Category Archives: Colic

What the Heart Knows

Life gets so messy. The older we get, the messier it seems. In 34 years my heart has been crushed, lifted, divided, lost, shattered and redeemed many times over. My heart; it is a weathered and worn thing that knows so much more than I.

I heard a saying once that having children is like forever letting your heart walk around outside of your body. That sums it up as best as anything I know.  I remember feeling this exact thing shortly after my daughter was born. It was both wonderful and terrifying in equal measures. I finally felt love in its most pure form, and I also knew I had no control over it whatsoever. What a dichotomous thing this parent/child relationship can be.

Both of my children have been difficult sleepers. Both were colic and both still resist sleeping as if it were the worst thing to ever happen to them. Who knows? Maybe in their world, it is? I have spent hundreds of nights holding them in pitch-black rooms humming, bouncing, shifting from foot to foot, willing them to sleep with my mind. Most nights I have taken this for granted: lost in thought of what still needs to be done that day.

But last night, as I held my 15 month old son’s limp body in my arms in his pitch-black room, I remembered the one thing that never fails to bring me into presence with him. He is likely my last baby.

As I stopped my mind from thinking about the laundry that must be folded and the dishes in the sink, I came–my heart came to be inside that room with him. There was no light and the only sound was the humming of a fan. I had no thoughts to distract me from that moment; it was just me, holding him–his heart wrapped in mine-all inside my arms. It was as complete a feeling as I can imagine.

He is not even two. His life is not messy. His heart is not fractured in the slightest way and he does not worry about all the toys he has yet to play with the next day. He is as whole and pure as each of us are when we come into this world. He and his sister, they are present with me always. Their needs are many, but they are basic and easily fulfilled. They do not fret about tomorrow or yesterday and this child’s perspective is a gift I get everyday.

While holding him I felt a quick pang of sadness that he will be my last. That my days of holding his whole heart in my arms are numbered. That there will be a day when I look at him and I know his thoughts and his whole heart are not in the room with me, but divided.

Knowing that these are things I cannot control, I tried to focus on something bigger than worry… this moment, and my gratitude for it. Grateful that I am able to hold all of him, his whole heart and mine inside my arms, inside one dark room, if only for a few minutes each night as he drifts off to sleep.

Holding your sleeping child in your arms is a powerful thing. I obviously don’t know this… but my heart does. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

Hot Lava

BEL's 1st Week

I swipe a burp-clothe-gloved hand under each breast to wipe away the slick, soupy mess that has accumulated there. I have always had large breasts, but since my milk came in, they overwhelm me.  It’s the hottest summer on record in the Pacific Northwest and in the 25 1/2 days since my daughter was born we haven’t had a single drop of rain. Like most people here, we don’t have air conditioning because this type of weather isn’t typical.

Our thermostat has read 98 degrees in the upstairs of our home for several days. The kitchen and her nursery are up there. As much as possible, she and I have been holed up in the basement during the day with the lights out, shades drawn, fans blowing… alone. The sound of the fans help us sleep, what little we’re getting.

There is not one inch of me that is not swollen and prickly from heat, shifting fat and spiking hormones. I would go naked but I don’t like to see my stomach like this so I wear a cotton maternity nightgown and a milk-stained nursing bra. I would go bra-less but I need absorbent pads because I leak when she cries, which is a lot.

It started two weeks after we got home—the no sleeping and crying. It was just long enough for family to leave town and just short enough not to catch my breath. It’s been a struggle finding air ever since.

She is my first and she reduces me to my elements.

My hands feel more like claws, tight and harsh next to new skin and I fear breaking her little body because I think I already broke her spirit. I don’t know why she cries. I’m sure it’s something I am doing, or not doing, or worse, can’t do. I think she can sense through her raw nerves and involuntary reflexes that I’m no good at this. Maybe that’s why she cries? A desperate plea for rescue and comfort?

I think that’s why I cry.

I think I cry because I sense that I’m on the edge of something hot and deep like that time we flew over the mouth of a volcano on our honeymoon in Hawaii. Up until that moment I had never seen anything as awe-inspiring and soul-shifting as those guts of Mother Earth. Looking into her atomic glow made my cheeks burn and my eyes water. Just like now. Knowing I was relatively safe in the helicopter I was intrepid. I wanted to fly closer, as close as possible without risking anything. Unlike now.

Now I’m not intrepid; I’m terrified. I’m scared that instead of amazing and beautiful the guts of this mother are deadly. I don’t want to fly any closer. I want to go home.

Before I can even feel that feeling I snap back into the reality that I already am.

