Imagine this:You are with your adorable 3 week old son at a friend's Birthday BBQ. You and hubby think 'We are SO urban and cool, here at this sans-kid party, being totally laid back with our party baby, being so hip and almost like we are parents but not parents'. Look at US friends!
And then it happens: uncontrollable, decibel piercing, crying.
It just started. Just like that. One minute baby there, super cute and sleeping in his little car seat amongst the party peeps-then screaming. Like, screaming like he was on fire. Like, screaming as if it was the only thing he ever learned and mastered, and he was doing it like it was his JOB. His million dollar job. Screaming like he was auditioning to be crazy screaming baby in movies...ok, you totally get it. SCREAMING.
Totally NOT cool family, right here.
So, we didn't know what to do! I mean, he's cried before. But he's been hungry, or tired, or the wind went in a wrong direction. Whatever. In 3 weeks, we had heard crying. But not random, and not when nothing would calm him down.
Luckily, one of our good friends is a Pediatrician, and he stepped in. After assessing the situation, he very officially told us 'Yep-could be Colic'. Said it like, so, 'Meh, it happens'. COLIC??? WTF?? That sounds terrible. We didn't even really knew what it was, but it sounded so scary....and LOUD! And sounded like people didn't want their babies to have this!
He tells me 'no, it's not serious'. Which is funny, because he also said it could last a few months, and ya, that's pretty fucking serious to me! Little dude was just LOSING it screaming, and it had only been 30 minutes. I can't take THAT times 90 days!
So, he didn't stop that night until finally Pediactric-friend held him. Then, he stopped. It was great, we got back to the party, all was good! Cool parents again! But then Pediactric friend had to go home, and going home meant putting baby down, and that didn't turn out so well.
In the 6 weeks (yes, 6 weeks), that baby DID have colic, it was only our good friend the Pediatrician friend, that made him stop crying. And it was only that ONE day. And don't think I didn't try to bribe Pediactric friend to come back to make all that crying shit stop! He wouldn't. Apparently the offer to come and live with us to hold a baby for 5 hours a night wasn't enticing. Whatever doctor dude.
ANYWAYS...I soon learned that the definition of colic is ' is a condition of a healthy baby in which it shows periods of intense, unexplained fussing/crying lasting more than 3 hours a day, more than 3 days a week for more than 3 weeks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_colic
Oh. And also that it FUCKING SUCKS! Now, I know that I didn't have it that bad in comparison. 6 weeks is better than a year, and 5 hours a day is better than 24 hours a day (yes, these cases DO exist). But it still is HELL.
We soon realized that after that shin-dig (where the crying started), our little angel would begin screaming (out of nowhere) at 7pm (witching hour), and continue uncontrollably until 12am. And then, just as it started, it would stop instantly. EVERY. FRIGGING. DAY.
What did we do in those 5 hours, you ask? Ohhhhh...welll....rocking, singing, feeding, bouncing, driving, swinging, humming, more bouncing, talking, whispering, shushing, outside, inside, crying (us), screaming (us), begging (us), nothing, everything.
It was hell. Pure hell.
So, one panicked day, knowing this would be starting again at 7pm, I desperately ran to the baby store near my house to see if they sold ANYTHING that would help this crazy shit stop.
The dude at the store had TOTALLY seen this scene before. Crazy and dischevled new mom bursting in and in tears asks 'what will make the noise stop????'. Totally would look like a crazy person if it wasn't a baby store, eh?
Man looks at me and says, well, we have this thing called a Moby Wrap, and maybe you can at least swaddle him in there to keep your hands free while he's crying.
Pure. Genius.
"Take me to this amazing product you speak of!" I tell him. And he does, and shows me the most expensive piece of jersey knit fabric I would ever buy. A Moby Wrap is like 15' of tshirt material that is just a strip of fabric. That's it. A long piece of fabric for like $100. Like, I could MAKE THIS for $5. I didnt' care. He thought it would help, and I would have spent $1000, for a break.
How it works, is, you have to do this funky wrap manoeuvre, around your body and then place the baby in this pocket you form in the front of you. After 30 minutes of a youtube video and practice with a teddy bear (thank god-cause the baby would have had a concussion from all those falls if we used him right away!), we put our bouncing baby boy in there when the Witching Hour fell upon us, and guess what....IT WORKED!! It did, it really really did! Sometimes it wouldn't work right away, but it always calmed him a bit, and at the very least, made it easy to walk around holding him. He would go in, and then eventually just fall asleep.
How did the Colic end, you are wondering? Well, one day, 7pm came (we were like crazy people in the evening, waiting for that hour to come...like the end of the world was coming, and bracing ourselves for the impact to strike), and then the clock made it to 7:30pm, 8pm, 9pm....he didn't cry. He just continued to sleep. Then the next day, same thing. So on, and so on, until we could officially say 'no more colic' and not feel like we were going to jinx it. Ahhhhhhhhhhh....it was so good. Life was so good. :)
Here is the best invention in the world, the Moby Wrap! Invented, I think, by little African women in the fields, and commercialized to rape consumers of their money, in the Western world. Who cares. It's amazing, and you should buy one.
http://www.mobywrap.com/mw/Home.htm
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