It turns out Sharon knew what she was talking about. Following my unscheduled c-section, there was nothing I wanted more than to zone out, completely alone, for about a week in a morphine haze. Instead, there was a baby girl in a plastic bin to my left, for whom I was meant to care.
And unlike other babies I've heard about, she did not sleep all the time or coo contentedly as I cradled her in my arms. On the contrary, she screamed and screamed from the get-go--while I held her, while Nick held her, while she flailed in her plastic bassinet, while I attempted to breastfeed her, while Nick changed her diaper--whenever. She was in this world, and she hated it.
I couldn't really blame her. I've found most of my daily life to be pretty excruciating for basically my whole life--why should my own baby feel any differently? I have a bad attitude about being alive, and it seems I transmitted it to her in the womb.
I spent about three days in the hospital following the surgical birth of my baby, and I estimate that I slept for possibly 45 minutes during that time. Virtually every moment was spent attempting to breastfeed my painfully small child or grinding my teeth as I listened to her howling angrily wherever she happened to be at the moment.
"Could this be colic?" we asked various nurses and doctors, but "colic", according to the textbooks, doesn't start until a baby is at least two weeks old, and with our baby arriving three weeks early, well, we wouldn't know if we had a colicky baby for well over a month.
"But then why is she screaming inconsolably?" we asked. "Is something wrong with her? Is she in pain?" But no, evidently there was nothing to be diagnosed or done. "Babies cry," they would say, as they rushed from the room and the screaming.
One evening, Nurse Betty came into my room. I was supposed to leave the hospital the next day, and I was in a unique mental state that was informed by sleeplessness, Percocet, distant pain and maybe a little post-traumatic stress disorder. "How are you doing?" I think she asked me. I have no distinct memory of how I responded, but I think it involved deeply negative jokes and probably some crying. The still-nameless baby howled in the foreground.
"Why don't I take her to the nursery?" said Betty. "You need some rest." I couldn't believe it--she wasn't going to force me to try some new breastfeeding "hold" instead? She wheeled the baby away and I had about an hour of non-screams in my dreary little room. I don't really think I slept, but it was still pretty great.
Eventually we went home, and the screaming just got more intense. Everyone always says that a baby will "change your life" and looks at you with these wide eyes, but no one really says that the baby will scream virtually non-stop, red-faced and flailing, as if you are continuously sliding burning-hot needles under her tiny little fingernails.
"Is this normal?" Nick asked me, as the frantic howls continued despite our constant attempts to soothe her.
I didn't know. I guessed so--everyone says "babies cry" and "it's so hard", right?
We called some 24-hour baby care help line that I must have found in the hospital discharge papers. Nick placed the call, since I was holding the screaming child and weeping to myself.
The person on the phone asked him a bunch of questions. I could tell he was getting frustrated. "But what should we do?" he asked. "Is there anything we can actually do?" He looked irritated as he listened to the response--clearly someone reading off the list of things one should try to soothe a colicky baby. "Yeah, we've tried all of that," he said. The white noise, the bouncing, the swaddling--whatever--all of it like taking a plant spritzer to a wildfire.
In the days and weeks following the birth of one's child, the baby has many appointments with the pediatrician. Ours was a perky, fast-talking woman who--when we asked her about our daughter's misery--suggested that we weren't swaddling her correctly. "Babies cry!" she said. "You just need to learn how to swaddle her better--I'll show you." We told her we'd been swaddling to no avail, but she was sure of her superiority. "No really, I'll show you and things will get better," she said.
She took wailing Lydia from my arms and attempted to wrap her up in her "expert" pediatrician swaddle. Lydia broke out of it immediately. Nick and I looked at each other, perversely pleased. Our baby showed the pediatrician who was boss! She might not be "easy," but she was definitely a badass.
I joined a "new mother" group, since this baby-having stuff was challenging and I didn't really have any friends with small babies. I wanted to take preventative measures so I wouldn't alienate all my childless friends with diaper reports.
Every week in class I sat on an inflatable exercise ball, bouncing Lydia vigorously while she yowled. All the other new mothers lounged on the floor, their babies napping in their carseats or lying motionless and awake on blankets in front of them.
It still didn't really occur to me that anything was "wrong." After all, the pediatrician, the phone-in baby consultant and the hospital staff had all just looked at me condescendingly while sharing their version of the verdict that "babies cry." If those other babies were much calmer than mine, well, that was obviously what I had coming.
But one day, "Sonya" and "Laura", the instructors who moderated the group, approached me after class. "Sometimes we have to stage an intervention," Sonya said. Both mothers of three kids, they could see that I had a special situation. I don't really remember how they phrased it, but they basically informed me that my situation was fucked.
"How are you holding up?" asked Laura. "What are you doing to take care of yourself?"
I wasn't doing anything to take care of myself, unless you count "hoarding the last two painkilllers for a really bad day" a self-care plan. They laughed supportively at my bitter jokes and hugged me.
Weeks passed, and Lydia continued to scream. The only time she slept at all was while lying on my chest, usually around 4 a.m. I would hold her with both hands, terrified that I would fall asleep and drop her. Occasionally exhaustion would take over and I'd pass out for a few minutes--only to wake up with a shock, scared that she had toppled onto the floor during my period of negligence. (She hadn't.)
Nothing really "worked" when it came to soothing her. Everyone tells you to take the baby for a ride in the car, which I tried many times, often in the depressing hours of the morning. She would scream the whole time and I felt like a monster.
We did experience some success when we'd bounce her vigorously for hours while listening to the same droning records over and over, Stereolab being a particular "favorite" of Lydia's.
But most everything we tried was a total joke.
We sought outside assistance, including the services of a chiropractor who suggested that I eliminate all wheat and soy from my diet to see if that helped. I followed that suggestion for about a day and a half.
"Isn't colic usually caused by something in the mother's diet?" said some hippie at the baby-friendly yoga studio. "Maybe you should eliminate dairy...since of course you're not drinking coffee or alcohol or anything."
"That's bullshit," said my friend "Jessica," who had a colicky baby of her own several years ago. "The sad truth is that nothing helps, you just have to wait it out. I was drunk for basically the whole first year, I was so miserable."
So I gave up, and just accepted that I had what could be lovingly described as a "high need" baby. And once I stopped trying to cure her, I found that I took some sick enjoyment from the situation. I decided that Lydia was actually sort of cool for being so vocal about her angst--not at all like her repressed mother! I could actually learn a thing or two from this child.
