I never expected to hate being a mother.

That was before my baby cried for a year.  After consulting medical doctors, the chiropractor, the naturopath, the homeopathist, the midwife, the grandmothers, the friends and dozens of books, there was no diagnosis, no cure, no relief, no answer.  

“You have a cranky baby,” said the midwife. “But he seems perfectly healthy.” 

So what do you do when your baby will not stop crying? You carry him in a football hold. You stop eating dairy, tomatoes, wheat, corn, spicy food, soy products and chocolate in case it’s an allergic reaction to your breast milk. You rock. You rock faster. You bounce on a ball. You carry him in a sling. You massage his tummy. You give him drugs for gastro-esophageal reflux disease. You take four baths a day, hoping the warm water will soothe him. You blow dry him with a hairdryer, knowing that the electromagnetic fields must be frying his brain, but at least it stops the crying for a minute. You try driving with him in the car, because everyone says this will help, but in fact it aggravates him. You cry. You pray.  

What don’t you do?  

You don’t take him out to dinner. You don’t go to story hour at the library. You don’t go to the store. You don’t go anywhere where people will hear your child. Because when you do, everyone looks at you as if you’re a terrible mother.  And you believe it, too. You’re a terrible mother. Surely if you did a better job, your child would be as sweet and docile and delightful as the babies of all your friends. 

Don’t believe it. In fact, you might come through this a much better mother. I did.

Is It Colic?  

The only diagnosis folks could come up with for Finn was colic, a catchall term for uncontrollable crying in infants that has no known cause.  

If you are like me, you will read every book out there about it. You will try everything the experts suggest—new sleeping methods, new schedules, new holding positions, new teas. And when the remedies don’t work, you’ll feel increasingly hopeless, defeated, cheated, and just plain sad. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.  

I never embraced colic as my son’s condition. So many of the other mother’s who’s kids had colic would cry only in the afternoons, or only for a month or two. Finn cried and slept and ate. Cried and slept and ate. There was no down time from the crying. He woke up crying and cried as soon as he unlatched from the breast.  

To this day, Finn is now three and half, I don’t know why he cried. But I do know that out of a difficult year, I learned a lot of lessons about how to deal with a crying baby that the experts didn’t tell me. Here were the four most helpful.  

1)      Find Other Mothers With Similar Experiences 

About four months into the crying, a friend told me about another local woman who had a child similar to mine. “Call her,” my friend said.  

The other mother’s story was similar in many ways. Her son was a few months older, and was just coming out of the crying. She told me the litany of things she’d done, very similar to what I had done. She had no silver bullet, no panacea, but she understood. It was the first time I had spoken with someone who really understood what I was going through. And that validation buoyed me. I wasn’t the only one. My child was not totally different.  

It was hugely helpful to listen to her story, which is part of why I wanted to write about mine. But even more important was that she listened to me and said, “I know,” or “I’ve been there,” or “I hear you.”  

Get your grapevine working for you and find another mother either in the throes of it or who has recently come through the other side. It will not stop the crying. It will soothe you.  

2)      Listen To Your Inner Talk And Rewrite It If Necessary 

About five months into the crying, I called a friend and broke down, weeping.  “I’m being tested,” I told Susan.  

“It’s not a test,” Susan said to me. “It’s a path.”  

That was my first true turning point as a mother. That little variation in metaphor allowed me to put one foot in front of the other, following my “path” for the next six months until Finn’s unstoppable crying finally ebbed into the gurgles and gagas I’d expected would come with mothering. 

I’ve thought a long time about why the paradigm shift worked so well as an attitude adjuster. For one, I had embraced “I’m being tested” as a mantra. I repeated it aloud many times daily. And if motherhood were a test, I was most surely failing. But if motherhood were a path, now that was something I could give myself over to. Don’t I love walking? Don’t I appreciate it when the hike is harder, steeper, longer? A path suggests exploration, movement forward, pleasure.  

Though I had long been a poet, it was the first time I understood that by modifying my daily metaphors, I could powerfully adjust my outlook.  

One of the keys is to identify which metaphors we subconsciously embrace. In my case, it was a test. No wonder I picked that one. I’m a teacher and love being a student. But the metaphor didn’t serve me. By choosing a path, I enabled myself to see my position in a more positive light.  

3)      Get Out Of The House 

Though it can be really hard to take your crying baby into the world, do it. Of course other people are uncomfortable with your crying baby. It makes them feel helpless, too. But you need community and support now more than ever.

I holed myself up in the house and made myself increasingly miserable, isolated, and stir crazy. I lost perspective.  

One day when Finn was about three months old, I took him to a church service. It was incredible medicine. Not the sermon, the congregation. I hadn’t been there before, but in the pews were at least four other children who were physically or mentally impaired in their development.  

I remember thinking, “So your son cries. This is not a big problem in the big picture.” It was a great way to re-view my situation.  

Getting out is not only good for you, it’s good for your child. In a study from the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, online June 21, 2008, researchers found that “Parents' interactions with their baby during the first year of life can predict the odds of behavior problems later on.”

The study, which followed nearly 1,900 children from infancy up to age 13, found that “Children whose mothers gave them plenty of intellectual stimulation in the first year of life—reading to them, talking to them and taking them out of the house—were less likely to have serious behavioral problems.” 

The study also showed what many of the colic books will tell you—that fussy children are more likely to have behavioral problems later in life, “acting out or cheating at school, lying, bullying other children or disobeying their parents.” 

I remember reading those books and thinking, “Great. His infancy sucks and he’s destined to be a delinquent.”  

Au contraire. At three and a half, my son is still strong-willed and defiant at home. What a surprise … like his mommy, the kid likes to see the world as a series of tests. But because he started out so difficult, I quickly learned that I had to be a boundary setter—for him and for me.

I learned many tricks to discipline with love and lack of drama. Whereas a lot of my friends have never had to discipline their children much, Finn already understands consequences very well. And in pre-school his teachers describe him as incredibly polite, well behaved, loving and gentle with other children.  

4)      Look For The Blessings 

In some ways I think the world knew I needed a high-maintenance child to make me put the child first. I travel extensively with my work, and I can be very selfish about my “alone” time. I think I expected that a child would just fit into my busy schedule.

Perhaps it took a high-needs infant to make me learn that I needed to put mothering first. And I love being a mom.  

Now, expecting my second baby in five days, I admit to being nervous that she will walk me down the same path her brother did.  

If she does, at least now I have more tools. One of them is: Take what comes. If you expect, you’ll likely be wrong. Just see what is, then do your best. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time.