Claire and Jackson: One word: Colic

Before Claire was born I, like every other mother out there, had such ideas of how my maternity leave was going to go. We'd get up in the morning to see Daddy off to work, relax, have breakfast, cuddle on the couch under the fluffy white Pottery Barn blanket, do some errands, and just enjoy each other. The sun would bounce off the snow outside, making it bright and cheery in the house while we cozied up. I'd have dinner made and Jeff and I would enjoy it together while Claire sat in the bouncy seat.

The reality of life after Claire was born: I was up all night long nursing Claire and rocking her, so if Jeff made even the slightest bit of noise when he got up I wanted to throat punch him. Poor guy. It was so darn cold that winter that I had the heat cranked to 72 and all of the shades drawn to try and keep the warm air from escaping through our drafty old windows. Leaving the house was next to impossible, as Claire liked to eat about every hour and a half. And the next nursing session always started an hour and a half from the start of the last one. If she ate at 2:00 for 45 minutes she inevitably wanted to eat again at 3:30. Forget leaving the house. I was able to get a shower in, but she'd no doubt be screaming by the time I got out. Sometimes the noise of the hair dryer calmed her long enough for me to at least get my hair dry. Forget cuddling under the blanket. Claire needed to be on the move, constantly. She had to be in perpetual motion or she started screaming. And forget the bouncy seat or swing, because the perpetual motion had to come from me, not some inanimate object. We'd pace around the house, never sitting down, while I rocked her, shushed her, and simultaneously patted her bottom while holding the pacifier in her mouth. I'd get her settled and try to ease onto the couch and the crying would start up. Again. Remember those 50 pounds I gained when I was pregnant with her? People were astonished that I lost it all by the time she was about 10 weeks old. Everyone asked, "How did you do it?" It was simple: We were constantly walking around the house and because she was always screaming and wanting to be held I did not have time to eat. Many days it would suddenly be 3:00 in the afternoon and I'd realize I hadn't eaten a thing. So yeah, forget about making dinner. Poor Jeff, I don't know what he ate all of those months, but it certainly wasn't anything that I cooked!

The crying...it was never-ending. My poor, poor, sweet baby did nothing but cry from the time she was 2 1/2 weeks old until she was 5 or 6 months. We called her "sensitive" but really she was colicky. I never really understood the whole "colic" thing until we were going through it with Claire. Basically, for anyone else who's unfamiliar, the baby cries constantly, typically for hours at a time. Nothing helps, and it doesn't matter what you do, the crying continues. Claire would be fussy all day long, take little catnaps here and there, and then scream for at least 3 hours straight at night. One night she started screaming at 5:30 and did not stop until after midnight. Like really, truly, did not stop, screamed her little head off straight for 7 hours.

There is a reason why prison camps use recordings of crying babies to torture their prisoners (I'm not making this stuff up. You can look it up!). I would have done anything, said anything, to get the crying to stop. It pushed me to the edge of reason. Sometimes I would rock Claire at night, useless in comforting her, and just say to her, "Please stop...other babies do not cry this much, I know they don't. Please just stop..." Other times it took all of the self-control I had in me to not absolutely lose my mind. There is a reason why they make you watch the video about "Never shake a baby" before you leave the hospital. The doctors and nurses should probably make a surprise visit to your house a month after you get discharged and make you watch it again, just in case. I never would have done anything to hurt Claire. Luckily I am educated enough to know when to step away and what to do to keep my sanity. Some nights it killed me to put her down in her crib and walk away, but there was just nothing else I could do and nothing that would make the crying stop. I understand why people do terrible things to their crying babies. I don't think it's okay and I don't condone it, but I understand it now. The incessant crying pushes you to your absolute limit. Then, of course, throw into the mix the fact that this screaming crying being lets you get, if you're lucky, 2 hours of sleep at a stretch. Utter sleep deprivation and a colicky baby do not make for a good time. I could have asked for more help from family members, but I remember thinking that I could never put anyone else through taking care of Claire because it was that bad. Besides, what would I have done? Sat upstairs and listened to the crying from the bedroom? I certainly couldn't have caught up on sleep while she was downstairs screaming!

More than anything else, I felt like a complete failure as a mother. Here I was, with this beautiful baby girl, totally unable to make her comfortable. I questioned myself as a mother constantly. I never felt like I was doing a good enough job with her because she was always so unhappy. My one job, the only thing I had to worry about for my 12 weeks of leave, was to take care of her, and I couldn't do it. It was heartbreaking. No, heartbreaking is too cliche...It was the most painful, most difficult, saddest, most stressful thing I had ever been through in my life.

I'm sharing this because it is an important part of the history of our little family. It's not pleasant to relive it, but maybe someone who is going through something similar will read it and know that they are not alone in their feelings. I can stand here and say that not only did we survive, but we came out strong. Look at us now!