waayyyy too much information”
Since we had already been through colic with Lucy, it was at least familiar territory, although we weren’t exactly excited to get to re-experience that unfun time. When I was pregnant and people asked me about whether I was nervous to have a new baby or excited, one of the first thoughts in my mind was always “will we have to do colic again?”
My sister-in-law Hillary had gotten pregnant a little sooner than she wanted with their third child and was a little overwhelmed. Needing extra help from the Lord, she asked Him to give her a freckled redheaded baby, because she had always wanted to have one. And she got what she asked for, and really felt the consolation of the Lord in that small blessing. My main thought was just, “Okay, Lord, I don’t mind if there is a problem. Let Violet spit up all the time, have an allergy or cradle cap or something else. Just not colic!” So it was a little hard on my faith when crying and fussiness began to spiral out of control just a few weeks after Violet was born.
With the buck up and take it mentality, Ryan and I just kept cranking, trying not to get too frazzled and renting every DVD that looked mildly entertaining to watch during 2AM bounce and jiggle sessions. FYI, vigorous bouncing and jiggling in our arms was usually the only thing that kept her from screaming, but you had to keep it up for a half hour to several hours to get her in an asleep enough state that you could stop. If you stopped too soon, within seconds you would have a purple faced screaming meanie on your hands, and you’d be back at square one again. I love the cover picture for a book I checked out from the library:
Eventually, fast Sunday rolled around one month and Ryan decided he would fast that somehow we could get some help. Since I am breastfeeding, I couldn’t fast with him, but I didn’t even give up chocolate or try to show some effort of faith that weekend. Instead, I had a sour attitude, “Ryan, she has colic. God could magically fix it, but he’s not going to. If she already has it; it is not going to go away, we just have to wait it out.”
A week or so before that, we had begun to try harder to read our scriptures every day. All those things you are supposed to do (praying, scripture study, Family Home Evening) had been left behind because with no one getting any sleep, there was simply no time! Two days later, on Tuesday, I went to the WIC clinic to get our most recent allotment of free milk and cheese. I almost didn’t go because it is always a hassle and it looked as though the babies might actually sleep in. But since I had already had to reschedule the appointment three times because of Ryan’s ridiculous work schedule, I got the babies up and went anyway.
At the clinic, Violet was mildly fussy, and I complained to the lady how she was colicky. So, at the end of the appointment, I got a nice little pamphlet “Common infant problems: what about colic?” Of course, this only agitated me. What could some stupid pamphlet have to say that I didn’t already know after scouring books on the subject and having gone through it with one kid already?? But, I am kind of OCD as far as pamphlets go. I don’t want to not know what to do if Lucy somehow got a hold of the bleach just because I was too lazy to read the poison control pamphlet. So at about 12 midnight, I read it. “Colic causes the babies who have it – and their families – a lot of pain.” Understatement of the year! I was making fun of it to Ryan, when near the very end, under “What can I do?” the flyer states “the cause of colic may be as simple as an oversupply of breastmilk…” What? How have I never heard of that?
It seems like every woman I know complains of not having enough milk. I have always felt lucky because I have tons. I can skip feedings and still have plenty of milk – with Lucy, Ryan always called me “Mrs. Milkbags” (oh how marriage changes after kids). I never even knew that too much milk could be a problem! I immediately Google ‘oversupply breastfeeding’ and the Le Leche League website pops up with this whole thing about it. Apparently, women with “overenthusiastic breasts” as they call it make so much milk that it causes major problems. The baby never gets to the rich, thick fatty ‘hindmilk’ and only gets the ‘foremilk’ (more like skim milk). Since they never get the fat, they always feel hungry and always want to eat. They eat and eat, and their little tummies get distended from all that skim milk. Their bodies don’t digest it well (you need the fat for it to digest right), resulting in explosive green poops (that is another fun story), gassiness, burping and tummy aches. Since there is so much milk, it shoots out too fast, and it is like trying to drink from a fire hydrant for the little babes. That makes the baby choke and gag and pull away from the breast. The fat in the milk also helps the baby sleep, so my babies could never sleep because they were always hungry with no sweet sweet lipids to line their stomach walls.So, in sum, apparently my children were crying and could not sleep because they were always hungry and not matter how much they ate their tummies hurt. How terrible is that? Not comforting for a new(ish) mom who, up until this point, was pretty confident in her mothering capabilities. Most new moms blame themselves when the baby isn’t happy. I didn’t do that, but turns out I should have because it was totally my fault. I kept wondering why colic seemed to be genetic yet neither my parents or Ryan’s parents had colicky babies. Well, every one of my babies would have had colic, because the problem was me.
Who the heck invents a ‘disorder’ for which the cause is unknown and there is no way to fix it? I know I would have been more persistent in trying to solve the problem if I wouldn’t have heard over and over again that there was nothing I could do. That the underdeveloped brain simply was not yet mature enough to shut crying off. That evolutionarily, babies who cried most were most likely to survive, and thus that trait was carried on. B freakin S! The babies are unhappy because there is SOME sort of problem, and thus they cry! Interestingly, the overproduction of milk problem also disappears around 4-5 months because the baby gets bigger and sucks more and can deal with the forceful flow of milk better than a littler baby.
Luckily, the problem was easy to fix after calling a breastfeeding counselor about the specific steps I would need to do every time I feed Violet in order to ‘tame’ my breasts. Interestingly, I have to do it every time every day, or else those gung-ho breasts of mine start producing again like there’s no tomorrow. It took about two weeks, but now we have a HAPPY baby who makes super loud squeals in the middle of sacrament meeting. I bore my testimony about it the other Sunday (without ever using the word breast from the pulpit), and we are incredibly thankful to the Lord for helping us solve a problem that would have kept us from enjoying our kids and kept us from ever having any more!
Finally, I think it is hilarious that my breasts are ‘overenthusiastic.’ Like since they are small, they felt some sort of need to overcompensate in order to send the message out “I can do it just as good as you, double-D cups!” A mom on the internet sited this fountain in Italy which memorializes the plight of the overenthusiastic mother. I guess back then, they thought it was a beautiful thing because these special women served as wet-nurses for scores and scores of babies whose own mothers just didn’t have enough milk. Now you know way more about me than you ever hoped to, and random strangers can read this, too!
But solving this ginormously tremendously hideous problem has been a huge miracle in our family, and so mostly for myself, I needed to write it down so that I would never forget it. The Lord really is all-powerful and can provide solutions where we could not see any possibility of relief. Now Ryan and I are trying to apply this lesson to the tricky problem of ever getting him a pilot job that will pay for a family.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/mikes-blog-1-pilots-food-stamps
