I am a mother of 3, two of my children are adults, 22 & 19. I never imagined I would be going through the joys of babyhood in my ripe old age of 42! I was blessed in October 07 with a beautiful baby girl!
After a wonderful pregnancy, and easy birth I was well on my way to being a new mommy again. I remember thinking while still in the hospital how quiet my new little angel was. Always drinking all of her bottle and burping so well. Things changed drastically when we got home! After a few weeks at home that sweet, quiet little angel turned screaming, inconsolable baby! My husband was beside himself, confused at what we could be doing wrong for our child to behave in this way. I soon realized, as my older daughter had colic that we were faced with the same thing with our new little angel.
I immediately contacted our pediactrician who informed me to switch her formula to a soy based formula. I must admit, after about a week on the new formula, there was some improvement, but she still would go through bouts of crying throughout the evening and early morning hours.
I found my best defense with her colic was to burp her after one ounce. She was about a month old at this point and was drinking 4 oz. a feeding. Although she would protest at times, the extra burping helped quite abit. We also purchased a bassinet that had music & vibration. The combination of both would help relax her and sleep.
The other thing I found was a huge help at night was to bath her right before bedtime and then swaddle her tightly and rock her. This helped her to relax which calmed the colic.
We tried the over the counter medicine which did not help. By 4 months old, our daughter had thankfully outgrown this.
As I went through this with 2 of my children now, my advice to other parents is a saying my mother has always told me, "This to will pass". And.. it will!
Just remember, your sweet child is suffering and its not anything your doing wrong as a parent, she will outgrow this & soon be smiling and happy again!
Comments for
Keeping Your Sanity With A Colicky Baby
I had already had two sons and each of them were as far apart as night and day, but when the third one came along, I was totally flabbergasted by how difficult it was with him. I never saw a baby so unhappy in all my life. He would spend hour after hour crying and nothing much helped unless I rocked him.
I began to wonder if I wasn't a "bad" mother. I called the doctor to see if there was something wrong with him that I just wasn't picking up on, but there was nothing. The doctor just said I unfortunately had a colicky baby and he would outgrow it. Not much help! I wondered if I was going to be able to survive this.
It was torture to do the simplest thing like grocery shopping. Here I was toting two younger children with me and had him in his baby carrier and I could never finish the shopping without him screaming, red-faced. Everyone had advice, but nothing worked.
I don't envy anyone who has a baby like this. It took six months until he outgrew this. Try to be strong; it WILL end!
