Little Victor had a difficult week. First he had to have his circumcision redone because a little piece got left from the first time. A sliver of himself got tucked back under the foreskin and was irritating him in ways I hope never to experience.
The doctor, in order to get the painkiller to work faster, slipped him some sugar water. Which made his little insides blow up with gas, so for the next two days he was a natural gas well. And, since that kind of thing is still very new to him, he cried with each eruption. Sugar water also encourages babies to poo… which causes even more tears.
Then, to top off his week, he got constipated for almost two days. We were about to administer a little more sugar water, or something, when he finally unloaded tonight (Sunday). He filled his diaper, then he almost filled his jumper. There was baby crap — which at this point looks a lot like normal human crap — everywhere. He was covered from his nipples to his knees. It looked like a large animal dumped on him.
Afterwards he was all floppy and had this eyes-half-closed look like he was thinking “ohmygodIamsofreakinghighrightnow”.
Unfortunately Victor missed the Super Bowl. Tonight was his bath night, and his mom wanted to get everyone to bed early because she has a doctor’s appointment in Ottawa in the morning.
It’s her first official checkup since having Victor. I’m not sure why I’m not going… weird.
Victor did spend a lot of time with his grandmother this week. My mom and my girlfriend have set up a babysitting schedule, so mom will have her grandson once a week for four hours, then twice weekly once her volunteering schedule gets set — mom lost her job at the National Archives just before Christmas, so she’s going to work at archiving the local municipalities historical records.
My mom and my step-father are having a great time with Victor.
Personally, however, with the incredible and sustained screaming I did lose my temper on… I think it was Monday. Maybe Tuesday. The screaming was constant, and very loud, for ninety straight minutes. This was when, later on, we found out about the little piece of leftover hard foreskin.
I ended up walking around the apartment with him, just bouncing him gently, with my face close to his, and saying hello in different tones. It calmed us both down. But there was a point where I had to put him back in his basket and walk away. I’m still a little freaked out about how much I wanted to break a chair, or something.
Something else we found out was the cream we were using to soothe his nether regions, was actually irritating him. Especially when he peed. So now we’re using straight powdered corn starch. So far so good.
Although we are starting to believe he might have a touch of colic. He’s still regurgitating his formula, not nearly as much as ten days ago when he was basically a lawn fountain, but just enough to make us want to see a doctor about it. He’s also crying when we give him the bottle… but I think that was just the bad week he was having.
We are changing formula’s. We’ve been using Similac, but my girlfriend wants to try another one… but I’ve totally forgotten the name.
Little Victor and his great-grandfather, Big Victor, had three visits this week. They get along great. I am, however, getting progressively more worried about my grandfather. His walking skills are degenerating quickly. He’s also just showing up at my girlfriend’s door at random times. She doesn’t mind, she loves having him around, but he’s acting as though they were planned visits.
It’s weird, he’ll refer to phone calls which never happened, but then he and my step-father had a long talk today about upcoming construction projects in Ottawa — he’s an engineer, my step-father’s an architect and city planner. And he’s still dead-on when it comes to politics and sports. It’s like the peripheral vision is getting worse — if not completely gone, but he can still see the important stuff.
…quick Cooler update: her first vet visit is this Wednesday. She gets her shots, and an exam, then next week she gets spayed.
This week Victor and I watched “To Kill A Mockingbird”, with Gregory Peck and a really young — and creepy — Robert Duvall, we also watched David Bowie in “The Man Who Fell To Earth”, which is taken from a book by Walter Tevis, who wrote my favourite book, “Mockingbird”. Pretty cool link, eh? That was on purpose.
We also watched “In The Heat Of The Night” with Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, and most of “The Untouchables”… this was totally by accident, but The Untouchables is about Al Capone — played by Robert DeNiro — while Rod Steiger, in 1959, played Al Capone in “Al Capone”. That would have been pretty cool if I could have done that on purpose.
New music this week was ‘Pharaoh’s Dance’ from Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew”. I had played earlier Miles for Victor a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure which he prefers yet.
And we also listened to The Grey Album… it’s an illegal mashup by DJ Danger Mouse of Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” and The Beatles’ “The White Album”. Very cool. ‘99 Problems‘ (feat.: Helter Skelter) should be a classic… so sayeth Victor, so sayeth we all.
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...salted lithium. 
We used Desitin on the bebeh butts. Worked like a charm. There was a reason we stayed far away from the cornstarch but I don’t remember why.
