Helpful ideas for colic, reflux, and inconsolable crying (baby's, not yours)

My cousin Kristin and her hubby Scott had their first baby, Kenzie Grace! She's a gorgeous baby with the most amazing personality trait for a newborn......she smiles! A LOT! In many of her hospital photos, and even more of the pictures they've taken since, she has an actual, recognizable smile. No one would mistake it for gas. Unfortunately, she's retired the smile recently and taken up the habit of screaming inconsolably every day and making her mommy unhappy. Today I got a "HELP! What do I do?!" text from Kristin and since she didn't answer her phone when I called back to answer her question, I texted her back that I would email her some things I'd found to be useful when my big kids were babies. Some of these worked for colic, some for reflux, some for any kind of crying. Nothing works every time, and sometimes nothing works at all. None of this advice is meant to replace good medical care. Whenever a baby's screaming or inconsolable crying is new, get them seen by a doctor right away. And no matter what you do, NEVER SHAKE A BABY.  If you feel yourself losing control, put baby down in a clean, safe place like their crib, and call a friend, family member, or 911.

Tips for Colic/Reflux/Hysterical Crying

If you have Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance, they have a 24/7 nurse hotline. You can call them any time and ask any question on any topic as many times as you want, whenever you want. I miss them. They were invaluable when my kids were babies. There are a few more similar services online, but I don't know what the terms and conditions are.

Swaddling is really helpful for colic. Tight as possible, no arm movement. Side/stomach positioning in your arms (don't EVER put baby down like that in her crib, though). Shushing noises, swinging baby gently, and giving her a pacifier to suck on are also recommended.

If it's reflux and not colic, then holding baby straight up instead of lying her down in your arms or crib is essential. Reflux is like adult heartburn, it is acidic and painful. Upright positioning will let gravity help keep the acid down in tummy where the environment is more suitable for acidity. Trying to put her down for sleep in a more uprightish position in a car-seat is great, since she can be closer to you in your room and she is not lying down flat.

Ocean sounds helped Aidan a LOT. Play it kinda loud. This is perfect. Ocean Sound YouTube Video Some baby soothing crib toys have similar sounds as well, check at Amazon.com. Rain or running water sounds are good too.

Mike and Abigail preferred singing or rythmic talking. Just a constant low dialogue, like reading my email or their books out loud or singing kid songs. Some of those crib toys have both water sounds and music.

Lay her on her back on your lap with her head at your knees and "bicycle" her feet. This will help her get rid of trapped gas in her lower digestive system. Gas in her upper tract can be helped along by sitting her up on your lap, supporting her head/neck/chest in one hand and rubbing her back with the other. At least two of my kids burped better with an upright pat/rub combo than regular baby burping. Some people have reported success with Mylicon drops, which is a baby medicine drop for anti-gas. It never helped my own kids, unfortunately.

Take her in the bath with you. Warm but not hot, lots of bubbles. Just make sure she's wrapped well and not startled by a wave of cold air afterward or it will backfire.

Baby massage techniques are awesome. http://www.babycenter.com/slideshow-baby-massage This is a really helpful slideshow. You will probably end up using these ideas even when she's not crying.

This is something to think about any time a baby is crying and you don't know why. Check for a random single hair wrapped around a finger or toe (or in diaper, if baby is a boy).  This odd phenomenon happens more often than you would believe and is painful enough to cause inconsolable crying.

Last but CERTAINLY NOT LEAST: Remember to follow the "Airline Philosophy of Parenting": Always put your own oxygen mask on first. Follow good basic nutrition, exercise and sleep rules as much as possible in general, and get some personal time. But MOST especially when baby is colicky, sick or not sleeping well, it is important to take care of yourself. Take breaks. If she's crying non-stop, make sure she's safe, then PUT HER DOWN. Get a moment to get yourself together, use the restroom, eat, get hydrated, and meditate or pray, and do this at least once every couple of hours. Don't let her make you crazy; thats when we hurt ourselves or our babies without ever meaning to.  Call a neighbor, friend or relative to take a "shift" with the baby if it has gone on for a long time or multiple days. Pay a babysitter and go out with daddy or gal pals, or take baby out on a walk or for a drive or to a park.

Sam Digest, Part 2

I had so much fun writing about the exploits of Sam, that I thought I'd put in a few I forgot or add anecdotes from this week.

Sam likes to watch "BDDs" and "moomies".   (DVDs and movies.) Once after an ad, he got excited about BDD and Boo Ray!

Up til now, Sam has only said "love you" to Aidan, and only twice. I've never heard him say it (and he hasn't seemed to get the sign) to anyone else. However, as we were dropping off Jed at work this week Sam told him, "Bye, Daddy! Mwah. (blown kiss) Love you!" :D

Sam saw a Polar Springs delivery truck with the whole side open in a parking lot the other day. He showed me the "geen truck" and asked me very curiously, "Mama, truck doing?" I told him it was a water bottle truck and it was making deliveries to stores. He looked at it wistfully and said "I wanna water bobble." 

