We need to talk about how awful it is to have a baby with colic

There's no 'how to' navigate this hell. This is simply a letter of hope. Photo / 123rf

There's being a parent to a newborn and then there's being a parent to a newborn with colic.

Those two things are not the same. And as much as our brains have an incredible capacity to dull painful memories, the colic period is a traumatic one - and because it happens to so many babies (one in five, or thereabouts, they suspect) and isn't really an illness of great consequence, it's been normalised as something you've just got to get through.

Sure, you have to get through it. But we need to also give the parents of babies with colic the space to acknowledge just how absolutely awful that period is and how entitled they are to hate it with all their might.

My daughter had severe colic for just about the entirety of the first three months of her life.

Eventually, it stopped. But before it did, it made me question many times over what I'd done with my life.

For any parent out there in the midst of colic: I see you. This absolutely sucks. You're entitled to hate every minute of it. No one can possibly know what you're going through - but you know that you will get through this.

No one really knows what causes colic - which is just one of the many annoying aspects of it. No one even really knows how to define it accurately ("hell" feels appropriate but also somehow too nice), let alone how to treat it.

Colic is basically just a lot of crying, for no apparent reason. Your baby is thought to have colic if they cry for about three hours a day, three days a week, for three weeks.

It just happens ... because it does. As if having a new baby wasn't already exhausting enough.

No one can give you a proper explanation and, for that reason, your brain can't rationalise why you're going through it, which makes it tougher to cope with. It's frustrating because there is nothing you can identify as a cause and, therefore, no solution you can possibly come up with.

I know, I tried it all.

For those months, my daughter cried solidly - and not just a whinge, we're talking high-pitched screaming her tiny little lungs off - non-stop for about four hours every evening. Sometimes more, never less.

It'd come around 5pm, sometimes earlier, never later.

Every night, she'd scream and scream, even though there was seemingly nothing wrong with her. A few hours into it, you'd be forgiven for not knowing if the screaming was happening or whether it was only in your head.

My days were split between enduring her colic cries and trying to recover from the hours of colic before the next bout began. It was relentlessly painful.

I worried someone would call the police to come and do a welfare check on her. I worried she'd cause permanent damage to her vocal cords. I worried I wouldn't make it through it all.

I had one of those wrap carriers and would tie her up close to my chest and, together, we would pace the dark rooms for hours and hours on end, my tears of pure exhaustion falling down my face to a soundtrack of her screaming.

I am an ultra runner and pride myself in my ability to endure, to keep going in the face of pain and adversity. But colic broke me.

I've run 100km in a row and I'd rather do that any day than go through another bout of colic.

I cried so much. Out of pure despair. I just wanted it to end. Why couldn't she stop crying? She was warm and fed and dry and yet her body just would not let her relax and settle. Hours and hours on end.

I tried every colic remedy under the sun, in all hemispheres of medicine. I tried osteopaths, I tried GPs, I tried anything that anyone mentioned to me. Gripe tea? Sure. Kid's calm? In a vat, if you have one. Colic calm. Colic drops. Colic powder. Anyone selling anything with the word "colic" in it was getting my EFTPOS card shoved into their hands. I bought products in three different countries, visited doctors in two. Battery-operated swings, car rides at all hours, baby massages, white noise, shushing. I spent money on things with great hopes they would work and I threw money at things when I was convinced they wouldn't work (and they didn't).

Nothing helped. Not one thing.

It is hard to put into words the toll this takes on new parents.

There is nothing to love about this stage of your life. Photo / 123rf

You don't know when it is going to end and at times it feels like it never will.

You sit there, exhaustion corroding your bones, and you want to punch the next person who tells you to "treasure every moment". You want to use the last of your strength to beat the living daylight out of the people telling you to just "let them cry", that "all babies cry".

You know this cry is not like other cries. And it sucks, it absolutely sucks. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

It sucks because it makes no sense and because it's so normal you're just supposed to ride it out.

This is not a "how to" column because there is no "how to" navigate this hell. This is a letter of hope.

It's important to talk about how awful colic is because parents need to know they are entitled to hate it without feeling like they're failing as parents.

While you're 100 per cent entitled to wallow in how much this sucks right now, one of these days, your baby won't cry. And you'll think it was a one-off and you try not to let your guard down because you're so exhausted. Then the next day will come and they won't cry again. Next thing you know, day three of no crying (well, no more than the average baby). And that's when you realise: you did it.

You rode it out.

All those moments when you thought you couldn't keep going, you kept going.

Your baby grew strong each day. With every step in the dark, with every tear, it just kept growing and growing.

And so did you.