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Colic: One dad tells it like it is
Colic is murder on a relationship. Here's how one dad suffered through the nightmare of colic and lived to shed some light on it
Four years on, I find it impossible to describe what it’s like. I could say it’s like being water-boarded, or listening to nails on a chalkboard. I could say it’s like any number of things people use to describe something unbearable. Except it isn’t really like that. It isn’t really like anything except what it is. It’s a thing that’s impossible to recall with anything like the discomfort one experiences when it’s happening.
What is colic?
They call it colic, and it has time spans and frequencies associated with its medical definition, but all you really need to know is that it’s your baby crying for hours at a time, many days in a row. What exists in the moment is the crying, which leads to the imperative to stop the crying and solve the problem that created the crying — except there may not be a problem, there may only be the crying.
Which is a problem.
We had a seemingly happy baby, a perfect little boy, and then the crying came on. I can remember the moment I realized something was up: It was 2 or 3 a.m., and I was in the nursery, doing this trick I’d come up with to calm him, where I paced back and forth and rocked him in a slowed-down version of a football running back carrying the pigskin, one end of the room to the other, back and forth, back and forth. Before, it had seemed to soothe him. Now, nothing soothed him. We checked the diapers. We cuddled and cooed. We tried the breast and got out the thermometer. Then, after some hours, inevitably more than we expected or found tolerable, he’d fall asleep.
Is this OK? Is this normal?
The keening in his crying: The poor kid! He was in such obvious distress. Do something! Somebody, do something! The urgency I felt…I wanted to sprint, speed, hop in the car to zoom to the pharmacy to find just the right medicine to cure the problem. Elixir, tonic, poultice, philter: What it was called I didn’t care. I just wanted to help my boy.
Christ, it had to be something serious. Didn’t it? What else would trigger this sort of crying? The noise he made included a falsetto trilling that did something to me. It seemed to reach into my skull through my mouth, to grasp my brain stem, to shake the inner core of my being. It was the strangest sensation: His crying was actually rattling my brain. I looked down at him and he was apoplectic. I’ve never seen any human being look that angry. Is this OK? I thought. Is this normal?
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What do you think?
Nicole Nifo RMT (not verified) says ....
Great article, I work with parents a lot when teaching infant massage and know that a lot of focus is on moms and supporting what they are going through. It is important to support dads too because they supports moms and during a hard time like having a baby with colic, they need to stick together and support one another! I do not feel that fathers talk enough about what they deal with and I am happy to see this article and hope more dads can bond together and talk!
Tanya (not verified) says ....
Your article brought tears to my eyes as it brought back the vivid memories of our own experience with colic. My sons crying led to my crying...I can't believe my husband survived...that we survived. However, we too got through it and even went on to have baby #2 (but not until we moved out of our condo and into a house..colic and condo do not mix). My heart goes out to all families that experience colic.
Guest_73674 says ....
Thank you for writing this. I found myself nodding throughout the entire article. Colic is so unbelievably frustrating and heart wrenching. Our first born had it for 4 months and now he is the active, polite, funny 2 year old.