Womb to Bloom - Maternity & Beyond

Your baby is colicky? Here’s the good news – it’s just a phase. I can’t tell you how long it will last – but I’m fairly confident that, when your baby is ten years old, she will not come home from fifth grade and break down into inconsolable tears for several hours at a time every evening. So, yes. It’s a phase. Which doesn’t make it any less tolerable now, does it?

I’ve got four kids and I only had one baby (my first) who was truly colicky. One of the others gave me little tastes – but he had nothing on his big brother. His colicky periods always started at about 4 p.m. and lasted until about 8. I can specifically recall walking laps around the first floor of my home during maternity leave, rocking, swaying, bouncing a screaming baby (having fed him, changed him and burped him), singing softly into his ear.

When you have an otherwise healthy infant, there is not much that is more frustrating than that infant’s first cold. We all do our best to keep those common cold germs away from our newborns. We stay away from crowds. We wash and sanitize our hands obsessively. But it always happens anyway. That first stuffy nose. The first runny green snots. Sometimes even a little cough heard over the monitor. If you’re like most first time mothers, you’ll probably freak out a little bit.

Now let me preface all of this with a disclosure. I am not a doctor or a nurse or a medical professional of any sort. My advice is solely based on being a mom and having extensive experience in snot-wiping. I’m really, really good at it. If you are concerned that your child’s condition is more serious than a common cold, please call your pediatrician.

I discovered my baby was teething when I fed my daughter a banana and she bit me. I had a friend who discovered teething when she was nursing and her son bit her. Teething really doesn’t hurt us moms but is sure can be painful for our babies.

Signs and Symptoms of a Teething Baby
The typical signs and symptoms of a teething baby include being the right age. Babies typically begin teething between the ages of three months and one year. My children each began teething at around 13 months of age, but many start much younger.

As a mom the first time my baby came down with croup I thought I was going to go insane. It was 3 am the baby was showing all the symptoms of croup including a low grade fever, a barking like cough and stridor which sounds like wheezing when the baby breaths in. My pediatrician was taking too long to return my call and I was ready to jump in the car to head to the emergency room.

By 3:30 am I was bundling my 6 month old who was barking like a seal in warm blankets and rushing to the hospital. The moment we walked outside she took a deep breath in the cold air and the barking like cough stopped. I went back in the house, called my pediatrician again and asked “what just happened”.