How Parents Can Survive Colic
Although colic will eventually end, this reassuring fact does not ease the difficult days and nights with a colicky baby. Rather than follow a passive wait-it-out approach to colic, parents should try every conceivable remedy to ease their baby’s discomfort. But they must also devise a strategy for getting themselves through the colic ordeal.
The first step is to fight the tendency to take the colic personally. Colic is a random condition. Babies with colic are not mad at their parents, nor are they rejecting them. This simple fact can be difficult to keep in perspective when the infant has been screaming nonstop for hours and the parents are considering abandoning the baby in a basket outside the pediatrician’s office! One mother found it helpful at times like this to breathe deeply and slowly repeat to herself. “This baby is not malicious. She is not purposely trying to ruin my life. She is simply in pain.”
At times, nothing seems to work. Only great fatigue will calm the infant, so parents occasionally must be able to let the bay cry it out in the crib. Walking away from a persistently screaming baby is not child neglect and it will not make the baby any less responsive to comforting later. One Mother pointed out. “Holding her constantly didn’t do either of us any good. It was wearing me down physically and emotionally. I just accepted the fact that she was a screamer, and I learned to tune out the crying when I had something else to do.” Another woman took long showers during her baby’s evening screaming bouts. The showers not only blotted out the noise but also gave her new energy to cope with the situation. Parents who find it too wrenching emotionally to ignore a screaming baby may feel comfortable with a technique suggested by many pediatricians let the baby cry for 15 to 20 minutes, then hold and comfort the child for another 15 to 20 minutes, then put the baby down again, and so on.
When asked what they would do differently if they had to live through the experience again, parents of formerly colicky babies are virtually unanimous in stressing the arrangement of at least an hour a day away from the infant. Ironically, the parents who feel most strongly about this in retrospect often were given this same advice by their doctors and rejected it. They worried about the babies, or they thought it was an unfair burden for friends or sitters. As one woman said, “I’m the baby’s mother, and I couldn’t take her screaming. How could I possibly ask someone else to endure it?”
Only later did these parents realize that incessant screaming is not nearly as nerve-wracking to someone who is not emotionally involved.
Parents should use the time away from the baby to do something special for themselves, preferably outside the home. Mothers report that these breaks give them something to look forward to during the grim hours. When they return home, they are relaxed and eager to care for the baby.
One factor that can make the colic experience especially difficult is isolation from a support group. New mothers may not have had time to develop a network of friends who have children. Others find it hard to be around parents of calm, easy babies, and they withdraw from existing friendships. One woman remarked, “I had to stop going to the playground. All these mothers sat around bragging about how well their babies slept and how regular their schedules were I felt really jealous and wondered why I was the one stuck with a colicky baby.” Parents might check with local childbirth organizations about support groups for new mothers and fathers, or perhaps join a postpartum exercise class. Chances are good that the other parents whose babies are or were colicky will be there.
Above all else, surviving colic means learning to accept help. If a friend or relative offers to watch the baby for a while or to cook dinner, parents should accept the offer. If family finances allow, hiring help occasionally to handle the major housecleaning chores can be real morale booster.
The support they receive from their husbands makes it possible for many women to cope with colic. Not only can the husband take turns walking with the bay or cooking dinner, but he can also share emotions and feelings – both positive and negative. Unfortunately, parents often fall into the self-defeating trap of turning on each other. One father expressed the resentment that can smolder in the marital relationship. “The minute I walked through the door at night, my wife thrust this screaming baby at me and demanded that I take over. She’d jump on me because I’d been with other adults all day, while she’d been trapped in the house. She acted as if it were my fault. I didn’t matter that I’d been awake the night before, too. All I was to her was someone to walk the baby.” This strain is most likely to develop if the marital relationship becomes completely centered around the child. For this reason, it is important that the couple spend some time together outside the home without the baby.
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