so persistent that I hear phantom cries when he's quiet. I hear it in the birds chirping. I hear it in the laughter and squeals of the little kids at summer camp at the school behind our house. We rock, we bounce, we sing, we walk, we coo. We try belly rubs, holding him a million different ways, eventually we try one of the three different medicines we have that might give him (and us) some relief. We rush through every task so that we can pick him back up, because he absolutely hates being put down. When we're together we play zone defense and tag-team to put out the fires. For the 50 hours a week Adam is gone, I do it alone and try to keep both of us from melting down. I do everything possible to get him to nap, because when he doesn't his screaming fits are 100x worse in the afternoon/evening. When all else fails, we swaddle him, put him down, and do something else for a few minutes. The gut-wrenching cries and blood curdling screams eventually become so normal that they fade into the background noise of your life. It's just not the calming, peaceful white noise you want, but if you don't tune out eventually you'll go insane. On our worst days, I chuckle to myself and swear I'm going to be checking into the looney bin soon.

Early parenthood can be very isolating for anyone. You spend way more time inside on your couch than you would think. Breastfeeding isn't really a team sport. Getting out of the house isn't always easy. Having a baby with colic exaggerates all of this, especially for me. I do want to pass the baby off to Adam when he's around, both so he can spend time with him that he misses out on while he's at work and so I can get a break. I don't want to pass him off to anyone else, though, because I don't want anyone to feel the frustration and heartbreak that we do when they try everything to calm him down and nothing works. People ask why I don't go to my mom's when he's been crying all morning and I still have a few hours until Adam gets home. In those moments, though, it takes a lot of energy to pack us both us, get out of the house, drive somewhere (which he usually hates), just to have the meltdown continue. In those moments, I don't want to pull others into the tornado with me.

Grammy: the baby whisperer

It may sound weird that I'm more concerned about the adult than the child, but trust me, if he's having a bad day it doesn't matter if I'm the one comforting him or not. I don't have anxiety of him crying because he's away from me. In fact, he usually hams it up for everyone and saves the real fun for us ;).

We cherish every good moment and gobble them up, trying to store the smiles, coos, cute faces, funny farts, whatever it is, into the memory bank. We draw on those moments to get us through the worst ones. Sometimes he can go hours without having a crying fit, and when he starts up again it feels like we just got the last meltdown under control. It can be maddening. But I think we hang on the moments in between so fiercely that it make us appreciate them more. One night I watched him "talk" and smile to his dad and it brought a tear to my eye because I know there's a happy baby in there. It's just masked by a screaming one a lot of the time. The day he was diagnosed with colic was one of the best ones we've had so far. He did have his usual meltdown for a lot of the day, but after the appointment we went out to dinner on a whim, got home, and decided to check out the concert on the town common that was going on. We chatted with people (meaning we told 20 strangers how old he is and that, yes, he loves being in the Moby wrap), and danced around together, we sang along.

We just keep holding on to the happy moments!

Times You Feel Like a Horrible Mother

And what makes you realize you aren't.

1. Feeling ready to go back to work
   
   I remember around the 2 week mark thinking "I seriously have 6 more weeks of this?" I felt like I was just getting through each day (some days still feel like that), and I didn't really know what I was doing. Part of me longed to go back to work, and I instantly felt shitty. I shouldn't want to go back to work, right? I follow some discussion boards online for people that were due around the same time as me, and so many of them said they were dreading going back, they would miss the baby cuddles, they had anxiety about daycare and just wanted to stay with their baby. I felt so guilty because I was toying with the idea of going back after 6 weeks (my designated leave) instead of 8 weeks (I'm taking two weeks of personal time). I knew I wouldn't shorten my leave, but part of my wanted to.
   
   I realized that this didn't make me crappy, neglectful mom - I was just wishing I knew what I was doing. Work seemed easy. I know how to do my job. This "job" of motherhood, especially during the week when I'm home alone with the baby, is so much harder than my actual job. If something's wrong at work I can fix it. I can't always fix Noah. Sometimes he just cries. My job can be monotonous sometimes, but there's an end to the workday. The endless cycle of tasks with a newborn never ends. Diaper, feeding, soothing, diaper, diaper, laundry, playful interaction, soothing, feeding, feeding, feeding, soothing, diaper, etc. Yearning for familiarity and stability does not make you a bad mom. He's now 6 weeks old and I go back to work at the end of the month. It doesn't feel right, now. I think I'll be happy to get back to work, do something different with my day, interact with other adults, etc., but I'm now starting to feel the anxiety of leaving him alone all day.
   
2. Using a baby bottle to measure out 5 oz of wine.
   
   I laughed when I did it, and I'm laughing thinking about it now. Summer days make me long for a beer on the porch. I have no desire to get drunk, in fact right now I feel like I could never get drunk again and be fine with that. 
   
   I just love having a drink with dinner or after a long day. Breastfeeding complicates this, and you need to plan ahead if you want to have a drink. That starts with doing your research and figuring out what you believe about alcohol and breastmilk - some people strictly believe in "pumping and dumping", others don't. I feel comfortable with not pumping and dumping because it doesn't speed up the elimination of alcohol from your system. Still, you have to time it so that you finish your drink ~2 hours before you need to feed again. This can be a challenge when you have an unpredictable newborn (is there such thing as a predictable newborn?). When's the last time you had to do math before you enjoyed a beer?
   
