Written by: She Evolves
I have always known my older sisters to be brave and strong from a young age. Growing up, I always wished I was like them because it seemed like they had it all figured out. Their confidence, accompanied by a firm spirit of resilience and genuine kindness, made life look worth pursuing.
We are now all grown up, and each of my sisters has two beautiful children. They both have one boy and one girl – it doesn’t get better than that. And I still envy them. But with all the glitz that motherhood came with for my sisters, my sister TK (the middle sister) had to cross a high tide with her firstborn, baby boy Ray. Now almost four years old, Ray had what medical terms refer to as baby colic. A term that I learned from the book Sleepless Nights. “A frequent, and intense crying or fussiness in a healthy infant.”
When I asked my sister TK, how it was like dealing with a colic baby as a first time mom… she said to me;
“Hectic! Three months of sleepless nights, stress, fatigue and of not understanding what was going on. I remember somewhere in the first month when I went to the clinic for his check-ups, I would hear other moms talk about it but I couldn’t really grasp what they were really on about. That’s when I started asking questions from the doctors and further researching it. From there I began to have some knowledge about what was going on with him which helped direct me on better ways to console him. It was very hard because I would do anything and everything to try to calm him down but he would just keep on crying and howling for hours on hours.”
According to Mayo Clinic, “the range for what’s considered typical crying is difficult to pin down. In general, colic is defined as crying for three or more hours a day, three or more days a week, for three or more weeks.”If you suspect that your newborn might have colic, it is important to ask your doctor about ways in which you can use to reduce both your and the baby’s distress. In a conversation with my sister, she advised that talking to other experienced moms can also be helpful. Other tricks she used that seemed to help included putting the baby on his stomach, gently rubbing his back and rocking him at the same time, and when it got worse to use tricks, she used colic drops to soothe his nerves.