I had to take Sam with me to my psychiatrist appointment. As we were in the waiting room, Sam brought me every bottle of hand sanitizer he could find and put it next to me on a table. The first one he brought me, he pumped into his hand and used properly. The next one, he said "TWO!" excitedly and banged them together. Another one was "Fee!" and the next one "Fo!". I thought he only knew the word two, I didn't realize he could count to four!

Now, Dr. S is a nice man who is rather stuffy and formal. He is also very calm and collected, even when someone he is working with is hysterical. But when Sam entered his office, he seemed rather nervous. The longer Sam was in there exploring, the more he began to sweat and be distracted. Sam must have touched everything, left a fingerprint or crumb on each reachable surface or item and commented, coherently and incoherently, on everything he could see. By the time my 15 minute appointment was over, Dr. S was almost shaking. I thought I was going to have to call the paramedics for the doctor! I loved the relief and surprise on Dr. S's face when Sam said, "See ya, Dock Tor" on the way out of the office. I guess some people were made to handle mental patients and some to handle toddlers.

Sam's been cranky at bedtime lately because we've been putting him down too late. One night when I was putting him in his pajamas, I was trying to get him to point to his body parts, but he didn't want to cooperate.
Mommy: Touch your knees, Sam.
Sam: No knees.
Mommy: Where's your elbows?
Sam: no my elbows!
Mommy: Do you have a head?
Sam: NO!!! NO HEAD!
 Since he was being so obstinate, but repeating everything I said, I decided to up the ante a little for my own entertainment.
Mommy: I'm going to tickle your patellas!
Sam: No my pa-tellas!
Mommy: Where's your clavicle?
Sam: NO CLAV-A-CLE.
Mommy: I'm going to grab your phalanges!
Sam: NO MY LAN-GEES!!
Mommy: I'm going to get your gluteus!
Sam: I NO WAN MY GLEE US!!
LOL! I couldn't stop cracking up. I had him so mad and all worked up that I felt kind of bad, but how often do you hear a baby try those words? And then tell you he doesn't want his gluteus? Rofl!

We take Jed to work every weekday morning, and Sam loves to talk about the cars he sees and babble things we don't understand and ask for movies and sing. One morning, he was just staring out the window very quietly and we assumed he was checking out cars. We asked him, "Sam, what cars do you see? Can you tell us about the cars?" He was quiet a moment longer and then he turned forward and said very clearly, "Mama, bubbles are balls."  WOW! Here we thought he was just looking at what he could see, and instead he was connecting inside his mind the relationship in shape between two very different, yet similar, objects; neither of which were in his line of sight nor current possession. He just blows us away.

Sam reminds us a lot of Michael, who at three told us that "zero was the middlest number, there must be things less than zero". At the same age Mike could take a screenshot of a computer game, open it in Paint, draw on it, and set it as his desktop background without our help and before we knew he could read. No wonder Mike told us "I'm NOT THREE ANYMORE!!" and when we asked "Well then, how old are you?" he said "Thixth!" Mentally, he probably was six.

The Sam Digest.

Sam has long been a talker, but now that he's really stringing words and ideas together his little personality is emerging. He is really funny and smart! I thought I'd share some of our conversations, some of his one-liners, and the fun little anecdotes I have about Sam from the last couple of months.

We pass McDonald's and Sam yells, "Fen Fies! More, fen fies?" (This was complete with sign language for both more and french fries).

Mommy: Sam, are you stinky?
Sam: No.
Mommy: I think you pooped.
Sam: I don't poop.

I put Sam in a shopping cart at Market Basket and roll him in the door. As soon as I pull out my shopping list, he shouts, "Hot gogs! Nonuts! Mannas! Mater nacks!" (Hot dogs, donuts, bananas, and Mater fruit snacks). I guess he thought my list was incomplete!

Our family is close friends with the Harmon family in our ward. Their oldest daughter Jessica is now 12, and she's Sam's favorite person outside the family. If we see a bus, "See-a-ca" must be on it. If we are going to church, Sam will willingly go because he knows "See-a-ca" will be there. If he won't eat something, sometimes he will try it if I tell him Jessica likes it.  The best was, I was trying to get him to say Julia's name. "Sam, say Sis-ter Har-mon". He grinned and said "Yay, See-a-ca's Mama!"

Sam loves Mater fruit snacks. He also likes Buzz and Woody fruit snacks and will eat "Peen-cess" fruit snacks ("Princess" to Sam is anything pink, purple or feminine). Apparently, Sam believes there are fruit snacks for anything he is a fan of, because the other day at the store he asked me for "See-a-ca" fruit snacks and was quite disappointed that they didn't have any.

Sam uses the same phrase for lunch and breakfast Aidan did at this age. "Mama, me eat?" I love it, it's so cute.  But the other night, he patted my leg while I was on the computer and asked "Mama, make nummy dinner?" How could I resist?

Sam dislikes having a dirty or wet face or hands. While my other children and kids of my friends generally had a wide drool spot from their mouth to their bellybuttons from age 10 months to 3, Sam rarely has any drool on his clothes. Not because he doesn't salivate at the same rate as other kids, because he does. But instead of letting it go, he sucks it up almost every time. Weirdest baby ever.

Another symptom of his dislike for dirty hands, Sam likes very few finger foods. He only wants to eat food with a fork and a spoon on a proper plate unless it is completely dry like cheerios or fruit snacks. He calls spoon and fork "A poon and poke-it".

If you tell Sam there is meat in a meal he'll get excited and say "Yay meat!"

One thing you should know about Sam, he is obsessed with Buzz and Woody from Toy Story and Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater from Cars. (He can say all of their names except Lightning McQueen, who is Bye-nee-neen!!!! instead.) Mater's catchphrase is "Dadgum!", Buzz says "To infinity, and beyond!" or "Buzz Lightyear to the rescue!" and Woody says "There's a snake in my boot!" and "Somebody poisoned the waterhole!" Sam goes around saying these things in his own baby way. "Badgum!" is my favorite, but he also says, "Too abby ah!" and "Buzz to the reck-you!" or "Nake in boot!" and "Waterhole!" all of which are funny and most especially when you hear them out of context or without background.

So Sam and I are wheeling around the produce section getting "bapes" and "cats" (grapes and carrots) and a kindly grandmotherly type comes over to make goo-goo eyes at him. "Look at his angelic blonde curls and his beautiful blue eyes!" she exclaimed. "Sam, say hi to the nice lady," I said dutifully. She looks hoepfully at him, no doubt expecting him to coo softly or goo-goo-ga-ga or even say hi or wave shyly. Instead, he rears back and says "Well badgum!" LOL! The lady goes, "Did he just say dadgum?!" "Yeah," I reply sheepishly. "Sorry." She walked off giggling. At least she wasn't offended. And it made me glad we don't curse or let Sam watch movies with curse words in them. Heh.

Sam loves to dance and he usually enjoys it when we join him in these activities. He'll dance in the grocery cart when a bouncy song comes on  and say "Dance, dance" to everyone else. So the other day we were in a Michael's store when a bouncy song came on after a slow song, and I got the dancing under way. Sam is sitting in the cart, looking at me with a very flat face. : |  I say "Dance, Sam!" and keep dancing and finally he shouts, "MAMA!!! You're done." Shocked, I stopped. Just to test him, I start it up again. "MAMA!!!" Sam says. "No."  Lol! Here I was thinking I'd be embarrassing to him at 19. But instead it starts at 19 months.

Same day, Abby is singing in the car, and Sam grabs her arm and says "Abby!! SHH!" complete with finger on lips. Lol!

At Michael's spelling bee, the announcer was telling us what the funds from the ticket sales would be used for. He mentioned the word "money" and Sam started shouting "MONEY! MONEY! YAY! MONEY!" The crowd got a good laugh.

We used to hold Sam in our arms and "sneak" up on people in a very obvious way. We'd loudly say "Sneak, sneak, sneak!" and when we got to them, say "AHHH!" He loves this game and right around Christmas time, began to play it himself. You'd be sitting somewhere and hear "Neak, neak!" and then he'd pounce on you, which was really, really funny. Then, he got smarter. He stopped saying "neak" and actually started sneaking. And instead of saying "AHH!" and pouncing, he'd throw something at you or hit you when he got to you, and it wasn't funny anymore. So to get back to the funny game, I was having him use his stuffed animals to "neak" and he liked that a lot. But the other night, he was already in his crib when I was using Baa to "neak" Abby, and so when I was done, Baa "neaked" Sam. And Sam did what we always do! He pretended to be surprised!!! He looked away, acted nonchalant, and gave me sideways glances and looked away again. And when I said "AHH!", he screamed and then dissolved into laughter as if he'd really been startled, and told me, "Mama, you funny!" I had no idea he knew we were pretending the whole time.

The smartest thing I've ever seen Sam do happened in the kitchen and just blew me away. Sam was bouncing a rubber ball in the kitchen while I was making dinner. He was with me for five minutes, and then the ball sounds stopped and he left the room. He came back about two minutes later with a 3 foot slat from an old toddler bed in the boys closet. Sam laid down on the floor on his stomach in front of the fridge and began poking the slat under the fridge. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, "Mama, my ball?" His ball had gone under the fridge! Instead of crying, or getting me, he had decided to solve the problem himself. And instead of using a tool within his line of sight or something that wasn't an appropriate length or shape for the job, he remembered where he had seen something that should work, and went and got it, and came back and tried it. He solved the entire problem in his own mind with only the limitations of his motor skills holding him back. WOW!

