Here is one.
On Amos's two-month-old birthday, we took him to the doctor for his first round of shots (not counting the poke he got in the hospital when he was a few hours old). Unfortunately for babies, many of their first month birthdays are celebrated by shots. It's a good thing they don't know about Dairy Queen ice cream cake or they would feel very slighted.
Amos did really well at the doctor and even stopped crying pretty quickly after his shots. By the time we left the doctor's office, he was back to his normal content self.
That evening, we turned on The Biggest Loser. I began nursing Amos, and suddenly, in the midst of Alison's narration of some competition, Amos started screaming. He was definitely in pain. We discovered that his right leg was red and swollen where he had his shot. Every time I laid him down to nurse him, I laid him right on that painful swollen thigh. He did not like that!
We quickly righted him, but realized there was no way to hold him that did not apply some sort of pressure to his leg. Poor guy! His nice, trustworthy parents were suddenly torturing him. He cried and cried. We scrambled to find the instructions from the doctor to see what we should do. We couldn't find anything about nonstop screaming. Finally, we decided that Mike should go to the drugstore to get some children's Tylenol, and I would try my best to soothe Amos.
After hearing his poor pitiful cries for what felt like hours, I finally found a way to hold him that kept the leg elevated but did not apply any pressure. I did not move from that position. I felt my arms starting to cramp, but I didn't dare move until Mike got back with the Tylenol.
As I stood there holding a now quiet baby, I realized that Alison was still talking on the tv. How long had that been on? I looked at the clock and saw the time: 7:15pm. The show started at 7:00pm. Amos had been screaming his head off for all of 10 minutes. At that moment, I had a profound appreciation for parents of colicky babies who cry constantly. How do they survive?
Soon after, Mike arrived home with the Tylenol. We administered the infant dose to Amos, and not too long after he went to sleep. What a relief!
The next day I found on the paper that we were to call the doctor if the baby cried for three hours straight. Three hours!
Amos woke up just fine the next morning, and our calm, content baby had returned. We had survived our first crisis!
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4 comments:
My baby has colic. I probably would have lost my mind except I could give him to my mom before I threw him out the window. And then I found "The Happiest Baby on the Block" and can now calm any fussy baby.
After having a baby who cries for no reason (or at least no reason that makes sense to me), it's weird to have times when there is actually something wrong. Last night I couldn't get Troy to stop crying until I realized his jammies were just too thick and he was hot.
All that to say, I feel your pain. There's nothing more distressing than a screaming baby!
Thank God for Harvey Karp. :-) I am very impressed by your stick-to-it-iveness. Poor little Troy. I'm sorry that he cried so much. Like I said, I can't imagine!
I feel like I've heard this story before. Did you tell me this in an email or something? Did this happen a while ago, or am I just having some weird sort of deja vu?
Yes. I definitely told you this story before. I've told lots of people, but I wanted to write it down for my own sake (to remember how crazy it was having no clue how to deal with a crying baby) and to practice telling a story.
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