Colic Chronicles

Advice and Learning the Ropes

My mother has repeated a few times something my grandmother said: “It’s really shocking that first children come out alive on the other end.” Sometimes I feel like the only things ensuring Piper’s safety are her own tenacity and the advice of others.

Recently Piper started to be ok with hanging out in her bouncy chair or swing. Check out the photo to the left to see how hypnotized by the lights, monkey and parrot she is (either that or she's totally mortified about what she's wearing). I asked my friends how long it’s ok to leave her in there and not be considered a bad mom. My panel of moms responded unanimously: Forever. Or until she cries. Whichever comes first. My friend Eileen even suggested that Piper’s time could be maximized in the swing by avoiding all eye contact with her while she was in there.

The very first night that we brought Piper home from the hospital Ryan and I were in a panic. Piper had never cried much in the hospital but began wailing at home without a nurse in sight. We figured the problem had to be that she was constipated – she hadn’t pooped in 48 hours. I called our pediatrician hotline to get some expert advice and it was suggested that we attempt anal stimulation on Piper to get things moving. “Should we rock, scissors, paper for this one?” Ryan asked. 

Motherhood has truly been a journey of learning. For example, now that I know Piper’s different cries and patterns better,  it seems more likely that the problem that dark, late night in October was probably that she was hungry.

But, we also now know that Piper really doesn’t mind all that much a well-placed Q-Tip.

Letter to Piper: It’s More Like a Shrub Than a Tree, An Introduction to Your Family

Dear Piper,

 

You are going to get to know all the characters in your family in due time, but just to ease you into it, I thought I’d give you a heads up on a few things:

Your east coast family is big on eating. The Massachusetts side likes a big turkey dinner with multiple tables strewn throughout the house. Everyone is welcome. For example, your great Aunt Stephanie would occasionally bring mentally disabled patients from the hospital she worked in. Your great Uncle Patrick would bring a wolf or two he had raised. They are the Irish side and your east coast Grandpa has 8 brothers and sisters, so it’s a diverse crowd. One thing they all agree on though is that any ailment, whether it’s a burn, a cold, a headache, will be improved by a dip in the ocean. No matter how cold it is. Also they believe it is socially acceptable to wear your bathing suit underneath your clothes at all times. Just in case a good beach day catches you by surprise. Your Massachusetts great grandmother used to take me roller skating which was awesome.

The New York branch of your family tree where your east coast Grandma grew up favors Italian and Czechoslovakian food. So lasagna, pigs in the blanket and perogies are the specialties. They like music, science, bowling and playing cards and always seem to be arguing even when they are just having a conversation. Your NY great Grandmother loves slot machines. Before I was old enough to get into horse races legally, she would take me anyway and place bets for me. And it was awesome. 

So, you can always count on a warm meal if you show up at any of these places. And in fact even if you don’t want to eat, you will have to, because they get really angry if you don’t.
You will always have a place to sleep if you show up to visit family as well. But it just might not be comfortable. For example, here are a few choice places I have slept while visiting with family: In a loft space in Cape Cod with lined with twin beds filled with cousins and a snoring grandmother; in a kitchen on a chaise lounge while on vacation on the Jersey Shore with my NY grandparents; and in a dark, damp basement next to a ping pong table.

Holidays may not be like the ones that your friends have, but they will be entertaining. My favorite Thanksgiving was spent with your Dad’s family. We drove up to your Dad’s cousin Alyra’s place way up in Ukiah, California. Your Dad’s Jeep was loaded down with your Dad, me, your Uncle Oliver, your Grandfather Ron, your grandfather’s two dogs Opal and Molly; and an assortment of unnecessary equipment, such as a shovel, that your grandfather packed because of his tendency to be what he calls “prepar-a-noid.” At that time Alyra lived in a single-roomed yurt with no electricity or indoor bathroom. And animal lovers that they all are, everyone brought their pets. All and all, there were about 10 people, 2 dogs, 1 kitten, a chicken and a cockatiel in this one-roomed yurt. And some fruit flies, but no one brought them, they were just there for the compost. After dinner everyone except for your Dad and me busted out musical instruments and began to play. I just sat and observed and drank wine until I lost a contact lens. That was the low point though. The high point was the next day when we all gathered around, shooed the chicken off the table and had pie for breakfast.