Well, thanks for spending time with Sam and I. I just wanted to write all this down so I would remember later all the fun, silly, smart things he said and did at this age, and brag to you guys a little. Hope all is well with you.

A little thought on Tunnel Vision.

It's Christmas time, and that should mean joy and peace but it really means that I am freaking out. Jed is out of town, I have a party every day this weekend and one next weekend, the kids are still in school and have extra curricular activities, the car needs to be taken in for routine maintenance and the house needs to be clean before we leave. Which is soon, so I have to pack. And it is cold. SO COLD.

In the midst of all this, my baby Sam. Who is more toddler than baby and is scary smart and very active. (Translate, gets into everything). Sam is a sphere-loving fellow. Any sphere, anywhere, is a ball. Namely, a basketball. This is fine when most of the balls you see daily are actually sports balls, but enter the Christmas tree and the "basketballs" you hang on that, and well...trouble. Ours are all plastic, but other people have glass ones. He's broken two so far, so watch out if he's at your house. I'm not talking about accidentally dropping them with his clumsy baby hands. I'm talking about THROWING them with his Nolan Ryan pitching arm. I'm lining up college sports recruiters early next year.

So in an effort to get Sam to stop removing ornaments from our tree, we've done a couple things. Lamely saying "No!" and "Oh Sam, don't." Ignoring it. Gently showing him the whole ornament and how it's not really a ball, and making him put them back on the tree himself. Picking up baby and tree after the latter had fallen on the former and caused everyone to scream bloody murder. But today, today I had some inspiration. (I thought.) I would string the ornaments on a thread, and hang them garland style from the tree. That would be useful, right? If he pulled on one, he would find it attached to its mates and the tree and be foiled. My wicked little Darth Mommy brain didn't see this as "oh, it's like beading and I like to bead" or "oh, this will keep my precious little one safe from falling Christmas trees". No. I was viewing it as "HA! I WIN! I foiled you! I'm bigger and smarter! HA!". Because I'm like that.

And so I commenced my project with smugness. Sam was asleep, the boys were doing their homework, Abby was away at MADI. And I strung my ornaments on a thread. Green thread, so as to camouflage. But it was tedious work, and frustrating. It somehow became SO important that I get it done before Sam's nap was over. It somehow became so important that they be evenly spaced and perfectly alternating in color. And it was HARD! The balls were big and awkward. The thread is tiny and snappy and tangly and GAH! My hands were cold and clumsy. If I sat down on the floor, I cramped up. If I stood, I dropped everything repeatedly. I cowboy cursed because my kids were in the next room and I don't want to break my streak of not really cursing (going on 6 years now, if you only count out loud curses). "Fer cryin' out loud!" and "FREAK!" and I'm sure I was scaring my boys. I had to redo and redo the garlands because they kept sliding together or tangling up and being too short. I actually got to the point where I was having a weird kind of tunnel vision. All I could see was the ornaments and thread and the tree and I was getting dizzy.

Mike came in to do his piano practice and his pretty sounds jolted me out of my weird frenzy. I realized that I had made something small and unimportant, something that wasn't even tangential to the things I needed to do today, into the most important thing in my life and it was stupid.

I think it was an important lesson for me. Like people who get hung up on outside points of the gospel instead of clinging to the core doctrines of the Atonement, I tend to get caught up in things that aren't important and that I don't have the answers for. I need to stick with, spiritually and temporally, the things that really matter. My family, keeping order in my house, getting my kids where they need to go and what they need to know, and loving them. Being there for my friends. And not worrying about whether people like my artwork, or if I got an email, or if anyone ever reads my blog. Not getting caught up in whether I got people the best Christmas presents or if I was going to get anything, but instead working on giving the best of myself to those who need me.

Yes, things are busy and there are non-essential things, especially at this time of year, that are still important. But worrying about whether Sam is throwing plastic Christmas balls is not one of them.

Kid photos!

September and October

First Day of School!!

 

Yankee Doodle Homecoming

 

Sam's new pajamas, made by  Laurie Matthews.

Sam loves his bath!

Sam's first mural. He wasn't pleased to be caught.

Sam likes the new Ikea cabinets.

 

Sam loves his gymnastics class! He says "hop hop!" 

 

Aidan is our real gymnast! Check out these moves! 

Abigail enjoys getting dressed up for the Stake Daddy/Daughter dance! She's getting very grown up and lovely.

Funny Sam!

Sam loves to entertain us and make us laugh. This was his own invention, not something he copied from others! He is not only funny, but smart.

Sam Sings!

After dinner tonight, we sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" to Sam while he did the hand motions. When we asked him to sing, he did his own version of the song! What a riot! We love that smart little man.