   I had a beer on my birthday and had stolen sips of drinks here and there. I had an Allagash White, one of my favorite beers ever. I thought the heavens would shine upon my first beer in almost a year, as I got to finally enjoy one social adult beverage on my birthday. Surprisingly, it was just *okay*. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't the magical experience I thought it would be. One Friday night I decided we were going to have a glass of wine, damnit, because I missed wine, damnit. Adam and I were wine-o's in the early stages of our relationship, and we've always loved getting a bottle of wine or champagne to share. Needless to say, we didn't measure out 5 freakin' ounces of wine when we drank, so I had no idea how much 'one glass' of wine really was. We hurriedly got the wine glasses out once Noah fell asleep for his longest stretch at night (at least I anxiously hoped - what if he wakes up and needs to feed before the 2 hours has passed??). I realized I needed to actually measure out 5 oz, the standard 'one glass', and the first thing I saw with this exact measurement was one of Noah's bottles on our drying rack. I poured the wine into his bottle, laughed to myself, and thought about what a terrible mother I must look like. I quickly realized we aren't terrible parents, though, because we enjoyed our wine with our eyes half shut (staying up after the baby goes down instead of falling asleep with him seems like such a foolish thing to do), and we talked about Noah the entire time. I wasn't a bad mom for enjoying a glass of wine, for not "pumping and dumping", for using my child's bottle to measure out the right amount so I didn't drink too much. We were just normal humans that needed a 20-minute date night.
   
3. Losing your cool.
   
   If you haven't lost your shit while trying to comfort a newborn, I don't understand you. You must have the patience, grace, and demeanor of an angel on muscle relaxants. Noah is going through a super fussy phase right now, and one day this week he refused to nap and cried for 11 hours. There was about 20 minutes of catnaps sprinkled in there, and he didn't cry when nursing. That's about it. He had been changed, fed, burped, nothing on his clothing was making him uncomfortable, the room was a nice temperature, I had been singing, cooing, bouncing, rocking, walking with him for hours. Nothing worked. Eventually I felt like my head was going to explode, so I put him in his swing (much to his chagrin), closed the door, sat on my stairs and cried. I walked downstairs to get a drink, let out some inhuman yell myself, and then sat back on my stairs and cried some more. It's not the first time it has happened, I'm sure it won't be the last.
   
   It's always so defeating to feel like a tiny baby has totally beaten you, but sometimes they do win the battle... and yes, "battle" is the appropriate word to use, sometimes. Luckily, we're adults and can regain our composure and realize that it's probably not easy to go from life in the womb to life in the world, and not be able to tell us what is wrong. I felt like a total failure listening to him scream bloody murder in his swing, but of course after a few minutes I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, found my zen, and went back to trying to calm him down. It's okay to lose your mind occasionally. Being screamed at for hours at a time is not easy. It doesn't make you a bad mom to scream back, sometimes.
   
4. Shooting daggers out of my eyes when people say how peaceful he is.
   
   Noah hates the car, and I mean really hates it, and will usually scream his little lungs out for 50%+ of the trip (sometimes 100%). Usually he's so happy to get out of the car that he goes total zen-baby when we get to where we're going. That's great, don't get me wrong - sometimes we even get a long nap out of it after (nothing like a nice traumatizing car ride to knock you out for a few hours).
   
   When we're out in public people usually say what a calm, peaceful baby he is, "just soaking up the world!" I smile and agree and say "yes, he's happy!", but most of the time I want to roll my eyes and go "I wish you had seen him 15 minutes ago". Then I feel like shit for being so negative, because he is a pretty happy baby overall. I chuckled at myself writing that, because like I said he's in a super fussy phase and is finally dozing off after wailing for 2 hours straight this morning. I digress.
   
   I think I get frustrated when people only see the happy baby side of him because it makes me feel like I get the unhappy side allllll to myself. Of course, I would rather him be a happy baby in public and save his meltdowns for home when it's calmer and better for us to soothe him... nothing like trying to calm a crying baby and remember your pin number in the checkout line. Misery also loves company. I don't mean to say that early days of parenting are miserable, but some moments really are. So many other moments are hilarious, fantastic, and heart-melting. But I want other parents to commiserate with me and say, "he's happy now, but I totally know he'll be crabby for most of the day! I feel you, sister! Hang in there! You're doing great and wow-ee do you look FANTASTIC!" Is that too much to ask for ;)?
   
5. Feeling like an uncaged animal when I leave him.
   
   It was 5.5 weeks before I left Noah for more than 10 minutes to run out to the post office while Adam was home. It was a Friday, I had defrosted some breastmilk for Adam to use to bottle-feed (we do one bottle a day to keep him used to taking a bottle), and I suddenly got the overwhelming sense that I wasn't going to be cooking dinner. No one was. We were getting takeout, damnit! Getting takeout with someone that has 13 food allergies isn't easy, but we can always do sushi. I had to drive two towns over to the closest sushi place. It was a 45 minute trip total. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, I blasted my music with the windows down, and I felt like a zoo animal being let out of the cage for the first time. Then I felt like crap. I wasn't a zoo animal, I wasn't in a cage, I was caring for my baby at home.
   
   But you know what? You spend 5.5 weeks attached to someone, mostly inside, with not much variety in your days.
   
   You'll feel grateful to get out, too. I had to work really hard to not keep texting Adam to check in, to not feel super anxious about how the bottle feeding was going, if he was crying, if they needed me. I told myself everything was fine, so I turned up the music and enjoyed myself.
   
   
   And the sushi was great.