While raising my first child, I determined that of all the rigors that babies and parents go through, was teething. The times in which the tiny chompers of our offspring are boring their way up through the gums and into the world, to help them level up in terms of foods they can eat and sensations they can experience. It’s obviously painful and frequent, given that the average child has around 20 total teeth, and every time it seemed apparent that #1 was going through some teething, the days were full of lots of crying, lots of drool, occasional vomiting, and struggles to sleep, leading to some very exasperated parents and one definitely fried dad.
Well, with #2 a little over a month old now, I think mythical wife and I are experiencing yet another new thing: colic. Basically periods of time when the baby goes completely apeshit ballistic nuclear and is screaming their heads off for an inconveniently long duration, and there doesn’t seem to be an explanation for it. I mean seriously:
Unfortunately, there is no definite explanation for why this happens. Most often, colic means simply that the child is unusually sensitive to stimulation or cannot “self-console” or regulate his nervous system. (Also known as an immature nervous system.) As she matures, this inability to self-console—marked by constant crying—will improve. Generally this “colicky crying” will stop by three to four months, but it can last until six months of age.
I read shit like this, and my thoughts usually go in the direction of, how long as the human race been in existence, as well as existing in the age of modern medicine and diagnosis, and nobody’s still been able to figure this shit out?
Needless to say, it’s evident that #2 has occasional colic, and when it starts, it’s basically the worst scenario in the world. Seriously, I’ve never had suicidal thoughts in my life before sitting there with an inconsolable newborn screaming their lungs out and there being seemingly absolutely nothing in the world that can bring them down. Blowing my head off, or jumping off a cliff seems like a preferable alternative to trying and failing to calm a colic-ky baby back to earth.
And as often times the case during this second go-around, I’m ashamed to admit just how often I lose my cool and let it get to me. It’s like I know that parenting is excruciatingly difficult, and I did sign up for this, but to me, and by no fault of anyone much less my precious #1, we have comparisons we’re capable of making, and when didn’t go through it so badly the first time around, but are going through it horrifically the second, it creates that space for their to be additional frustration.
All the same, good or bad, these kinds of posts exist to be the real life truth to how parenting really is going for someone like me, and I do want to remember the things that I can hopefully look forward to in the future as talking points to remind my children of in the future when they’re older, wiser, and can comprehend words in the event that they find this shit on their own.
The daunting reality is additionally the fact that we’re still so early on that teething hasn’t even yet come into play, but considering how #2 has been so far, I can only make an educated guess that I’ll go back to thinking teething is the biggest cancer on the planet again in 4-6 months.
