I have a distinct memory from summer 2021.
I was a few months pregnant and it was thunderstorming at home. I decided to sit in our sunporch and listen to the storm pass over.
I remember fantasizing, “at this time next year, I’ll be enjoying thunderstorms in this room with my baby”, with images of me rocking a baby to sleep in my arms and tears of happiness welling up in my eyes.
But the reality that ensued was far from that peaceful fantasy.
I birthed a fire-breathing dragon who I don’t think ever fell asleep by me gently rocking her and allowing me to sit comfortably on a piece of furniture. Ever. And it’s like she didn’t know how to relax enough to fall asleep in a car seat or stroller. My back and quads ached from the hours I spent constantly bouncing her in a carrier on a yoga ball. My head hurt from all the crying. My heart hurt from never being able to figure out how to make her happy.
This was not what I envisioned the beginning of parenthood being like.
We knew something was wrong when she didn’t stop crying after all her needs were met. Most of the time, she cried herself to sleep, didn’t settle after diaper changes, and had meltdowns during nursing sessions.
Turns out, we were gifted a colicky reflux baby with some pushing trauma from the birth and some food sensitivities, who was spirited as all hell, to put it politely.
At 4 months, the girl had never taken a nap on her own, and let me tell you, it wears on you – body and mind. 3-4 times a day we strapped on a carrier and bounced on a yoga ball until she passed out.
And we tried to let the few people we had in our circle try to soothe her to sleep too. Didn’t work. We were often handed an overtired baby who was even more work to try to settle into sleep.
It’s a good thing we had 4 different carriers because that $300 bedside bassinet? Didn’t need it. A nursery? Pshhh. A carrier was the only way she would nap. Not even nursing her to sleep worked.
My husband and I spent at least the first 4 months in a zombie state, borderline depressed. All the time, energy, and effort we put forth into just making sure the baby stopped crying when she was awake was draining us of all the resources we could muster up.
We often thought, “if we could just figure this out, she’ll stop crying and we’ll be fine”. But nothing worked. And we got to a point where we had to stop researching. It was driving us crazy.
I would look on Instagram and simply not know how new moms even left the house with a newborn. I mean, I kind of figured my situation wasn’t the norm, but weren’t their babies difficult too? And how in the hell were they able to take vacations?
I tried to take my daughter to Costco down the road and she had a complete meltdown within the first 5 minutes in the store. Her crying fit meant we had to leave the store and let my husband shop alone.
I felt embarrassed and couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I couldn’t even go grocery shopping with my daughter. I felt like I was a failure. Not only that, but how was I supposed to function and have needs of my own? How are we going to have food to cook our own meals?
Needless to say, that experience stripped me of every bit of parenting confidence I still had left and I didn’t take her in a car by myself until she was almost 4 months old.
That doesn’t even count the time we tried to accompany my husband on a work trip at 12 weeks old. She had a meltdown so bad on the second day that we called the pediatric ER and had to come home after being there for only a day. All three of us came home so drained that I’m not even sure how we had the gumption to keep going. I just wanted to bawl right along with her every time my daughter started to cry. That trip caused my anxiety to hit an absolute peak.
To say I was traumatized by the newborn phase is putting it lightly. It was the gut punch I never expected to get after I unexpectedly had a c-section after a planned homebirth. And all of that was after I spent the year prior making sure my body and mind were as healthy as they could be prior to getting pregnant.
It was some hard stuff to lift yourself up from.
And no one seemed to understand. My parents said we were all easy kids. When I asked, people around me would reaffirm that most newborns werent like my daughter. It was one of the single most isolating experiences I have had to date. If no one understands you, how can they help you?
I was in a constant state of worry, anxiety, hyper vigilance, and fight or flight. My nervous system was so dysregulated that even a slight whimper from her would cause my heart to skip a beat.
We spent countless days and an ungodly amount of money on products and doctors/specialist visits, and nothing seemed to take away the misery. The fact was she simply wasn’t the type of baby who cried because her diaper was wet or she was hungry. She was in a constant state of hysteria.
So, no. I didn’t love the newborn phase like I was often urged to. And I certainly wasn’t prepared to have a colic baby, especially with no help. We were left to figure this out on our own.
I have to fight the feeling of anger that comes up when I think about those first months. I felt robbed of such a sweet time. I wished so bad that the thunderstorm fantasy was actually a reality. I just wanted my baby to fall asleep easily once. I just wanted her to have a day without screaming once. I just wanted to undoubtedly know I could soothe her once, I just wanted someone to understand, but none of that came true.
I blamed myself and wondered if there was anything I could have done differently. Was the labor trauma just too much for her to handle? Did my compromised gut and antibiotic use during pregnancy throw off her delicate microbiome? Was there something I was eating that made her upset? There are dozens of questions I have, many of which I’ll never know the answers.
We didn’t start to feel like we could breathe until around 4.5 months, and even then, parenting without the other spouse was hard for both of us. I had to use PTO from work just to watch my own high-needs child all day. I could hardly cook a meal, go to the bathroom, and take care of the dogs, let alone work a full work day. It was draining just being her sole caretaker for a few hours. I dreaded the time my husband left because I thought, “how am I supposed to figure out what to do if nothing works?”.
But, in saying all that, things get better all the time. Maybe not day by day, but week by week. Month by month. With each new milestone I feel a little lighter.
At 5 months, she smiles at us. She’s nursing to sleep every once in a while. We can have visitors over for short visits. WE CAN LEAVE THE HOUSE FOR A SMALL AMOUNT OF TIME! We celebrate these small victories that are the norm for many parents
Part of me knows it’s okay that I didn’t enjoy the newborn phase. The problem is, no one talks about that, and people are quick to convince you otherwise.
While I’m glad many parents look back at the newborn phase with rose colored glasses, it’s hard for me to imagine that. I’m not there. I don’t know if I will be. There’s not much to enjoy about exhaustion, feeling like all your efforts are futile, and missing the hell out of your spouse while they’re sitting right next to you. I honestly don’t know how we got through it most days.
What I do know is that acknowledging and working through these difficult emotions will help me release them. Suppressing, dismissing, or minimizing them doesn’t make them disappear. I know they’ll hang around for me to “deal with” later. In saying that, having a good therapist was crucial in helping me process this experience and thus, improving my mental health during such an intense period of my life.
Still, through all this pain of having a colicky baby, I am grateful. I thank God every day that he gave us the strength to show up every day to try to be even better parents than we were the day before. All these struggles required me to have patience, get creative, love myself, my husband , and my daughter more, and find joy in the little moments. I’ve become more understanding, adaptable, and flexible and for that, I am so thankful.
If you are a parent of a colicky baby, don’t let anyone make you feel bad if you don’t love this stage of your baby’s life. It’s absurd to expect anyone to be in love with a period of their lives where someone screams at you 24/7 and nothing that you do makes it go away. In any other circumstance, we wouldn’t put up with that type of relationship 🙂 So, it’s completely normal, expected, and okay to feel frustrated, alone, tired, and sad. If this is your situation too, I hope you know that you’re doing nothing wrong. Lean on those that love you and want to help you. And although I can’t tell you when, know that things do get better over time.
Sending love <3