I used the PC formula, and it was great on their tumtums. Depends on the kid tho.
and I refuse to reference the missing foreskin issue. I don’t even want to THINK about that.
BTW, the kicking chair thing? NORMAL. That kind of screaming will make anyone homicidal. You’re doing just fine. 🙂
The best thing you can do, and we ALL do it, is to walk away. He will still be there, still crying, after you’ve had time to collect your sanity. I can recall doing it quite a bit while my daughter was colicky…..
Hang in. This too shall pass!
Is Victor on breast milk and formula? It’s been 14 years since I breastfed but in our case my girl was breastfed exclusively for a time (6 mos) and then switched to formula. Of course I am not close to your situation…and not an expert. Please forgive me if I am overstepping.
Please forgive my misinformed comment.
Clare, you’re far more of an expert than I am, and your comments are always welcome on anything. So far we’ve been switching back and forth depending on how my girlfriend’s feeling… when Victor’s with me it’s straight formula though.
I had Victor with me tonight… he had a couple of difficult moments, but instead of trying to “fix” him every time , for a few of them I just left him alone for a few moments and he worked himself out. I think I’ve been rushing in too fast, and getting into a bit of a panic… when kids start screaming I think we (I) have the tendency to think it’ll never stop, and all we can do is pick them up and hope for the best.
One problem I have now is I live in a box, there are no quiet places for me to escape an hour long crying jag…
I agree with Thordora, that it’s perfectly normal to get frustrated and agitated by the screaming, and to want to break something. I remember it well, all these years later. So putting him down and walking away is a good idea when you feel that way. But at his tender age, he’s not old enough to want something he doesn’t also need, and leaving him alone to cry for a long period of time could leave him feeling abandoned and traumatized. Can you spell each other when one of you is getting too stressed by the crying? Or call in other helpers?
(Honestly, colic was the most frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced. Especially since it was combined with sleep deprivation.)
My son had colic for 3 months and at the time it seemed like the longest 3 months of my life as I had to hold him darn near around the clock for the entire 3 months or he would not sleep – but it definitely bonded us. As for the walking away technique, that one is useful at some many different stages of their lives. I just had to use it yesterday and mine is a tween now.
Hi Zoom… his crying / screaming isn’t really an issue yet because he doesn’t do much of it. He was in my apartment for four hours tonight and cried — for his bottle — for all of ten seconds.
His older brother, meanwhile, had a three hour bout of insane hysteria last Tuesday. At one point I was holding him in my arms and his face just looked like plastic, his eyes were bugging out of his head and he couldn’t stop screaming.
We finally found out on Thursday what’s been bugging him so much over the past couple of months… he thinks his father’s “friend” has been hurting his father, because of the strange noises coming out of “daddy’s bedroom” at night. So the poor little guy has been terrified of his daddy’s girlfriend.
With Victor, he’s never been left alone for more than a few minutes. My girlfriend showers with him in the room, and still has a hard time letting him come up to my place. And my apartment is too small to get away from anything. I think the longest I’ve ‘let’ him cry is a few minutes.
Hi Meg… today my girlfriend officially banned the word “colic” from my vocabulary.
Also according to her, apparently I might have screwed up the night I had to walk away from Victor. He has a rash around his dude parts that gets irritated and painful when he pees. I checked his diaper a couple of times that night, but — mostly jubilant at not finding a giant load of poo — I didn’t think of checking for the liquid stuff.
Good grief the poor little guy. Just reading the 1st paragraph gave me this shivery, chilly, erky, squirmy feeling all over & especially in low down places.
As this is my 1st visit to your blog I am sending you greetings from Tasmania
Hi Tony, and thanks for coming over… greetings from Ottawa, Canada. I managed to get through the first circumcision — I was in the room and I didn’t fall over. But this time I had to pass exactly for all of the reasons you’ve listed.
Thanks for the comment.
When he is crying like that (been there) walk him around the block several times, or buckle him up in the carseat and drive….or put him in his baby cradle/carrier, place it on top of (supervised by you or girlfriend) the clothes dryer while it is drying clothes or towels you grab to just re heat….it’s the soothing sound of the motors that calm the colic baby. It will be over by 4-5 months and most likely is from the formula upset. This is why rocking chairs and lulliby singing become a very big part of your life.
And, rocking a baby while soothing them is very therapeutic….
Little Victor is such a blessing. Of course parenting has its (unexpected) surprises, but live every minute of it 🙂 Here’s to the little one’s health for the year ahead.