Colic and Stuff

I want to pick up the thread from two posts ago and talk about the bane of any parent's existence with a newborn - colic. I'm not going to deal with the mystery of why some babies get it and others don't. As far as I'm aware, no-one has figured it out yet. What I DO know is that if you're a new father and you're left in sole charge of a colicky kid, you are almost guaranteed to be pushed to the edge of your sanity. I think it's about as close as the male of the species can get to understanding what many mothers experience with infants - being trapped in a situation you can't get out of and for which there appears to be no solution.

Both my kids had colic and now, 18 years later, I have no idea how long it lasted in each case. It might have been a couple of months, but I honestly don't remember and it seemed like forever at the time. I recall distinctly with one of my kids reaching a dark place buried deep within me when I understood vividly how parents can harm their new-borns out of sheer frustration. The baby is fed, dry and otherwise healthy and still crying loud enough for the neighbours to hear. One cold winter night I reached the end of my tether and yelled violently at one of my kids in his crib when he hadn't stopped crying for a couple of hours. The only reaction that caused was louder crying in fright on the part of the baby. But in that moment, I suddenly understood how shaken baby syndrome can happen - and while it doesn't excuse harming a defenceless child, it certainly explains why it occurs. A mental picture flashed through my mind of throwing the child against the wall - and I experienced a sudden fear that I might actually do it. I also understood all the tragic newspaper headlines and the human cost of choices made in the heat of rage and frustration. It is possible to love a child and at the same time to hurt it even to the point of causing permanent damage or death. I was immediately remorseful for having become enraged at my child and never did it again. Yet, I have often wondered in subsequent years if that child is carrying around the psychological burden that I fear I might have placed on his tiny shoulders so long ago...

So what is the main relief for colic? The only thing that worked reliably for us was taking the baby for a long car ride. We tried everything else - walking around the house holding him face down on my arm with the ball of my thumb in the baby's stomach; putting him in the car seat on the dryer or the washing machine while it was running; going for a long walk (which seemed to be the second-most effective method, although darned cold in the middle of an Edmonton winter). The good news is that the baby will, just as mysteriously as it began, get over the colic and you will regain some of your lost sanity.

I hadn't intended to write this much about colic. It's clear that putting this in print has some therapeutic value for me. From what I have read about all of this, I believe that fathers are at a bit of a disadvantage in the child-rearing department, compared with mothers. We don't have the same hormonal mix and tend not to establish the bond with infants that mothers are hard-wired to experience. I'm not saying that all fathers have this kind of struggle, nor am I saying that all mothers experience the nurturing response to the same extent. But in general, I believe it is true. This means that fathers of new-born children may not have the compensating emotional attachment to their small charges that enables mothers to cope better with the less pleasant aspects of raising kids.

That leads to the question of what fathers (and mothers) can do to mitigate the stress of looking after babies. Two spring to mind. I mention both of these because they were largely missing from our lives when our kids were little. The first is to build a support network around you and USE it. We had no immediate family who could babysit. Our friends were either childless and not interested or in the same situation as we were, so we had limited opportunity to get relief from small children, whether our own or someone else's. So if you can, work deliberately at establishing that network if you don't have any significant offers of help coming in. And if someone DOES offer help, take advantage of it! I had no clue that I needed to have such a network around me and put no significant effort into creating it. I just thought that was how parenthood had to be - some kind of bizarre and painful karmic investment. But no - it was just ignorance and obliviousness.

The second thing you can do to mitigate the stress of parenthood is investing in yourself, either on your own or with your partner, minus the kids. We had friends (with four kids) who took one evening every month to have a date with each other. We almost never did that - maybe we were stupid - but it was something we didn't place any priority on. I would live that part of my life quite differently if I had a chance for a do-over. I must admit, too, that I had other personal issues that I was trying to understand, so I felt as if I wasn't entitled to claim time for myself. While I don't advocate selfishness, I strongly recommend negotiating time with the mother of your children to do something healthy for yourself. That doesn't mean getting to go grocery shopping alone - although I must say I enjoyed that. I'm talking about keeping in touch with friends or going on a personal retreat once in a while. I never felt comfortable asking for that until I no longer needed it as much. I don't recommend that approach, even if you think you're being an enlightened man by supporting your wife with your continuous presence. She may not want or expect it of you, so at the very least, I suggest you talk to each other about those expectations.

Whole libraries of books have been written on this stuff, so I'm not going to pretend any of it is particularly profound - it isn't. Perhaps my experience is more a cautionary tale than anything else. I'm university-educated and my kids were healthy, normal children. I had taken pre-natal classes with the mother of my children and I was with her when both my kids came into the world. I had access to all the knowledge resources that were available 18 years ago (pre-internet) to anyone with the ability to read and understand almost anything in print. I was married to a member of the medical profession, so I had even more access to knowledge than most people. None of that mattered during those interminable evenings - every night for weeks on end - when I couldn't figure out what was "wrong" with the baby and felt almost entirely powerless to do anything about it.

Becoming a Dad

This blog is called Kids, Kites and Karma. My working subtitle is "Messages for Dads". You deserve to know why.

