Mummy Milli

When Monkey was born he didn’t have the newborn cry, he cried loud and dramatically.

We ended up in hospital for a few nights at only weeks old and even those nurses, who see thousands of babies, were commenting “wow, you really know when he wants something!”. This is where I really understood his crying was different.

It would continue for an hour or two, he didn’t seem to tire and while physically he was fine (apart from when we ended up in hospital). Something was clearly wrong for him and it wasn’t something we could fix apart from being there for him while he worked through what he needed to. That meant hours of standing and rocking, bouncing on a yoga ball or breastfeeding (the only sure-fire way to get a break from the crying).

We made the decision early that ‘cry it out’ wasn’t for us and we knew that it wouldn’t work for Monkey, but that meant many nights of only  3 – 4 hours of extremely broken sleep. For the first 6 – 8 months of our little ones life, I was a zombie scraping together every last piece of patience I had to stay true to our values. I found I had little patience for the unsupportive comments from other people in my life.

Some of our family and friends, while well meaning, were big proponents of unsolicited advice and in particular “have you let him cry it out?”. We explained multiple times why we don’t want to, admitting sometimes yes we have actually tried leaving him for a few minutes just to see if he wants some space but that his cry’s aren’t the same as other babies- he doesn’t wear himself out, he works himself up!

We ended up going for a weekend away with some family, both of us taking shifts in trying to settle our little one so that others weren’t too discomforted by his screams. This led to the dreaded question again that parents of colicy babies loathe, “have you tried just letting them cry?”. My partner finally had had enough and didn’t get up at the next cry. 

2 minutes passed and the family member started looking quizzically at him, 

5 minutes passed and they were fidgeting in her chair- shifting from left to right wanting to get up,

finally,

before even the 10 minute mark they looked ready to cry “why aren’t you going to get him? it sound like something is really wrong”

This was our night (and day), every night and people just don’t get it till they experience it. They can’t really comprehend as it is such a different experience than the norm, so unfortunately they also need to experience it to stop the questioning. This also leads too self doubt, particularly in that sleep deprived state, of ‘is our baby acting this way because of something I am doing?’. Honestly I have had those doubts till we had a second child and realised (through experience and not someone telling me) that it was not us, Monkey just had a lot going on.

How different the experience is to other babies! The hours of active rocking, bouncing, moving, singing and heading outside in the hopes of it making a difference. Trying anything to help the child sleep: a nice fire place (electric), roaming lights on the ceiling, complete blackness, silence, music and white noise to name only a few. The guilt of feeding them as this is the only thing to settle them but also feeling upset knowing that the extra feedings could be impacting their gut pain for the worse.

And then, of course, the isolation from other parents, who have it hard themselves, in different ways, but they just cannot understand our experience unless they have been through it.

I only knew two other parents who had experienced something close to what we did and not surprisingly they were the ones that offered the least advice. They knew that, as a parent of a not so easy baby, you have already tried all the normal suggestions and often many of the more unusual ones, as they had done the same.  You can find some of my own tips here.

If you are in the middle of it, it will get better. Do whatever you need to to get through it. I gave up on trying to separate feeding and sleep, it meant I could get him down quicker and actually get a 10 minute break. There is a push right now to feed, play then sleep but no matter how much we tried it wasn’t for us. We just ended up following Monkey’s lead for the first 8 – 9 months of his life.

How are you going? Are there any expectations you could temporarily give up to get a bit of sanity back?