I will admit it, my child is a tyrant. An 18 pound tyrant with an equally weighty attitude. She's not the happy baby that we ordered but she's mine and I love her to pieces. Sometimes I tell her I'm going to sell her to the circus or send her to China to start working off her debt to me. Either way, I am totally kidding and would probably reconsider the circus deal five minutes after making it. Maybe.
Five a.m. is really early. I don't know if you knew this but there are two 5 o'clocks in a day. I didn't realize there were until later in pregnancy when my bladder constantly woke me to a little fish doing little laps in my uterus. I should have know right then and there that my child was going to be a naughty little thing. Especially when you would go to press on her and she'd scoot over to the other side like, "hahahahahaha you can't catch me!!" I should have known but I was so stinking hopeful.
I thought I had read every little thing about motherhood. Schedules, making schedules, breast feeding, diapering, colic, teething. Let me just let you in on a little secret. Those books are waaaaaaay too general when it comes to anything other than the standard happy baby. Little did I know that I would one day want to throw those books and articles in the fire pit and watch them burn in a fit of rage. By the way, sometimes burning things (safely and within legal laws and limitations) is therapeutic. I suggest burning a bunch of bills and/or awful letters in your fire pit at least three times a summer.
I was so stinkin' hopeful and thinking everything was going to go according to my plan.... WRONG!!! Dead wrong! My child, let me rephrase that, my MONSTER is not your typical baby. She came out with an attitude. Actually, at her first doctors appointment the doctor and ALLLLLL the staff came out to tell us what a little temper she had. Let's just say that's code for, your child is awful so please make her stop screaming. First thing right off the bat, she had a hard time nursing. I guess I am defective and didn't keep up with her gigantic appetite. She's a big baby and still getting more giant like by the minute, so it was natural that her appetite would be huge I just didn't know how big at the time. I don't think it's really normal for a one month old baby to be eating 5-7 ounces of breast milk or formula. Let me break that down for you, 5 ounces times feedings every 3 hours equals 40 ounces in a day. I don't think my milk trucks were working that fast.
Monster-kins would cry nonstop until the next feeding or just never stop from the first, so finally when I was about to ship her back to the stork and demand a refund, my bestie suggested that she be bottle fed. So we got everything together and my bestie fed her because I was having a Get-this-kid-outta-my-face kinda moment. Let's just say that was the first time in a month that she stopped crying. After that, we had plenty of more crying all day episodes, one involving her crying for 4 hours straight and my mother in law coming over to pick her up so I could cry and sleep myself.
Colic is no joke. I always thought it was just one of those things where the parent just didn't know how to soothe the baby or know what they needed. No, it is a bizarre turn of events where your child is possessed by gremlins and there are monkeys in their belly jumping and squeezing their little intestines and pushing horribleness throughout their entire bodies. If your baby has colic, please for me get someone to watch your lil' monster for a few hours so that you can have sanity. Grocery shopping was my saviour. I would drop Gremlin off and go walk around amongst somewhat normal people and just hear nothing. Nothing but silence and possibly Michael Bolton. "Hmm, should I get the frozen broccoli or just buy fresh? Hmmm, what was that? Oh yeah, nothing!"
I remember, in my sleepless haze, my aunt and grandmonster trying to calm her down. By that time I had become kind of immune to the screaming, or at least I could just ignore it for the most part. They were so funny trying to figure her out and all she did was scream at the top of her lungs. Thankfully my aunt had a horribly colicky baby and my grandmonster is mostly deaf so it didn't really affect them. I remember my grandmoster asking what was wrong with her and I pretty much said she's colicky and she cries, babies cry. And then my hair turned white. True story
We had a few weeks of relatively calmness once she got a little bit bigger and we changed her formula a gagillion times. She was eating a ton and then she hit a growth spurt and required more food than even I would eat in a day. We couldn't keep her full. So we had a cement truck back up and put a nipple on the spout so she could be full. Here lately her growth and development have been extraordinary. She can mimmic and say Momma and Babba and also she learned how to turn on her mobile with her feet and if she keeps slapping at it, it will also turn on for her fat little hands. She is always watching to learn, which brings me to my next thought. Always snap the Onesie. I will explain.
Monster-kins has been growing so fast lately and has been little Miss Independent and doesn't like to be clean or clothed, so I decided to just leave her in her little t-shirt and just put her to bed. In my 5 am haze of feeding and changing her diaper, I didn't fasten the Onesie. I just left it open after said diaper change. ALWAYS snap the Onesie.
She started whining at about 7 am and I was tired so I just went and turned on the mobile so I could get at least 20 more minutes of laying around. She whined for a little bit more and I finally went in to investigate. The mobile usually holds her attention for the entirety of it's cycle so I knew something was up. I went in to her room, looked and she was completely sideways in her crib turning the mobile on different songs with her pudgy little hand and saw her diaper was open. I said, "monster baby.... did you learn how to open up your diaper? ..... OH MY GOD!!!! YOU POOPED!!! AHHHHH" After walking around the room screaming, yelling and possibly crying, I tried to decide do I go wash my hand and then clean her up or do I try to wash her up and worry about self decontamination later?
So I did a few laps around her room, grabbed some wipes and a wash cloth, did butt damage control then worried about my hands later. I was so afraid Mr. Bear was going to be lost in this fecal military action, but thanks to Tide he was saved. It is the oddest feeling to pick up a tiny baby turd from your child's crib. Smeared poo is expected but an actual formed turd takes practice. That means she had to poop and then scoot to keep it whole. I know gross, but Imma gross person so it doesn't bother me. After a decontamination bath where her entire body was scrubbed, I was only 5 minutes late for work. Granted, my hair looked like two beavers had a fight over how to build the dam and I wasn't wearing a stitch of make-up but I was there dang it!!
Moral of the story, just because they are little doesn't mean they aren't watching. In fact, they are studying you and waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. Learn by my mommy misstep and ALWAYS FASTEN THE ONESIE!!
Ciao
-Suzs
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