As a side note, one of your Uncle Caleb’s first words when he was a baby was “arborvitae,” so watch out for Grandpa’s interest in teaching you the Latin names of plants. He has his own agenda.

Letter to Piper: From Ted Kennedy to Man Feet, a Story of Your Arrival

 

Dear Piper,

Your arrival is uniquely yours and perfect for the warrior that you are. I’m almost positive you don’t know who Ted Kennedy was, but I spent the week of his memorial service shacked up at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco 27-28 weeks pregnant with you. Not nearly pregnant enough the doctors’ faces read while they told me everything would be “just fine”. I was hopped up on all sorts of medicine –Magnesium, Morphine and some other stuff -- trying to keep you inside while the contractions kept coming. And coming. While I was attached to monitors that registered your heart rate and mine, your father slept next to me on a rickety old metal cot with wires poking up at him. Takeout food boxes and slowly wilting flowers littered the room. I watched CNN and listened to at a funny story told at Ted’s memorial. Ted aggressively persuaded a friend of his with no sailing experience to assist him in manning a sailboat into an intense, fierce storm off Martha’s Vineyard after eating a bellyful of salmon sandwiches. The clear metaphor for the storm happening to the two of us on dry land with a bellyful of only a little chicken soup broth escaped me at that moment and I laughed.

The doctors wanted me to try to keep you in for another 10 weeks laid up in the hospital. But together we didn’t do so hot with the whole bed rest scenario. I couldn’t focus enough to read books or really send emails. And you didn’t really seem all that comfortable either. Your uncle Caleb came by frequently. So did your west coast grandmother, Stephanie. She brought me cut up organic peaches that were delicious. I couldn’t really hold up my end of conversations, so many times I gave up and just fell asleep while they worried near us. At night when the visitors left and the drugs kept me awake but mentally fuzzy, all I could do was watch CNN, the same stories over and over and over again all night long.

Your east coast grandparents arrived in the middle of all that first week to keep me company in the hospital. On Tuesday, it became increasingly clear that you were going to arrive that that day, September 1, 2009. The contractions wouldn’t stop and were intensifying, even though Dr. Katz convinced me I just had to go to the bathroom, that I wasn’t in labor at all. Whatever. “Get me OUT of here!”” you seemed to say.

That afternoon your grandmother called your Dad on the phone and said: “Melissa is having the baby!” Long pause. “Now?” No pause. “ Yes!”

And your Dad tore out of John’s Jaguar Service leaving the guts of a classic car strewn about his work space, hopped on his motorcycle and donned his silver helmet. He rushed from the Mission District to Laurel Village to put on his hospital scrubs and join your grandma in the delivery room. Grandma held one of my legs. Your Dad stood behind me looking extremely pale and coached her on how to best hold my leg out for a speedy delivery. I saw her discretely roll her eyes. And then you arrived. 2:37pm PT at 2 pounds 7.5 ounces. Screaming!

The neonatal ICU staff whisked you away to give you oxygen and check everything since you were not really supposed to be outside of me for a long time.  The news was cautiously optimistic. You were doing very well for a baby of your gestational age. “A rock star baby” the neonatologist said. But you would need to spend a couple months in the hospital growing.

It was awhile before I could see you. Hours I think? And when I saw you, you were so tiny and attached to all sorts of wires. You were so small in fact that I wanted to bring you home and photograph you next to regular household items for scale. (“Yep, she’s smaller than a ketchup bottle!”) The nurses said you were “feisty” which I now realize is code for “excessively squirmy and vocal.” And you were soooo thin. As your grandmother and I peered together into your glowing incubator, she said: “Well, she’s not going to have cellulite problems now, will she?” However, I was quietly concerned that your feet seemed so very out of proportion with your teensy little body. “Man feet,” I thought. And I blamed your father. 

We’ve had many days of good news since then. You were discharged on October 24 with a clean bill of health. You’ve since learned how to smile and coo. And you’ve totally grown up around your feet so they no longer look like “man feet” and they look just perfect.

Messages from the Other Side

My best two girl friends – Jennifer and Christine -- recently took me out for an early dinner while my husband Ryan stayed home and watched Baby Piper.