To place my comments for this and future posts in context, I think it may be useful to start with a bit of personal history. I grew up in the 60s and 70s at a time when the "western" world was going through what has sometimes been referred to as the dawning of the age of Aquarius; the era of flower power, free love, anti-war protests, ban the bomb and Woodstock. Living in New Zealand, we were not as connected to the events that shaped this new age as were Americans, Canadians and people living in western Europe. But we were affected and moved by the space race, the Cold War and Vietnam. One of the older sons of neighbours who lived across the street went to Vietnam to support the Americans in an artillery unit. The New Zealand Army also sent field ambulances and medical staff. We were certainly not immune from this war or its direct effects. But it was easy to let others deal with the details.


I was the 3rd of 4 children (in order - boy, girl, boy, girl) born between 1954 and 1960 to parents who had been young children during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Their world view was significantly coloured by their experiences during that part of their life and the messages that were given to us when we were young came, predictably enough, directly out of our parents' experiences of economic hardship and personal struggle. My father left an unhappy home life at 16 and articled as an accounting student, taking night courses while he worked. My mother trained as a primary (elementary) school teacher. They married in their early 20s and started a family almost right away.


Life for my father seemed hard to me. He worked long hours as an accountant and in his time away from the office he put enormous energy into figuring out how to provide for his family in the long-term. He bought real estate knowing that it was the only asset that could be relied upon to increase in value. As an accountant in public practice, he met business people from all walks of life and learned early on what it took to be financially successful. He was also very active physically, playing competitive tennis for many years, and taking up running for fitness in his 30s before it became "cool" for adults to invest in their health through physical fitness.


My dad cared deeply about his kids, but like most men of his generation, the details of raising the kids were left largely to mum. Dad was the disciplinarian and we lived with the constant possibility of being "corrected" through corporal punishment. In our house that usually meant a three-foot length of bamboo. I remember being terrified of the possibility, so I absorbed the internal message that it was good to avoid punishment if at all possible. I actually remember only two instances of being "corrected" with the stick, at least one of which was richly deserved. But the psychological effects of the threat of punishment have had a persistent (and largely negative) influence on my life. I learned how to lie to avoid detection and those lies became part of my normal way of engaging with figures of authority, including my teachers.


As a male child, I absorbed the messages that boys don't cry, that life is hard and that you can't expect work to be fun. We were also strongly encouraged to find jobs that offered secure income, good pensions and long-term stability - in short, we were encouraged to find low-risk, solid return jobs. Government jobs (including teaching) were touted as good examples of this. Obviously, I took this to heart, almost 25 years into a public service career. Success in school was a highly prized goal - all four children finished high school and went on to university. Three of us finished at least one university degree. All of us entered careers that would not have been possible without a degree. I ended up spending almost 10 years in post-secondary studies and acquired four university degrees before I started working in a permanent full-time job.

How I ended up in Canada is properly the subject of a different blog entry. Suffice it to say that I arrived in Edmonton, Alberta, in August 1979 as a graduate student at the University of Alberta and found a way to stay. I got married and put down roots. As I reflected, at considerable geographic distance, on my childhood experiences, I resolved that if I ever had kids of my own, I would deliberately not be the kind of father my own father had been.

Seven years after we got married, my wife and I decided it was now or never. We had two sons, born not quite 23 months apart. When my first son was born, I was struck by the enormity of what we had done - we had just created a new, autonomous being for whom we were responsible. In the following days and weeks, I realized that I was the custodian of a small person who had his own identity, personality and potential. I saw immediately that I did not own this little person - I was his custodian and mentor until he could assume full responsibility for his own life.

This realization led to a series of logical conclusions, most of which will be covered in subsequent posts. But the main decision I made at that point was to try to be a better dad than my own father had been. That meant making some deliberate decisions about how I would raise my sons.

I have to say at this point that I was ill-equipped to be a father. I had no experience with infant children and had read almost nothing about what to do in those first few days and weeks after our first child was born. I had attended pre-natal classes with my wife and I had read one of her medical textbooks related to embryology, so I had a lot of head-knowledge about the development of the fetus and I knew, more or less, how to change a diaper. Beyond that, it was all rather scary and mysterious.

What did I learn in the months of preparing for this amazing and life-changing event? First, that you can't ever really be prepared for it. Second, that it is preferable that you really WANT to be a dad. Third, that even if you don't really want a child, you can CHOOSE to be engaged in the raising of your children. Fourth, that once you father a child, your life changes permanently, even if you don't want to be a parent.

What would I like to tell the world about being a father?
Want it (ideally)
Prepare for it
Share in it
Enjoy it

Next post - cholic and how to survive it.

Welcome to My Blog

I've been here before, but with no clear purpose other than curiosity. The last time, I was playing with the Google toys, but had no sense that what I was doing might be useful to anyone other than myself. I don't even remember when that last time was.

I have a sense of having moved a considerable distance in my life since that first tentative toe was dipped into the blog pool. For instance, both of my kids are now past the point where they need me to give them advice about much... not that I ever had to, even when they were still legally my responsibility. But now, with both of them in university, I am even less needed as either a father or a confidante. We still have fun and enjoy each other's company. It's just much less frequent, since they no longer live with me.



I wonder if this is a sign of successful parenting? I know their mother and I made some sound decisions when the boys were little - saving for their education was one. It is this decision and others like it that will be the substance of this blog, at least for a while. I believe some of the wisdom of my years may have value for others - particularly young fathers. I hope a few kind readers may help me to sort out exactly where this value lies.



I reserve the right to detour from time to time into topics that interest me in my life today, but mostly the point of this blog is to put some ideas into writing and let others tell me if they make sense.