Fussy Baby

Our baby Maelin is amazing: she is almost always in a good mood, she sleeps around 5-7 hours at a stretch at night and she only cries if something is wrong. However, yesterday was a bad day with her. From the moment she woke up, she was horrendously fussy…there was nothing we could do.

Our day looked like this:

7:00am Maelin wakes up and I feed her and try to get her to go back to sleep for a bit. (this is because starting at 3am, she was up EVERY hour and a half…I got about 3 hours of sleep). She’ll have none of it (continues to fuss and near-cry) so I take her to bed with me. She finally falls back to sleep around 8:30

10:00am We all wake up together. Maelin is fussing, so I feed her and then we get her dressed. She’s happy for about 20 minutes, then the fussing and near-crying begins again.

11:30am Kevin takes her so I can go to the bathroom. She’s still extremely fussy.

12:00 I feed her again because I can’t think of anything else that might calm her down. While she’s eating, Kevin leaves to get coffee and I get a phone call from his Aunt and Uncle asking if they can drop by for a minute. I look around at the cat barf on the floor, the burp rags everywhere, the fact that I am still in my pj’s with un-brushed teeth and say, “Sure.” Not sure what I was thinking. So I rip Maelin off of me (which makes her very happy…), and quickly get her dressed and put her in the crib so she can look at her mobile. She’s good there, so I clean up the cat barf, brush my teeth, throw on some clothes and try to hide the mess.

12:20 Kevin gets back right when Aunt and Uncle stop by. They ooohhh and aaahhh over the baby (who was cute for about 3 minutes and then starting fussing again) and they leave. (it was really nice to see them and they brought Maelin an adorable piggy bank...)

1:00pm Kevin and I look at each other and the reality of our life sinks in. No one is coming to help…we have to figure out what this tiny, screaming person might need to feel better. At one point, I put her in her crib screaming because we just can’t think of another thing to do and we both need a break. We let her cry in there for about 5 minutes while we just breathe. Then I start to feel horrible about letting my baby scream while I do nothing, so I go get her. After passing her back and forth between us, I put her in her crib and she sleeps for about 30 minutes. Kevin and I start a discussion about how to fix her schedule during the day so that she might be happier. We talk about how some days he doesn’t want to come home from work because she’s so fussy at night and how exhausted I am all of the time and how house-bound we both feel. Then we realize it’s about 3pm and neither of us has eaten yet.

3:00pm We feed baby and put her in the stroller with strict comments not to cry and if she does, she’s going to have to deal. We walk to our neighborhood wrap place and grab lunch. Maelin cries the second we get into the restaurant so we get our lunch to go.

4:00pm Put Maelin back in her crib and hope like hell she takes a nap.

6:00pm Feed baby again…she actually slept for about 30 minutes, so we’re hoping she’ll be in a better mood because her Uncle Chad and Aunt Jess are coming down from Loveland to hang out and they don’t get to see her very often.

6:30pm Realize she’s not in a better mood.

6:31pm Aunt Jess takes baby from me (I think she could see I was losing it) and holds her in the colic hold and baby actually calms down for the first time all day. Although I’m thrilled that Maelin isn’t screaming, I TRIED that hold about 20 times before and it didn’t work.

7:30pm We put baby back in crib for another nap. She sleeps for about 30 minutes.

8:00pm Feed baby again while Chad, Kevin and Jeff go get pizza. Jess, Kat and I talk about having babies and how much your life changes. No kidding…

8:45pm After eating dinner super quick in case she fusses, we give baby a bath in the sink. It’s the first time she’s actually happy….can the baby just live in the bath???????

9:45pm After being dressed, lotioned and fed again, baby is finally rocked to sleep. We put her down in her crib, and she’s out until 2am.

9:46pm Look back at the day and wonder what the hell happened to our life…