It was excellent...Not really.
But did at least kinda make you chuckle afterwards. In the heat of the moment? No, it didn't help the situation in the slightest...I'm pretty sure that's about the point I came closest to developing a nervous tic...but once Miles finally
In any case, the only semi-surefire way to calm him down was the wrap. So I had him strapped to my body something like 12 hours of every day (not including the hours that went towards feeding him or changing diapers, etc.) Many a nap and even some nighttime sleep took place with a baby strapped to my chest. Which is not comfortable. At all. Especially when temperatures hit the triple digits. I'm amazed I didn't melt my baby. He did however sport heat rash fairly frequently. (And I'm relearning how to make cutoff shorts...because my emergency shorts-shopping spree in late August didn't turn up any contenders).
In any case, during all the insanity that was month one, Miles' skin went crazy. Rashes and pimples and pussy eczema galore. It wasn't pretty. I immediately deleted pretty much all pictures taken during this time period so as not to have proof of how hard Miles got hit with the ugly stick.
A semi-presentable picture taken during the aforementioned time period
In any case, I took him to the pediatrician to get his skin checked out and came home with a handbag of various diagnoses - a stork bite on the back of his neck, baby acne, heat rash and an allergic reaction. The pedi and I pinpointed the cream in Miles' bathwater as the most likely culprit for the allergic reaction, and it panned out once we eliminated all additives from our skin-care regime. (We're not totally weird, when Dylan was born the midwives suggested olive oil and cream in his bathwater rather than baby lotions, etc...Dylan never had a problem with it).
Then when I went back for the one-month check-up and confirmed cream as our culprit, the pediatrician suggested that Miles might be allergic to the protein in cow's milk and that perhaps milk products in my diet were the cause of Miles' colic. (Dylan's allergic to cow's milk protein as well, but we never had issues with it via breastmilk - only once he started solids). So I was supposed to try cutting milk products from my diet for a week and see if there was a difference. If things DID improve, I was supposed to "challenge" milk products again - so consume them again and see if he got worse again.
I was ambivalent. On the one hand, eliminating all milk products from your diet is HARD. I never realized how much milk is in my diet (considering the fact that I hate milk). On the other hand...hallelujah! Perhaps there was something I could DO calm my baby (and my household). And so we entered our trial period. The first 3 days we didn't notice any difference. Then from day 4 on, we started to notice a gradual improvement. I think the point at which I became a full believer was when Miles' eczema cleared up...overnight...like it had never existed. On day 6, G announced that I would not be consuming milk ever again - challenge be damned. I agreed wholeheartedly.
In the meantime, we also discovered a semi-reliable alternative to the wrap. If we swaddle him and put him in the bouncer on vibrate and vigorously bounce the chair with our foot, he's pretty happy with the world and will eventually fall asleep. I feel like a seamstress with a treadle but can now bounce that puppy into eternity without even really being aware I'm doing it.
In any case, 4 weeks later I have a totally different baby. Although he's still super fidgety and needs to be swaddled to sleep, he's pretty chill and smiley in general...and he showed those baby uglies who's boss...look how beautiful my boy is now.
I wish I would've known to try all that for Josie, our fussy, colic one. Although it wasn't as bad as most colic babies (like yours); but it still wasn't the best first-time-mom experience! So glad you're finally through it.
ReplyDelete- Beth A.