Wanting Another Baby But Scared of Having Another Colic Baby: What I’ve Learned
Last Sunday I was sitting on the living room floor folding fitted sheets when I glanced at the photo taped to the dryer: me, red-eyed, three days post-birth, holding my first daughter against my chest. She’s screaming, my smile is wobbly, and my left hand is pressed hard into the small of my back like I’m trying to hold myself together. I stared at it for a full minute before I admitted the thought I’ve been pushing down for six months: I want another baby.
What I can’t push down, though, is the memory of what those first three months were like. My daughter had bad colic—four, sometimes five hours of nonstop screaming every single night, no matter what I tried. I cut dairy, soy, caffeine, even citrus out of my diet until I was living on oatmeal and rice. I tried every swaddle method, every brand of gripe water (the organic one tasted like cinnamon soap, if you’re wondering), three different bottles, a chiropractor adjustment, and endless 11 p.m. drives around the local highway. The only thing that calmed her for more than 10 minutes was that drive; I went through three tanks of gas a week, and my husband would meet me at the gas station in his slippers to pay because I couldn’t get out of the car without her starting screaming again. I cried more than she did some weeks. We didn’t speak for three straight days once, both of us too tired and raw to be nice to each other. People keep saying you forget the hard parts of babyhood, but I didn’t. I remember the ache in my arms from holding her 12 hours a day. I remember the panic that I was somehow broken as a mom, that I was doing everything wrong.
That’s why the thought of another baby leaves my chest tight most days. I finally worked up the courage to bring it up to our pediatrician at my daughter’s 3-year checkup a couple weeks ago. I waited after the appointment and blurted out that I want another kid but I’m terrified of going through that again. What she told me, and what I’ve been sorting through ever since, isn’t the fluffy “it’ll be different!” encouragement I expected. It was solid, plain information that’s helped me stop panicking long enough to think clearly.
She told me that only about 1 in 10 parents who have one colicky baby have another. That means 90% of the time, it doesn’t happen again. Colic isn’t a genetic curse you pass down to all your kids; it’s usually just a temporary developmental hiccup with a lot of different causes that don’t automatically repeat. She also confirmed what I’d started to suspect: it wasn’t my fault the first time around. It wasn’t my diet, it wasn’t that I held her wrong, it wasn’t stress during pregnancy. It just was.
That’s the first big change I’ve already made, if we do go through with this. I’m not going to blame myself if it happens again. The second thing is I’ve stopped waiting for people to offer help and I’m already lining it up, specific help—not the useless “let me know if you need anything” that no one ever takes people up on. I asked my sister to come over for two hours every Tuesday and Thursday for the first three months after birth, no excuses. She’s already cleared her calendar. I asked my neighbor who brings us tomato soup every fall to drop one frozen meal a month in my freezer for the first 12 weeks, and she said she’d be happy to. I already agreed with my husband that if the baby is screaming and nothing works, we take 15-minute shifts. One of us holds the baby, the other goes to another room to drink a cold soda, scroll through their phone, or just sit in silence, no guilt. No more both of us being exhausted and cranky at the same time.
Third, I’m not going to chase every cure. First time around, I was buying new remedies off Amazon every other day, switching everything up constantly, and that just left me more stressed and convinced I was missing something that would fix it. Now, if we end up with a colicky baby, I’m picking two things to try for a full week, and that’s it. Cut dairy for seven days, use the slow-flow bottle I already have, that’s the whole list. No running around trying every new thing that someone posts on Instagram. I know now that colic goes away on its own by 12 weeks, no matter what you do, so the goal isn’t to cure it—it’s to get through those 12 weeks as intact as possible. I also gave myself explicit permission to put the baby down in their bassinet for 10 minutes and walk away if I’m overwhelmed. First time around, I thought that made me a bad mom. Now I know that 10 minutes of me breathing and calming down is better for both of us than me holding a screaming baby while I cry right along with them.
Last night my daughter climbed into my lap while I was half-heartedly scrolling through baby names on my phone. She leaned her head on my chest and said she wanted a baby sister to bring her dandelions and play tea party. I squeezed her tight, and for a second I could only feel the fear: the fear of screaming, the fear of sleepless nights, the fear of being too tired to be the mom my first kid deserves while I’m dealing with a colicky newborn. But then I thought about the 15-minute shifts, and my sister coming over twice a week, and permission to step away if I need to. I know those things don’t make colic easy. They just make it survivable.
I still haven’t called my OB to talk about coming off birth control. I still catch myself staring at that photo on the dryer and holding my breath. Some days I’m convinced I’m being silly for even thinking about this, and other days I can’t think of anything else. But last week when newborn diapers were on sale at the grocery store, I threw an extra pack in my cart and stuck it in the back of the closet. It’s a small step, and it’s okay that I’m not taking a big, brave leap all at once. I don’t have to get rid of the fear to move forward. I just have to be ready to carry it with me, one small step at a time.
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