Baby Colic

A colicky baby. Wikipedia defines it as "a condition in which an otherwise healthy baby cries or displays symptoms of distress frequently and for extended periods, without any discernible reason."I define it as a condition where the sweet, cuddly baby you brought home from the hospital is possessed by an evil monster bent on the utter destruction of his parents. In the hospital, Caleb was the sweetest, calmest child I'd ever met. He didn't cry once the whole three days we resided in the hospital. It was a different story once we brought him home. The nurses had joked that they installed the baby's batteries upon leaving the hospital. They weren't kidding.

We've progressed a long way since those initial months of constant crying but every once in a while we encounter an inexplicable evening where Caleb will flip out at bedtime and a marathon of crying commences. The other night, as I leaned over the railing of his crib, patting his back as he screamed, crocodile tears running down his face, I wondered, "How do you do it?" How do you handle the inconsolable crying? The cries that pull at your heartstrings and the tears that turn your insides to mush. There's a war inside of me. A war between the part of me that desperately wants to curl up in my nice, warm bed and catch a few hours of sleep before the midnight feeding and the part of me that just wants to scoop him up, rock him, and tell him that the world really isn't the cold, scary place he seems to think it is.

It boils down to the fact that you don't really have a choice in the matter. Your baby has to be cared for whether you're feeling up to it or not. He's totally dependent on you. He's not even able to calm himself without the help of his parents. And that's how I did it. That's how I was able to put myself aside and pour into my little sweetie when I didn't feel like I had anything left to give. Seeing a situation from another person's point of view can give you that extra jolt that you need to see it through.

How many other inter-personal situations can you apply that to! Make the choice to see a situation from another point of view other than your own. In Toba Beta's book, Master of Stupidity, he says, "We begin to learn wisely when we're willing to see world from other people's perspective.”