Randoms

I feel like I haven't been keeping up on the life of Riley so here's a few details of note lately...

1. The Nuk is gone! When Riley was born we didn't give her a pacifier because we wanted to make sure that she took to breastfeeding. We didn't really have to worry about it because she had nursing down right away, but we weren't taking any chances since we were new at the parenting job. Plus, I was torn about whether I wanted her to use a pacifier or even her thumb. I wanted her to have a way to sooth herself, but I didn't want to go through the 'removal' process later.

When we finally gave Riley a paci she didn't really care for it. For a short time I thought she might start sucking her thumb (something her dad did when he was a baby), but that didn't happen either. You'd think I would have been fine with this, but since she was colicky at the time I wanted her to have something that would calm her - that would help the crying stop (please make it stop). Eventually, she did latch on to the Nuk and for some time that sucker went everywhere with us.

Finally embracing the Nuk around 3 months, but not the life jacket.

As she got older, Nuk usage was scaled back to sleeping time only with the hope that we'd get rid of it soon. That 'soon' took longer that I wanted to, but finally Jesse and I agreed that since she was about to turn 3 it had to go. We prepared Riley for weeks telling her that Nuks are only for babies and since she was a big girl she no longer needed it. She would agree, but anytime I tried to set it aside she would freak out.

Not quite ready to let go

Jesse and I did not communicate well about the exact timing of the Nuk cut off. I had in my mind that we might have to do something tricky (cut the tips off) or symbolic (set it outside for the pacifier fairy to bring to another kid) and that it would be done a couple weeks after her birthday. But in the end, Jesse just put her down for a nap on her birthday without it. She didn't sleep that day, but I am sure it was for a number of reasons. That night I was at a hotel with Riley and friends and ended up giving it to her midway through the night (after a weird freak out), but since then she's been Nuk free. We had a number of nights where she would wake up crying. We weren't sure what that was about - it could have been the lack of Nuk, but she's woken up crying with the Nuk so who knows. I'm just glad it went as well as it did. She doesn't even seem as attached to her 'blankie' that she slept with every night. Any stuffed animal seems to do. Huh. I'm relieved that it went so well. Perhaps I should give her more credit when it comes to adjusting to new things.

2. Speaking of sleep - to nap or not to nap. I'm a little worried that Riley is phasing out of her nap. She'll have a week were she doesn't nap... or doesn't nap well, followed by a week that's fine, but those no nap days are starting to happen more and more. Doesn't she know that I really need that afternoon downtime myself? As I write this I *think* she's fallen asleep for a nap, but the last two days she skipped her nap without getting any more sleep at night than she usually does (and has actually been getting up earlier). I know it is common for some kids to stop napping at this age, and I shouldn't be surprised based on my kids previous sleep patterns, but say it ain't so. At least give me another 6 months. I'll be ready by then, right?

3. Haircut. Riley still has superfine straight hair. It might be getting slightly thicker - maybe, but the one thing for sure is that it keeps wanting to grow out into a long mullet. It seemed silly to take her in to get a slight trim, but I remember all too well the trims my dad gave me as a child and suddenly the money seemed so worth it.

Yeah, it doesn't look much different

4. Sleepover and grandma and grandpa's. Jesse and I had to help my dad out at his farm so we shipped the kid off to her grandparents. While there she got one last birthday gift, a tea party set, at which she exclaimed "a tea party booth" when she opened it (where does she get this stuff), made cookies, and went sledding. It's always a good time at grandma and grandpa's house.

Colic

My daughter, Riley, is going on 21 months and is a happy and delightful child, but that wasn't always the case. She struggled with colic for the first 3 - 4 months of her life. It's been a bit since my husband, Jesse, and I were struggling along with her, but I felt the need to write about our experience because I recently read the following two things:

1. Another blog, titled "Enjoy Every Minute... It All Goes So Fast", wrote about people who naively make this statement to new parents.  I get why people feel compelled to say this, but in reality this comment isn't that helpful when your baby won't stop crying, you're sleep deprived, and you're just trying to stay sane. Do I have to enjoy every minute? Because there were a lot of miserable moments that I would just rather forget. The one that I especially got to me was "Don't you just love motherhood?" No, actually it sucks big time when you have a colicky child.

2. A colleague posted on Facebook what he learned about colicky babies at the birthing class he and his pregnant wife were attending. Namely that colic may last 4 months, but it feels like 4 years. What they should have added is that colic will make a parent age at least 10 years as well. At. Least.

These two things brought me right back to my own experiences with colic, the comments (and looks) I received from others, and the thoughts that were often running through my head. I know everyone experiences colic in their own way, but for those who aren't that familiar with colic the hardest part for me was seeing my baby in pain and not being able to take the pain away. The second hardest was the toll it took on my body and my mind followed by that I felt few people really understood what our life was like during that time.

