Enjoy the Silence

My daughter Molly has colic.  And it is terrible.  If you don't believe me come by any day between the hours of 6:30pm and 10:00pm. The board of education can forget those baby practice dolls, I'm going to start lending Molly out to local high school kids and I assure you none of them will EVER have sex again.

As a parent, colic is the ultimate in hands tying impotence as you watch your child scream in pain while you go through a random loop of ideas to "make it better" until finally the clock strikes whatever and everything goes back to some semblance of normal. However, you are generally so exhausted that you just melt onto the couch for an hour before going to bed.  

The experts say that colic ends at three months.  So we sat in anticipation last week awaiting some improvement.  The experts are liars.  There I said it.  Sometimes we think it's getting better, but I think we're just numb.

To give you a good idea of the anger level Molly displays during colic hours, I'll tell you this.  In the past month she has karate kicked the zippers of three pairs of footsie pajamas rendering them helpless and broken. Last week she ripped the leg off of a stuffed giraffe.  None of these instances happened during colic, that’s just regular happy Molly.*

During a good round of colic Chris likes to randomly call out, "Loud Noises".  I prefer to sing, "Noise, but I can't hear anything.  Just (Molly) screaming, screaming.  Some guy screaming in a leather jacket."** It doesn't make her feel any better, but sometimes it's liberating just yelling something back.

Yesterday our friend Rice*** sent me a great blog entry on coping with colic (http://offbeatmama.com/2011/11/a-colic-to-do-list).  It had some genuinely good ideas that we hadn't thought of and will totally try out.

I personally like to bring Molly to Wal-Mart when she's screaming.  She's never the worst kid in the store, cause it's Wal-Mart, right? And misery loves company.

Last week we discovered that Molly likes hockey.  Something about the white colour of the ice while we lay her on her stomach and bounce our legs makes her quiet and droolly, buying us a good twenty minutes.  The worst part about the colic**** is that as soon as you think you've figured something out to calm your baby: they decide they hate it.  Maybe tonight will be the night that she stops.  Then again, maybe not.

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*Chris thinks that the rage comes from the mother's side.

**Thank you Pursuit of Happiness.

***Yeah that's right, that's your new nickname.

****There are so many bad things about colic that there is no real "worst" thing.