My sweaty, bloated body with its milk and its weight is lying in this darkened basement and although I might wish for it, I am not alone, nor will I ever be again. The heat of this life is inside me now, in my breasts and my bones that are shifting back into place and also, especially in this baby. She’s a piece of me broken off, tossed up and flung outward upon the world in a burst of molten lava.

She flows and rips back to the center of me with every breath, expanding my world one inhalation at a time and now I will never breathe the same again…nor do I want to.

Unfixable Things

“The wake up seems to be developmental, you’ve tried everything to try and eliminate it and it looks like we are just going to have to wait until he outgrows it.”

This one sentence touched off a downward spiral inside of me a couple of days ago. It was written in an email from the child sleep expert we hired back in November to help us with our infant son. Every night, since he was four weeks old, he has cried uncontrollably before going to sleep. This used to occur in the middle of the night. The sleep expert did help us to correct that, thank God. Now, the crying happens  at a more reasonable bedtime hour, or when he wakes up 45 minutes after he’s gone to bed. Thus far, nothing this expert has suggested has helped us to stop the crying and thus, she wrote the sentence I copied above. Every night since then, has felt more and more hopeless.

Since this whole thing started months ago we have tried everything; every swaddle, clothing fabric, room temperature and sound. We have attempted pacifiers, bouncers, mobiles, routines and shushing techniques. We have consulted our pediatrician, Google and yes, spent hard-earned money on an infant sleep expert. As for my own coping mechanisms, I have cried, screamed, hit things, tried accepting it and have even done yoga in the middle of the night to calm myself down. I am not happy to report that I’m still doing all those things.

As I type these words he is screaming his poor, little, adorable head off. As I type this, it’s 10:30pm and he’s been like this since 8:30pm. We have no idea what is wrong and we have no idea how to fix it. The last two hours have been a series of futile attempts at doing so. Now, we have just left the room for the last time to let him cry because that is all there is left to do.

I have only been a parent for 2 years and 8 months. In that relatively short time one of the most painful things I have had to do is stand by and let my child cry; to feel utterly helpless in the face of their pain.

I can’t fix this and perhaps I’m not supposed to. Perhaps this experience is a precursor to the painful parenting moments ahead when I will have to stand by and let my child cry. Right now, I don’t know why he’s crying, but in ten years it might be because a kid made fun of him at school or he wasn’t picked for the kickball team. In twenty years it might be because someone he loved hurt him or he lost a friend. In 30 years it might be because he’s scared of life, or maybe he’s sitting in a dark room holding his own crying child, and crying.

Whatever it is, each time my heart will break along with his and I’m fairly certain it will not get any easier. Perhaps this time is helping me build the strength I’ll need to to stand by the next time he needs to cry and I can’t fix it.

I know in my head that I can’t magically heal all the things in life that will end up hurting my children, but could someone please tell that to my heart.

Hush Little Baby Don’t Say a Word…

I didn’t want to publish this post. When I started writing it, it quickly turned into Bitchfest 2011 scheduled to perform in a venue for one. I didn’t want to publish it because I wanted to maintain a positive vibe here and write about all sorts of enlightening things, not the darkness of my personal hell. Then I decided, fuck it, it’s my blog so I’m going to publish it anyway. That’s pretty enlightened of me, right?

I’m finding that unless you are also currently the primary caregiver of multiple, small, non-sleeping children, 24 hours a day, that empathy is hard to come by. I mean, wasn’t I supposed to know this shit was hard? No one has a baby thinking it’s going to be all designer onesies and chubby ankles, right? And didn’t I consciously go and have a second one KNOWING exactly what I was in for?  Furthermore, haven’t mother’s been taking care of infants since, like the DAWN OF TIME and with far less gadgetry? So what the hell are you bitching about you spoiled, first-world, crazy woman?!

Unfortunately, knowing that my problems aren’t life-threatening or world-ending doesn’t make me any less frustrated. Similarly, knowing that it’s only temporary, helps to ease that frustration for about five minutes until the overwhelming, blurry-eyed weariness sets in again. So, if maybe I can break it down on a biological level, people can understand why I spend most of my days trying not to hit things.

First:

A mother, particularly a breastfeeding mother, is biologically, physically and chemically responsive to her baby’s cry. A nursing mom, (myself included in the early weeks), may express breast milk when they hear their baby cry. It makes sense that there is a strong symbiotic relationship between mother and child, you know, so we feed them and don’t leave them to marinate in their own fluids. In fact, I was told by my pediatrician that “colicky” infants (like the kind I make) might just be ahead of the evolutionary curve. Ever hear the saying, the squeaky wheel gets the grease? Well, the crying infant gets the boob.

As for my personal experience, I can feel every nerve ending in my body tingle when my son cries. It feels similar to grabbing a live electrical wire, which I’ve done while changing light fixtures. I am particularly sensitive when I’m lying prostrate, sound asleep at 3 o’clock in the morning. The moment he lets out his first whimper, a jolt of electric energy courses through my limbs that pops my eyes like the jump cut of every zombie movie ever made. If I have to listen to him cry for more than five minutes (which happens a couple of times a night) all that electric energy starts to make me nauseous. It actually sucks worse than I can make it sound because you have to factor in the emotional aspect of this equation which is just too sad to mention.

Second:

You can die from sleep deprivation people. Literally, like, die. There’s a reason they use it as a means of torture, because it’s effective. It’s actually most effective when you let someone fall asleep for just a little while and then keep waking them up, again and again which happens to be exactly what my son does. Personally, I’d rather be water-boarded. Studies have shown that a sleep deprived person is more impaired than someone over the legal limit of intoxication. Speaking of intoxication, chronic sleep deprivation feels similar to a really shitty hangover; a perpetual, all-I-want-to-do-is-eat-greasy-food-and-sleep, kind of hangover. Chronic sleep deprivation (I’m going on four months people) can make a relatively sane, rationale person, do insane, impulsive things like destroy Diaper Genies and hallucinate.

A month after my daughter was born, my husband and I went to Lowe’s. I stopped to read a magazine at the checkout counter and when I looked up, they were gone. I shit-you-not within ten minutes I had the store manager locking the front doors and calling a Code Adam. Turns out they were in the gardening section. THAT is what sleep deprivation will do to you.

I bet I can guess what you’re thinking? “So how are you able to spend so much time writing silly shit on the Internet if you’re SO sleep deprived? Shouldn’t you be sleeping RIGHT NOW if you’re so tired?”

You’re probably right, I should. But honestly, writing, yoga and caffeine are the only things GIVING me energy right now. Because what I know for sure is that when you’re doing what you love, what you were born to do, it fills you up with all the things you need to go on in the face of adversity. So I keep typing. I have to keep typing or I will probably get myself banned from every large box store in the Puget Sound region.

Well, well, will you lookey there? I actually did write something enlightening. Yeah me.

Now Playing at Bitchfest 2011: Hush Little Baby Don’t Say a Word…(so Mommy can type a few thousand of them and feel sane again.)

I Give Up

Today was just one of those days. Sadly, all of my days are feeling like just one of those days and it’s making me well, sad.

My 3.5 month old son is a very big boy. I give you Exhibit A: The child he is squashing is a 2.5 year old toddler.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, he has officially grown too big for the bouncer he has been sleeping in since birth. That bouncer, with its vibration and well, bounciness, is the only tool in my arsenal that kinda, sorta, maybe (but probably didn’t) helped get him to sleep, and last night, we relinquished out of necessity. I could no longer stand to hear his little heels bang the plastic vibrator part as he kicked in fury. Instead, I listened to his little heels kick in fury on the quieter bassinet mattress until 4:15am as he let us know just how much he disapproved of the new arrangements.

For the last couple weeks I don’t think he’s gone to bed before 2am, and that was a good night. Add to that, five nights of a house-full of eating, sleeping, pooping house guests and top it off with (in her honor of the holiday) my daughter channeling her inner Native American and waking with a puking virus most likely contracted from one of the foreigners and so yes, it has been one of those (insert expletive here) days.

Most of the day was spent letting the toddler veg out to cartoons whilst refusing every attempt at nourishment and fluids while the infant slept off his middle-of-the-night-tirade and I partook in some retail therapy. I need to look no further for proof that there IS a God because today was Cyber Monday. Hallelujah! Praise be to Jesus!

You will never guess what I bought myself.

It is both practical and frivolous. It is indulgent and needful. On the one hand, I feel good about it. On the other, like a failure. The gift I bought for myself this year is five phone consultations from a parental counselor specializing in child sleep issues. She was running a Cyber Monday Deal, how could I not?

I’m excited at the prospect of finally getting some sleep, but I’m also feeling like a total wuss. I feel like I’m officially saying that I can’t hack this parenting shit and so I have to pay someone who actually knows what their doing to tell me what the hell I should be doing because I am obviously incapable. (Did you get all that?)

If you’ve read this blog you know that I’ve tried just accepting my situation. That led me to doing yoga at 3am in a dark room which further helped me to understand that I have some (insert Matthew McConaughey’s voice from Dazed and Confused here) “serious anger issues dude” and now, I’m just throwing in the goddamn burp cloth and calling in the professionals. I give up.

I give up because something has got to give and it might as well be me. I give up because I desperately NEED to have a day that’s NOT just one of those days.