Celebrate your child's love of learning

© Wondertime

When I look at her now, my sweet little Fiona, she shows no signs of it. Almost six months old, she coos and giggles, flirts and blushes, and squeals with delight when I kiss that sensitive spot on her side. There's no more arching in pain, no pulling her legs up to her abdomen, no sticking her tongue out like a lizard and howling for hours at a time.

You'd never know it to look at her today, but this child spent all of her first three months and part of the fourth in what looked to my wife and me like abject suffering. Her beauty and sweetness were always evident, but they were in constant conflict with the demon colic in her belly.

The sentence
Our daughter was diagnosed with colic, a condition often defined as excessive crying with no apparent cause, at two weeks of age. She had been having projectile spit ups, cried constantly, and went through the above-mentioned contortions for hours at a time.

Then our doctor gave us this gem: "Don't worry. It's usually as bad as it'll get by 12 weeks. After that, it drops off."

By my reckoning, that gave us a three-month sentence to hell, of which we lived every second. I'm not saying that I wasn't overcome with the joy of our new baby or that my heart didn't melt whenever I looked at her tiny hands or kissed her pursed lips.

It's hard, however, to feel calm and tender when it's 3 a.m., you haven't slept for more than 45 minutes at a stretch for more than a month, work waits in the morning, the baby just won't sleep unless she's being held closely to one of her parents — and you're only into the sixth week. For our little girl, if she wasn't sleeping in short spurts, nursing, or being bounced constantly — with velocity — on a big green exercise ball, then she cried like she was being pulled apart.

As bad as that was, though, it felt even worse when we realized that friends, family, even doctors didn't really understand what we were going through.

Here's a typical conversation between my wife or me and well-meaning friends or relatives.

"So, how's the baby?"
"She's had bad colic. It's been a nightmare."
"All babies cry. That's just what they do."
"It's not that she's crying. She has colic."
"What is that, like when the baby coughs a lot?"
"No," I would say, taking a deep, calming breath. "Doctors don't really know what causes it. She's obviously in pain, though, and we can't do anything about it. It's been awful."
"Uh-huh. Some people have a tougher time transitioning into parenthood."

Just as I'd become offended by how little awareness people had around colic, my mind would race back to a few years earlier — before we had Fiona — when friends of ours had an infant with colic. We were the clueless one then, snidely remarking to each other that they didn't seem to know how to be parents and that we felt sorry for the kid. Little did we know that the very same relentless monster was waiting to bite us on the ass.

During the worst of it, the only thing that helped my wife and me were those few times when we'd meet people who'd been through the same thing. We'd see that look in their eyes, that empathetic shake of the head. "Yeah, that's rough," they'd say, and immediately we'd feel less isolated.

Why our daughter?
There are many theories about why babies get colic and many statistics that show babies born to certain kinds of people, in certain situations, are likely to end up with it. These are, of course, refuted by other studies and statistics that say just the opposite.

Here's what we read: that colic is a result of excess gas; that it was because her body grew faster than her belly and the catch-up process caused residual pain; that the acid pumps in her belly were overactive; that it was because our diet contained too much wheat or dairy or sugar or rice, or food.

The only thing you can count on with colic is that your baby's going to cry, you're not going to sleep, and it will feel like the worst all-nighter you ever pulled, with no end in sight. We tried everything we could think of: gripe water, medicines, pacifiers, keeping her propped up in her car seat as she slept. Nothing but constant bouncing would help.

On day 113, she seemed to turn the corner. That was the day she finally didn't need to be bounced interminably, all through the day and night.

My wife and I were finally able to eat a meal together — albeit wolfed down in a minute — without having to take turns feeding each other while one bounced and one carefully aimed the fork.

Better for it
The upside to colic? It bonded my wife and me together like no other test we had faced in our marriage. It bonded us so closely, put us so in tune with our daughter, that we had no doubt that we were a family after it.

It also tested the depth of our compassion, not just towards our daughter, but also towards each other and ourselves. It forced us to find relief in the small things, like taking a shower and going to the store, and to find the humor, like my wife's waking dreams about breast milk cookbooks, and fake boobs, and — heaven forbid! — twins, in what otherwise was a heartbreaking situation.

Most of all, however, it showed us that we can get through anything together, as long as we share it.

The colic is gone now but I won't ever let myself forget it. I've become a better dad and husband as a result, and a more empathetic man. I am now that friend or acquaintance who, when told of another baby's colic woes, shakes his head and says, "Yeah, that's rough."