For some, the fighting can get more intense. "The worst fights of our marital history happened when my daughter had colic," says Chris. "After nine hours of hearing her cry, he'd come home from work, and I'd be like, 'Take this thing!' We are not yellers, but when our daughter was going through colic, we were screaming at each other at the top of our lungs. After one fight, I asked my husband honestly, would you rather work a thirty-hour shift at your job or stay home with this screaming baby? He thought about it carefully and said he'd rather work the shift."
"My husband would come home from work and look at me like, 'Why is it still crying? Do something!'," says Anne Estes, a Brooklyn mom who's on her second round of colic. "Usually when we face problems, we throw money at it, outsource it, or negotiate it somehow. You can't intellectually, physically or economically control a helpless, screaming baby. Colic was the first time my husband and I looked at each other desperate to do something, with no idea of what could be done."
In partnerships with egalitarian childcare responsibilities, colic can spur a competition to see who's the better parent. It goes something like this:
"Don't lay her down yet, she'll throw up."
'I'm telling you she's fine!"
Everyone says colic eventually subsides. But what are desperate parents supposed to do to in the meantime?
"No she's not — you're just tired."
"Trust me! She's fine!"
"You never frigging listen!"
Kid throws up; litany of told-you-so ensues.
Of course, this scenario plays out to some extent in all households, but when you're home with a kid who is screaming all day and your partner comes home, the issues of resentment and competition have an added punch. And kids with colic have far more gastric issues than kids who don't, which makes things that much harder. To survive colic, parents have to muster up some mutual respect. "Being supportive of each other is the most important thing," says Lester. "This situation is an emergency! It's not normal and people have to get into that mode of being."
On the bright side, Karp has seen marriages actually improve because they've weathered colic. "It becomes a bonding experience, because it's a tribulation that couples have to learn how to work as a team to make it through," says Karp.
Verhoff and her husband eventually found a way to communicate under the circumstances. "We'd be up juggling our screaming twins in the middle of the night, and would deliriously crack up laughing at the audacity of it all."
Everyone says colic eventually subsides. But what are desperate parents supposed to do to in the meantime?
Harvey Karp has built a very successful business with his "Happiest Baby on the Block" methodology, a list of tips to help stop crying that many parents swear by. Some of these methods, like swaddling and white noise, have indeed been effective stopgaps for both my son and my daughter.
"The problem with gadgets, like vibrators and noise machines, is that they work for some babies, but not for all babies," says Lester. "And when they don't work, it sets parents up for failure. Stimulation like this only works when the stimulation is on, like the mother who drives her kid around at four in the morning, only to turn the car off and hear the kid scream again. It doesn't teach the baby anything. They need to learn behavioral regulation and self control."
