This is Jasmine.
When Gabe was a baby, he screamed most of the time until he was about four months old, and then things finally got better. We were exhausted. But every baby is different, right? Maybe our next one wouldn’t cry so much!
And for the first three weeks of Jasmine’s life, it looked as though we had gotten our wish – she ate, she looked around, she actually slept! Life was good.
But then suddenly she stopped doing those three things and replaced it with crying. A lot of crying. We tried rocking her. Didn’t work. Tried swaddling her. Didn’t work. Tried about five different kinds of pacifiers – she screamed on.
We tried infant probiotic, tried white noise, tried walks outside, tried tinctures for babies with upset stomachs, tried propping her bed up, tried different positions – nothing worked and I was in tears most of the time trying to take care of Jasmine and keep up with our toddler on a few short hours of sleep.
We googled Colic. Google should have some tips, right?
“Colic is not a disease or diagnosis but a combination of baffling behaviors. It’s really just a catch-all term for problem crying in otherwise healthy babies — the problem being, there’s no solution to it besides the passing of time.”
Well perfect. No answers there! So we plowed ahead, doing the best we could from day to day.
I wasn’t sure I even wanted to write about this, because I don’t feel like I have any answers to offer. We never did come up with solutions, but we did realize that we never would have made it if it weren’t for a few key things.
1. Accept Help
I’m bad about this. I don’t like to admit that I can’t do it all myself, so I plow ahead until I’m so worn out I just crash.
Thankfully, Andy is very good at noticing when I am getting tired, and he tells me to go take a nap. No protests.
Also, my mother-in-law has been great about taking Gabe for a few hours when I couldn’t take care of both children at once. It was so nice to know that I could call her up when I needed a break.
If you have an available friend or sister, take advantage of it and get some help!
2. Take A Break
We live in a camper. There is absolutely no place to get away from the sound of your baby crying, and that in itself is draining.
On the worst days, I just had to get away – go outside and hear DIFFERENT sounds. Just give myself a break from the screaming.
Again, if you have others helping you, it makes this a lot more possible. In our small space, even when Andy took care of the children so I could nap, napping was almost impossible with a small baby emitting loud noises approximately ten feet away.
Often Andy would bundle the children up and take them both outside to get the noise out of the house.
3. Do The Bare Minimum
Now is not the time to be going to social functions, or trying that new recipe, or diving into a sewing project. Some days, even having a clean house is not a priority.
Your baby has got to be first during these hard weeks. And sleep. Sleep definitely ranks up there pretty high. But there is nothing more frustrating than trying to get a lot done when your baby needs held all the time.
So ignore the dirty house if you can, eat the simplest meals you can think of, and don’t plan on going away much. Get away with doing as little laundry as you can so that when that baby does finally drop from exhaustion for a few minutes, you aren’t rushing around trying to get a million things done. Go sleep.
A clean house and a hot dinner don’t mean much to your husband if he comes home and his wife is an emotional wreck from lack of sleep.
4. Study Your Baby
On the trip to Georgia, we drove our motorhome so I had hours of just holding Jasmine literally all day and not trying to get anything done. I came home from that trip feeling like I knew my baby so much better than before.
I highly recommend putting everything aside for a day or two and just studying your baby. I learned that Jasmine needs held upright for a while after feeding her because she has about 4 – 6 burps. For Jasmine, it is very hard to tell if she has a burp or is just sleepy because she acts pretty much the same for both.
Before I studied her, I always assumed she was just sleepy and would put her down for a nap. Then she would cry and cry and I would pat her and try to get her to take her pacifier, and we would go around in circles.
She wasn’t actually ready to sleep, she just needed to be burped. Once I figured that out and made sure she had been burped well before putting her down for a nap she actually started sleeping again. That in turn helped her be awake enough to eat more, and things slowly got better from there.
5. Make A Checklist
Write down a bunch of things to check if your baby is crying. Does the diaper need changed? Does your baby have a burp hurting her belly? Are the clothes too tight? Is she too hot/cold? etc.
Try to make sure there isn’t an obvious problem causing the crying. Sometimes it helps to just be logical about it.
6. Show Care
If you have gone through your checklist and have not found any problems that could be causing the crying, there isn’t much you can do.
Andy always said, “Just make sure Jasmine knows we love her.” Sometimes hard to do when you are fed up with your screaming infant and frustrated that you can’t find anything to fix, but your baby needs to know you care and are there for them even if you can’t seem to fix the problem.
7. Lean On God
Nothing makes me as dependent on God as when I absolutely can’t do it on my own. In that way I am thankful for the rough times we have had with Jasmine because they make me realize my need for Someone bigger than me.
So when you are rocking that baby, pray. Often for me, talking it out to God really helps my perspective. Plus, when I pray it shifts everything back into focus and makes me realize I’m not alone. That in itself can be a life saver during the rough moments.
Lastly, hang in there. This too shall pass, although when you are going through it that seems unlikely.
Jasmine is now eight weeks old, and doing better. She definitely has bad days still, but the good days are slowly becoming more common. She doesn’t have nearly as many times in the day where she cries for seemingly no reason whatsoever.
Being a second-time parent is making me humble. When we only had Gabe, I thought, What is the big deal? We can do pretty much everything we could before we had a child, and it doesn’t slow us down much. Why are people always so BUSY when they have children?
But now I know. I don’t get much done most days and try my hardest not to leave the house unless I absolutely have to. The thought of grocery shopping with a toddler and a screaming infant terrifies me.
So yes, I am learning through experience to extend grace to other parents. Having children can be rough.
I look back and I’m not exactly sure how we lived through these last five weeks with the trip to Georgia and moving on top of a colicky baby, but we did somehow. It’s doable one day at a time with God’s grace.
P.S. All the pictures except the last one were taken before Jasmine was three weeks old, because, if you hadn’t noticed, she is sleeping and looking happy. 🙂