Christine, a cosmopolitan mom of two beautiful girls had freshly coiffed hair and tons of parenting wisdom. As an aside, Christine and I were roommates in the mid-90’s in San Francisco when we were so poor that in lieu of a dresser, Christine kept her clean underwear in a paper bag. “It does get easier. I swear!” She said waving a glass of champagne. She was talking about parenting. Not underwear.

Jennifer is currently going through a divorce with more style than anyone I have ever seen (hello, Jimmy Choos!). Incidentally Jen and I worked together at a PR agency, during that same timeframe when Christine kept her undies in a bag, where we were thrown into situations that we had little experience to handle and one time, via an unfortunate press release typo, we almost managed to delay a start-up’s IPO. But I digress.

This particular night, Jen talked about her plans to hit some bars on Haight Street post-dinner. I demanded that Jen send me text message updates from the bars while I went back home to care for the baby. I thought of it as sort of receiving messages from my former life. She obliged and sent me notes such as:

“There is a man here wearing a fur coat!” from gay bar Trax.

“Deluxe has much better looking men. And fresh squeezed juice!” from 50’s style hipster bar, Club Deluxe.

 I wanted to return the favor to let her know what she was missing. My update text to her:

 “Ryan is watching the Simpsons. And clipping his toenails!”

Colic Chronicles

I wish there was some sort of sage burning ceremony to rid us of the spirit-crushing, crazy-making colic. Piper was a peaceful, calm baby up until around the time of her due date (she was born 12 weeks early). And that’s when she decided to go completely bananas. Sometimes for more than four hours per day. And I’m talking about loud screaming as if to say: "I'm in pain and I hate you, you @ssholes!!"

After confirming there was no real medical explanation for this betrayal, I became convinced it was just our inexperience. We simply did not know how to soothe a baby, that’s the problem! But my mother, a baby expert, spent a week with us around the holidays, sighed and said: “you are really just going to have to suck it up and deal with this. It will pass. Eventually.”

So here is the list of things we’ve tried:

• Swaddling – hahaha
• Gripe water – didn’t seem to contribute to attitude adjustment, but did possibly make Piper’s gas smell like ginger
• ColicCalm – did nothing, but was good for a laugh because it’s inky black. You shoot into your baby’s mouth and then it oozes out. If you didn’t already think your baby was sort of behaving satanic, this would complete the picture for you
• Hyland’s Colic Tablets - these do sort of seem to work now and again, but she doesn’t like when they are administered and has become quite crafty. Most recently I thought I was in the clear with the dose and then after the smoke cleared, I found one on her cheek and the other on her lapel. Also they don’t dissolve quickly and tend to stick to her gums where they look like very white miniature teeth. One night Ryan said: “Look! She’s a jack-o-lantern!”
• Loud shushing - ineffective and made me dizzy after awhile
• Swinging - hated it!
• Car rides - loses her mind at stop signs and red lights. My friend Jennifer, also experienced with babies, once rode in the back of my Honda Civic with Piper and said in wonderment: “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
• Lullabies - whatever
• A $350 homeopath - ya, we got desperate
• Drastic diet changes on my part – I want an ice cream sandwich right now, soooo bad. Or just ONE SLICE of Little Star Pizza!
• Chiropractor - this maybe works sometimes a bit too, although I have to take her there in her car seat – see “car rides” above – which seems to cancel out benefits
• Cranial-sacral therapy – Our therapist surmised that because Piper’s early entry into the world was traumatic, we needed to go through a “rebirth.” So, we had a do-over -- only with us fully clothed of course and unfortunately, no meds -- complete with photos. Inexplicably I look as horrendous and puffy as I did the first time I gave birth to Piper. 
  

The single thing that has been the most effective is that we throw Piper over our shoulders – wayyyy over there with her arms and head dangling -- march around the house bouncing and chant a little something I made up (dum-da-da-da-da-da-da-dadum-dummm-dahhh) while vigorously tapping her lower back. We have spent countless nights doing this for hours. And if you get the chant wrong it totally doesn’t work. For example Ryan one day tried to change it to "Rythym of the Night”. You, know, just for some variety. It’s really no wonder that she thinks we are @ssholes.