My Parents Warned Me There Would Be Days (and Nights) Like These...

As most parents do, my parents shared stories with me about how I was as an infant. Most of those stories involved me crying; keeping my parents up at night, making my mom cry because there was nothing she could do to console me. My dad would often tell me that when I would cry he would pick me up, soothe me and finally get me settled enough to put me back down in my crib. He then said he would gently release me one finger at a time and the moment his last finger would leave my body -- I would begin screaming once again. This story was often followed by the comment -- I hope you have two babies who act just like you did. I took this comment more as a threat, and I took it pretty seriously. I knew I was a horrible baby. I heard that I even made one of my babysitters cry and almost scared her away from having children herself (she did end up having children, so I must not have been that bad). I had a bad feeling that this threat would someday become reality.

And it did.

The last few nights have been pretty rough. And I can't even say nights as the crying occasionally starts in the early afternoon. Mostly it is Emily -- but often, feeling left out, Abby decides to chime in too.

I do think Emily is colicky. She starts to cry on an average day around 7:00 pm and does not stop until about 11:30 or 12:00 am. Last night she went on until 2 am. Until I could no longer take it and made Geoff take her into the other room. It was almost time for him to get up and do the 3:30 feeding, and I had not yet gone to sleep -- I was finished.

In the recent past we have been able to console her with her pacifier. Lately, she doesn't even want that. We can often get her temporarily settled by placing her in her bouncy seat (thank you again Tina -- you are a lifesaver) and bouncing it with our foot. Once you get her to a point where you think it is safe to stop -- she realizes she is no longer moving and starts to cry again. Either that or we can actually get her to take her pacifier and she is content with it until it falls out of her mouth. When that happens, the screaming begins until one of us walks over and places the pacifier back into her mouth until she gets a good latch on it. Sometimes she cries that the paci has fallen out and when you try to put it back in -- she fights it. Then, once we finally have put the paci back in and we have returned to what we were doing previously the pacifier falls out again, she screams and we again go through the motions to get it back into her mouth. This can go on forever and it's even more fun when Abby plays the same game at the same time. And, to make matters worse -- this game is usually played while I am trying to pump and Geoff has already gone to sleep for the night. Try retrieving a pacifier while hooked up to a breast pump. I often have to unhook the tubing, retrieve the pacifier, go rinse it (if it has fallen onto the floor -- yes, I'm a new mom, but in my defense we have pets), get it back into her mouth, get myself hooked back up only to repeat the game seconds or minutes later. One may recommend that I try to find another time to pump and I acknowledge that is a fine recommendation -- however, finding time is often not as easy as you would think.

Some nights are fairly easy and after the 7:30 feeding we can get them settled enough to sleep and the 11:30 feeding goes smoothly enough that I can be in bed by 1:00 am. The majority of nights do not play out that way and they (Emily primarily) just cry and cry and cry and cry until I am crying right along with them (like my mom did with me) -- like tonight. I was holding Abby after she ate -- she was super fussy and is prone to spit up a lot and Emily was in a bouncy seat with a pacifier in her mouth. When the paci fell out, Emily screamed, when I reached over to pick it up and place it back into her mouth -- Abby started to scream, then I wanted to scream, but didn't.

Right now, Emily is sound asleep on her Bo.ppy and I am so tempted to put her in her bassinet so I can finally get some sleep -- I would do it if Abby were asleep too , but as luck would have it she is WIDE AWAKE and is playing the pacifier game. If I move Emily, then I have to listen for her with the monitor and go between two rooms -- not fun. So I sit here and pray that Abby will soon tire of this silly game and fall asleep before I fall asleep on the desk. It does look quite comfy right about now...

I'm not certain how old I was when my crying finally settled down -- I'm sure my mom will tell me the next time I talk to her on the phone, as she always reads my blog, but I have a feeling we're going to be dealing with this for a while. After finding out in 2005 that I have Celiac Disease, I immediately blamed my constant crying as an infant on that -- it very well could be the culprit. After the girls were born I spoke with their pediatrician about the fact that I do want them to be tested for Celiac Disease as soon as possible, because I do not want to them to endure the GI discomfort that I endured for the first 32 years of my life. Plus I don't want them to fall in love with Or.eos only to tell them one day that they can no longer (for the rest of their life) enjoy the best cookie on the face of the earth. Gluten free cookies just don't compare. I hope the girls can escape Celiac Disease -- so they won't be know as the "weird kids" who can't eat the birthday cupcakes. It's hard enough to endure that stigma as an adult, I can't imagine what it is like as a child.

So I am sure that somewhere "up there" my dad is looking down on us with a smirk and a chuckle, for I am enduring many of the same sleepless nights that he did when I was a fussy baby. My mom tells me every time I talk to her that Emily is "definitely my daughter" because every story I tell her reminds her of those sleepless nights with me back in 1973. Lucky me -- not many people can say that they had a chance to get a glimpse of themselves as an infant, right?