colic sucks

Let me start by describing what colic is not. It is not a baby that cries for an hour and stops and goes to sleep. It is not a baby that cries when he or she is hungry. It is really hard to not punch someone in the face when you tell them about your baby's extreme colic and they respond by saying that they know how you feel because their little angel took an hour to fall asleep. Any parent who has a child that has colic would kill if their child was just a fussy baby.

Colic is described in rules of 3:
1) Baby cries without obvious reason more than 3 hours
2) Baby cries without obvious reason more than 3 hours 3 or more times a week
3) Baby cries without obvious reason more than 3 hours 3 or more times a week for 3 or more weeks.

I am assuming that is the lowest level of colic there is because I would love for Evangeline to be that kind of colic.

Instead, we have a baby that cries/ screams pretty much every hour she is awake. This is an everyday thing and has been going on for two months now.

Colic is supposed to improve starting after 6-8 weeks of age. 'Most' babies get over their colic between 3-4 months. We are closing in on the 3 month mark and keeping our fingers crossed.

The reason colic sucks has very little to do with the baby. Babies that have colic have no residual issues from their colic. You don't see 13 year olds screaming for 5-7 hours a day for no reason. Babies do outgrow it. The real impact of colic is seen in the parents that have to deal with it.

Here is why colic sucks:

1) It makes you feel like a bad parent. Surely, the baby must by crying for a reason. What kind of parent does not know how to calm down their own child? What kind of parent cannot find the reason why their baby is screaming? There is very little that can make a person feel more inadequate than not being able to soothe your screaming baby.

2) It does a number on the parent's nerves and relationship. Babies scream because they need _______. They have no other forms of communication so evolution made their screams such that they would be heard. Babies' screams are jarring and upsetting and causes a very high level of stress. It also causes the parents to snap at each other, blame each other, curse at each other. We can't take out frustrations out on the baby, obviously; so, we take it out on each other. Just for shits and giggles...you want to test your marriage, agree to watch a baby with colic for one weekend.

3) It is very isolating. The first few weeks of parenthood, you are getting used to the exhaustion that comes with it and can't fathom the idea of socializing much. After 2-3 weeks, you kind of get used to it and are ready to rejoin the world of the living. Granted, you are not going to be going out to the bars every weekend, but you can certainly enjoy a nice night at a friend's house drinking a bottle of wine. Wrong. Colic prevents that. You can't bring the baby anywhere. Colic is not something that you subject others to, it is extremely upsetting. You can't have people over for the same reason. Also, it is impossible to have a simple conversation when a baby is screaming the entire time.

It also prevents things as simple as phone calls. Colic tends to be worse in the early to late evening hours. This is when people tend to call their friends and family as everyone is arriving home from work. Screaming children are not conducive to being able to talk on the phone.

So, please have patience if a friend or a family member has a colic baby. It is not that they don't want to talk or see you, they very likely are desperate to talk and see you, it is just that colic makes a social life an impossible task.

Colic sucks, it really does.