The evenings around here are tough.
Elizabeth cries, screams, gets the hiccups, cries more. We soothe, cuddle, pat, carry, swaddle, hold, swing. Poor little thing. So anyway, last night this lasted for six hours.
While trying to soothe her, Richard and I got out the Primary Song Book and started singing them back to back. It was tender. He cuddled with her while I took a shower, and we all were in bed by midnight.
Elizabeth woke up at 4:30 AM and while I nursed her, I listened to the sounds outside announcing the dawn light. First the birds waking up. Then the call to prayer as I rocked her back to sleep.
It was natural, spiritual, beautiful.
A moment to remember that today is a new day, to try again, to do better.
Fresh with hope.
7 comments:
This will sound sad, but hope with a colicky baby is a bad idea until they get to about 3 months old because there's not much you can do until then to stop it! From what I read, it's a brain development thing. Which is harder to tell your own brain hormones which send out gushes of chemical stress every time your baby cries. (Sam and Lily's colic was how I turned crazy ;)
The best thing you can do is hire someone to take the baby for two hours every afternoon so that you can leave the house and have two hours of guaranteed quiet.
Another thing that would help Sam sometimes is if I walked him around Walmart in a sling. Some days we spent six hours there. All the walking made it hard to heal my episiotomy (took ten months!) but I did lose 80 pounds!
Hang in there!
ps: Have you read "Happiest Baby on the Block?" (there's also a video that some people like better.) It's not a magic bullet, but it does have some good tips and some good-to-know bits, like that they call the evening the "witching hour" because that's when the babies go crazy. And we thought we were doing a good swaddle on Sam, but when we re-taught ourselves using the book, Sam started sleeping more at night. Lily didn't take to the swaddle as much, but she did like really loud white noise. Did you ever see her swaddled up with headphones? People always thought we were trying to do some bourgeois make- your-baby-smarter-with-Mozart thing. Really, it was static. We just didn't want to hear it all day. :)
Again, hang in there. There aren't colicky kindergartners. (Impressive tantrum throwers, yes. Colicky? No.)
And things really start to improve when they hit 3 months.
xoxo
Oh, I'm so glad that Kerry wrote all that good advice from someone who has been there!
What a great idea to sing the Children's Songbook to Elizabeth! I imagine one of the worst things about the colic (other than the screaming) is that you probably feel helpless! But singing to her is proactive and soothing for everyone involved.
You are both doing a great job! And one day this will all be a distant memory. Just get through it one day at a time.
Love you three, so so so much!
PS, I love that picture of my darling niece!
Thanks for the comments guys, it really does help to have your advise and just hear from you. :) my wise sisters.
Maybe this is a lame comment but...have you had her checked for reflux? My pediatrician told me there's really no such thing as "colic", that there is amost always a reason that a baby is crying. My friend had a little boy who had "colic" but he didn't spit up a lot but they did a barium swallow study and saw that his milk was coming back up into his esophagus and causing him pain. They put him on Prevacid and he was like a new baby.
P.S. Elizabeth is adorable! We had a little shower for Katie and Becky on Saturday and everyone was talking about how cute she is and how she looks like you (Catherine).
What a beautiful post. Love you!
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