1 Mother 2 Another

Under the “Who Knew?” category –

After complaining about Madeleine’s all-day crying jags to my girlfriend Renee, I learned yet another fussy baby trick.  Seems that sometimes fussiness is just from sensory overload, and oddly enough white noise somehow helps press a “reset” button on baby.  Renee discovered the sound of the hairdryer or vacuum worked wonders with her son Eli, and since her husband’s a record producer with an in-home studio, he made a CD of the noise for them to play.  Next time Maddie started up and couldn’t stop, we went into a dark bathroom and ran the hairdryer.  It worked like a charm, and she even fell asleep.  The running faucet worked just as well, but I think I’ll use the CD rather than run up a high utilities bill!  Girlfriend knowledge strikes again.

Yep, definitely reflux.  And she’s got a food intolerance, but it’s not milk and soy, which is where the doctor suggested we start.  It’s nuts.  You know how we figured it out?  I eliminated all milk and soy from my diet, and added in nuts to help with the protein deficit.  Definitely not the way to go.   Nuts make baby very angry.

Hooray!  Hooray!  It’s not just colic!  My daughter has an actual medical condition!!!

I never thought I’d be so happy to find out she’s got something going on, but to me diagnosable = treatable = more sleep for mommy and daddy.

Girlfriends to the rescue once again.

So we’ve finally come up with a few tricks that make the colic if not banished, at least bearable.  One is the Baby Bjorn, which my girlfriend Rebecca recommended for colic.  If we lose this I will break down sobbing.  And it has to be the Bjorn; I’ve tried the sling a few times and that simply makes her very angry.  And you don't want to see her very angry.

Ok, I’m going to tell the truth here, and if I get angry emails in response, so be it.

A girlfriend who doesn’t have children asked me today at church what has surprised me most about motherhood.  I thought for a moment, and answered honestly, “How much work it would be to love her sometimes.  Love is an active verb here, something I do, rather than a noun, something that exists on its own.  I didn’t know how hard it can be to continue loving someone and giving endlessly of yourself when she gives nothing in return.  She doesn’t smile at me, she doesn’t say, ‘Thanks, mom’, she doesn’t slip a greeting card shyly under my pillow.  She simply rolls over and goes back to sleep.  And when you come to her in the middle of the night and she’s crying, she doesn’t see you and suddenly stop crying, remembering that you’ve done this before and trusting that food is on the way.  No, she keeps screaming until food is in her mouth.  And she couldn't care less who’s giving it to her.  Unrequited love is tough to maintain.

I don’t think that was the answer she was expecting, but it’s the one I’ve got.