I've been around a lot of babies, but this was the first of my own. The first that I was responsible for during every living moment of the day. So when she wouldn't stop crying around 2 weeks old I was pretty sure something was wrong. I knew it was colic right away. My husband tried to assure me that it wasn't colic, but if it wasn't colic then it had to be something pretty serious because babies don't normally cry like that. That much I knew.

Crashed in mommy's arms after a crying tizzy that lasted several hours.
I held her this way for at least a couple hours after the crying stopped.

Of course, we consulted with our doctor and she was helpful in assuring us that this would pass, but it didn't make it any easier to get through each day. We found some techniques and tools that helped relieve the crying a little bit, but they also put a huge drain on us. For example, I usually had to hold Riley to get her to sleep. The moment I would put her down she would wake and start crying. Occasionally, if I laid her down I could get 20 minutes of sleep or so out of her, but she clearly needed sleep so I would sit in the glider in front of the closed captioned, muted TV with my baby in my arms. I watched a whole season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia that way. I'm pretty sure that show has a completely different feel with sound.

Because our baby cried all day long (it was worse in the evening hours) we didn't accomplish much as we were on constant 'Operation: Stop Baby from Crying' mode. I tried to explain to others what colic is and how it impacted our child, but I don't think most really understood unless they lived through it themselves. As I mentioned, we found tactics to help alleviate the crying, but it didn't really solve 'colic'. One of our most useful  'tactics' was running a hair dryer. Once we discovered that it calmed her down we had it running constantly for 4 months. I'm not kidding. We burned through 2 hair dryers. Using the hair dryer was all fine and dandy, but it didn't help us if we wanted to go out in public. I'm pretty sure you can't plug in a hairdryer at a restaurant without getting some ugly looks (not that we tried).

One of our other top tools was the yoga ball. Unfortunately, it was only useful when you bounced up and down rather vigorously on it with baby in your arms for long periods of time. My husband could only tolerate this for little bits of time so I was usually stuck with this one. My back still feels the residual pain of it. This one alone helped me age 5 years.


So tired from crying all the time.

I would read all sorts of articles, blogs, and the such and I'd hear all these stories about how changing the baby's diet, going to the chiropractor, bouncing on a ball, taking anti-gas meds.... made all the difference in the world. I tried many, many things and while some helped a bit, nothing made the drastic difference I read about in other people's lives. The things that did help us made it slightly less painful for our family which was worth it, but I never found the miracle cure that I'd often read about. I have to admit that when I would hear other wonderful baby stories (colicky or not) my first thought was "they suck". It wasn't that I couldn't be genuinely happy for others (I was), but I also felt sad that my child wasn't having that experience and it could come across as bitterness. I wanted that sort of magic in our lives.

Supposedly babies like when people make googly noises and funny faces at them. Riley does now, but this wasn't true for my colicky child. At all. I know people meant well, but I just wanted to scream "back off people". I knew my child well enough to know that this was not how she wanted to be approached. I tried to remember that my baby was not like the babies these people were used to. It was almost as if Riley was always overwhelmed. By everything. Complete sensory overdrive.

I often had to reel myself in and remember that other people did not mean harm. However, it irritated me when people didn't understand or minimized what was going on. I remember people hearing her gentle cry and saying "Oh, that's so painful to hear" or "Is that the crying your talking about" when her colic cry was a gazillion times more difficult to bear. People would make comments that were meant to be helpful, and perhaps encouraging, but often weren't. I even met people who didn't believe in colic. If I would just cut sugar from my diet, if I would just carry her every moment of the day, if I would change my parenting styles... I wanted to say "F**k you, you come over to my house for 24 hours and let me know how you feel at the end of the day after you've tried all these things and she's still crying". But that might have been sleep depravation and shot nerves talking. Thankfully, I still had the sense not to say it out loud.

So how can you help parents with a colicky child? Well, that's different for everyone so you want to make sure you take each person's preferences and personality into account. Some people might love having someone stay and assist for a week, but not me. That was one more person I had to take care of, train how to calm my child, and deal with their emotions when they realized how torturous it was to listen to that cry. It was helpful for me to have a supportive ear, and it was ok if people offered suggestions as long as their tone wasn't laced with judgement. Colicky kids tend to be sensitive so staying calm and expressing comfort can help a lot. And try to withhold the googly faces.

Sleep deprived mother and daughter.
Googly faces unintentional.

At some point the smiles occurred more often than the cries for Riley. She still didn't sleep through the night until well after a year old, but it was drastically better. I didn't have to spend hours each night consoling her while bouncing on a yoga ball. We finally turned the hair dryer off and we went out to eat without her crying once.

Between 3 and 4 months

Now? She's one of the happiest kids I know. She's made up for the colicky time tenfold, but I won't ever forget how hard that time was. Even now, writing about it makes me emotional - and not just because it was hard for me, but because I remember how painful it was for her. She's brought a ton of joy to my life and I am grateful for the little girl she's become. And now, I can say I truly love being a mom.