When you're pregnant, you dream of holding that sweet baby, and the world is a happy place. But then you're sent into shock when instead of you have a baby with colic screaming all day and all night, pooping blood, mucus and screaming with every feed, minimal weight gain, poor growth, and loss of energy. Alexa wanted to sleep all the time! We dealt with it with our first born, but Alexa seemed to be worse in a different way. Never did I think I'd be going through this again with my second child. Every feed was a battle. She would scream in pain every time we tried to feed her. It was so hard for me to see her in pain all the time.
It's so hard when you're already sleep deprived, with an active toddler, and suffering from PPD, to feel calm and tender when it's 3 a.m., you haven't slept for more than 45 minutes at a stretch for more than a month. For the first month and a half I bounced her on a yoga ball for hours. Then we were able to finally graduate to bouncing her on the ball in her car seat, because I found that as soon as she'd fall asleep she'd wake up if I put her in her bed.
I needed escape, but at the same time I felt bad to leave Alexa alone with her father, let alone a babysitter. I felt trapped, or doomed to be trapped with this child, whom I both loved and yet could not stand due to her incessant crying that sent my hormones and ears into over drive. My parents live 100 miles away, so getting any relief was not going to happen.
Everything we tried for her worked for a few days: switching bottles, switching donors, switching her formula, putting her on goats milk...etc..We tried everything we could think of medicinally: zantac, gripe water, medicines, pacifiers, keeping her propped up in her car seat as she slept. Nothing but only constant bouncing would help. everything only helped for a few days at a time then the colic monster would come back. Don't get me wrong here, I absolutely adore my precious baby girl. It was just harder to adore her with prolonged crying that did not give up. If she gave me a couple good days of low crying, I could recover and love her through it. But it just wore me out when I had no relief.
The only thing you can count on with colic is that your baby's going to cry, you're not going to sleep, and it will feel like the worst all-nighter you ever pulled, with no end in sight. Here's a short clip of what I deal with 24-7: