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!