Does colic exist? I don’t know, but the crying certainly does

Having experienced my second baby’s crying, I’m pretty sure my first born had colic. When he was about three weeks old, he would cry for hours, especially in the early evening and after feeds in the night. Whereas with our first baby, we were bouncing on the exercise ball, using the hairdryer and other white noise, singing, shushing, swaying, swaddling and whatever else we could come up with to get any respite and sleep, our second baby gets very slightly grumbly. Sometimes. I know, they’re all different, but I also wonder if it’s just us parents who are different second-time round?

 

I read an interesting article about how colic was just the baby saying “get out of my face!” And what a ‘colicky’ baby needs is to be held close by their mother, in a dark, quiet room, and not to be passed between friendly visitor after friendly visitor. I think there’s some truth in that in terms of second babies being more chilled, but I’m also pretty sure we tried the ‘peace and quiet’ approach to no avail.

 

If you’re in the midst of colic or just want to learn more, there’s a free workshop on next week in Battersea, which you might want to check out:

 

“Infacol have teamed up with expert midwife Nikki Khan to bring mums some help and advice on colic. The workshops will explain what colic is, how to treat and prevent it, the benefits of baby massage and the chance to ask Nikki any colic related questions on a one-to-one basis. Each mum who attends will receive a goody bag (approx worth is £40), full of products for mum and baby such as baby massage oil, skincare products and an Annabell Karmel cookery book. The workshop is free of charge and will be held on Tuesday 29th October, from 10am – 2pm. The workshop will take place at the Katherine Low Settlement, 108 Battersea High Street, London, SW11 3HP.  Refreshments and a light lunch will be provided.”

 

Places are limited and it’s first-come-first-served, so to reserve a space email natasha@orbitalmediapr.com

 

Keep calm and call the midwife!

My midwife was amazing, as were her colleagues, and today I finally managed to give them the thank you present I’d made for them. And by amazing, I mean she kept calm when we had flat batteries in the Tens machine; she didn’t throttle my husband when the birth pool ‘liner’ he’d bought (without any micro-management from me) turned out to be a cover to keep the water warm (I won’t be making that mistake again); or when, for the second home birth in a row, he didn’t check the hose fitted our taps. Like I said, won’t be making that mistake again 🙂 . But really because she has that special midwife superpower of making you feel like you’ve known her forever, feel completely reassured by whatever she tells you, and has magic massage hands. And you get no hint that you’re her third night-time birth in a row and she could really use some kip (and a salary that better reflects all this superhuman-ness).

I know the ‘Keep calm’ theme has been done to death, but I was struggling to think up a present that was a bit different, and came up with the idea for doing a custom-made poster*. And the ‘keep calm’ message seemed pretty apt!

Any gift I thought of seemed so insignificant in comparison to what they’d just helped me with. What did you do nice for your midwife to say thanks? We’d love to hear.

*I used Keepcalm-o-matic to make the image and Photobox to print it.