1 Mother 2 Another

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.

When Madeleine gears up, the only thing that works is to put her in the Bjorn, put on our MP3 Player with our “Baby Girl Soothing” playlist programmed in, and dance around singing along.  Leave out one of the factors – try, say, to sing without the music, or try humming along to the music without dancing – and the magic doesn’t work.  And here’s my other favorite part: she knows when you’re sitting down.  How, I do not know, but there it is.  You stand there, swaying, her little body momentarily calm, and you lower yourself slowly to the couch, still swaying, dying for a break.  You sit, still swaying, and her mouth opens cavernously wide and she wails.  She doesn’t know not to poop all over herself, but she can tell when you sit down.  The only way we’ve found to trick her on this is to sit on one of my physioballs; if she’s relatively calm to begin with, sitting on this and bouncing can often trick her enough.  My word, the details of subterfuge required for a couple minutes of peace are staggering.

I still can't wrap my brain around the fact that we've got about 9 more weeks of this to go.  I honestly wept when my girlfriend Abby gave me the typical colic timetable.  According to most books, we aren’t even peaking yet!!!!  I am convinced the parental brain must release some sort of amnesiac hormone when the baby’s older to make you forget all of this.  Otherwise everyone would be an only child.  I suspect my theory’s true, since when I was describing my nightly circuit path of nonstop pacing to Abby, she said slowly, “I remember doing that now.  I’d forgotten all about that until you described it.  Oh yeah, I remember colic.”  Not the best timing for her, since she’s 5 months pregnant.  It probably would have been better for her to remain blissfully unaware until she was in the midst of it herself.  Now she has something to look forward to!