Dummy

Sucksucksucksucksucksucksuck.

That is the sound of my son.

Last week I wrote about The Creature’s decision to enter himself in the World Screaming Championships (actually, it was about colic, you can find it here).

Empathetic comments were left on the post, and I was pleased to read them. A problem shared may not be a problem halved, but it certainly makes a difference to know that it isn’t just your own child who spends all his waking hours doing an impression of a banshee. 

The final comment on that post was from Mum of One, and it was the one which I was probably most glad to read.

Here’s why: Mum of One mentioned the D word. Dummy. Not only mentioned it, but mentioned USING one to soothe her own teeny person.

By the time I read those comments we had already reached that mindset of “will try anything to make this stop”.

While I had been considering seeking out venture capital to start up Cyberdyne Systems, in order to get to work on development of a retrofit volume control for babies, Mrs L had taken the more pragmatic approach of buying a couple of dummies and trying them out. She’s the brains of this operation, of that I have no doubt.

The dummy works. The Creature is now far more likely to be quiet for a bit, to drop off to sleep, to give us some much needed respite from his vocal stylings. 

The Dummy. Or, Peacemaker.

Hooray.  Or so you’d think.

No. We feel awful about using it.

I’m aware that guilt is becoming enough of a theme on this blog that I should probably make it into a separate category, but WOW, parenting is a daily guiltfest. With a guilt party running alongside it, in case you get bored of all the guilt and need some more guilt.

Neither of us know why we feel guilty. We haven’t gone down the route of researching every piece of equipment we subject our boy to. We don’t have medical journals confirming or denying the side effects of dummy use.

We DO have intact eardrums though, which is nice. Meanwhile, Cam doesn’t seem to mind, and he hasn’t been any worse at breastfeeding since using the gobstopper (though that’s not hard, he’s SHITE at that).

So why the niggling feeling that we shouldn’t be doing it? I must confess, the one thing that I know is bothering me is the possibility it could affect his teeth. As the (resentful) owner of a truly stereotypical British smile I would love Cam to have lovely straight teeth. I don’t want Mrs L to have to endure endless days of inconsolable screams to, maybe, improve his chances of perfect pearly whites though.

We’re making as little use of the dummy as we can, it’s only a last resort, but we are going to keep using it for now. 

Is it just us and Mum of One who’ve pacified our babies like this? Hit me up in the comments to either make me feel better about our decision, or to pour scorn upon my parenting skills.

Colic

Colic is a thing. A thing which no-one really knows what it is. Like electricity. No, wait, clever people probably know what that is. Ok, dark matter. Clever people can’t find that, and they’re clever.

No-one really knows what colic is, not even Wikipedia, which has the following to say on the matter:

“Colic, right, is, erm, yeah……when your baby cries. For ages. Because it’s got colic. And stuff.”

Wikipedia didn’t really say that.  I did. But it’s paraphrased. I may even go and edit the article in a minute.

The world is so unsure about colic that it can’t even decide whether a baby HAS colic, IS colic, GETS colic or what.

But, unlike dark matter (have they tried looking under the fridge I wonder? I bet that’s where it is) I can tell you EXACTLY where to find colic. You can find colic in my house. My baby is OOZING colic. He’s like a COLIC MINE. I’m going to set up a stall at our local farmer’s market (natch) in an attempt to offload some of the abundance of colic there is in my life right now.

Colic is a bitch.  A bastard of the highest order. Our baby has been/had/is/got colic for about a week so far. That’s nothing. The people who don’t know what colic is certainly do have some thoughts on how long it can stick around: up to a YEAR.

There’s also plenty out there on the side effects of colic: emotional stress, feelings of inadequacy in parents, low self esteem, resentment, marital discord, postpartum depression. There are even studies attributing car accidents to colic. I’m sure I heard that Hitler had colic, and we all know how well that turned out.

See those stars? They're colic. Probably.

To be serious for just a moment, colic has the potential to be genuinely devastating. If your baby has/is/gets/oozes colic I would encourage you to seek out any and all support available to you. Also remember this: it is not your fault.

It is not because you are doing something wrong as a parent.

It is not because of something you did during the pregnancy.

It is not just your baby. It is not unusual.

It will pass, it will improve, you will have that shiny beautiful tiny person back.

(In case it’s not obvious to anyone, I am telling myself these things as much as I’m telling anyone else who reads this)

Once again, I’m left feeling guilty for not being able to do anything to help Mrs L through the long, scream-filled days she is currently dealing with, while I go to work and feel like someone’s secretly lobotomised me during the night.

He tends to sleep in the night (so far, fingers crossed, sacrifices made to the God of colic) and save his unbridled fury for Mrs L to deal with during the day. So I get just a small portion of the colic. A snippet. A modicum of colic.

Mrs L gets the full fat version. The unlimited use package. I feel so bad as I leave the house, it just doesn’t seem fair.

So now it’s over to you. Your suggestions in my comment area: what is colic? What are your experiences of colic? What is the best animal to sacrifice or witchcraft to perform to exorcise our home of this elusive yet utterly pervasive…thing?

Colic: it can fuck ever so off.