Killer Gas?

It was only a few weeks ago. (I'm trying to be suspenseful and dramatic and such.)

After a long day of colicky crying, Amelia finally seemed to be in a pleasant mood, so I handed her off to James for some Daddy Time (i.e. vigorous playtime). And then I proceeded to have a glorious time showering and brushing my teeth and such.

As I was standing in the hallway watching the happy pair play, James flips Amelia over on her belly for some tummy time. As you may know, it is important to do this frequently so that the baby can practice pulling up her head and doing little mini pushups in preparation for crawling.

Well, James flipped Amelia onto her belly... and disaster struck! (Cue lightning and thunder.)

The child morphed into a banshee and began screaming at the top of her lungs. As in, REALLY screaming. This wasn't too unusual, since Amelia isn't usually too fond of tummy time. Of course, James picks her up to quiet her, but then Amelia keeps screaming. And screaming. Desperately, James walks her and bounces her and... well, she just screams and screams and REALLY SCREAMS.

I must confess... I took some pleasure in the fact that I was not holding the baby, because (as you'll remember) I've been home everyday with a colicky baby, often by myself. And I really didn't think James knew how stressful that was. So when the baby started screaming, I was glad James was getting a hefty dose of it too. Now all is fair and square.

After all his efforts to soothe Amelia prove fruitless, James yells, "Jenna! I think you need to come feed her!"

"Sorry, I'm brushing my teeth!" And then I proceed to brush my teeth... and rather slowly, too. And then I take my sweet time getting into my jammies and settling into bed before finally proclaiming that I am ready to receive a ballistic child.

It is my bedtime routine to snuggle into bed with Amelia, and nurse her to sleep. And this really tends to work pretty much all the time. Amelia is very fond of nursing and never refuses a good boob if she can help it. She's inherited the Dilts appetite... everything consumed goes straight down through her leg and out a hole in the bottom of her foot, leaving her belly perpetually empty and begging for more.

This time, though... Amelia is so upset that she makes one feeble attempt to suckle, and then gives up for good, screaming louder than ever and completely ignoring me. This is my first real signal that something is actually wrong. A Dilts is always willing to eat, right?

I end up taking Amelia downstairs and walking with her... walk, walk, walk... attempt nursing again... bounce, bounce, bounce... massage... Nothing. She's just screaming and screaming. And when I say screaming, this is what I mean: there's your regular run-o'-the-mill screaming, and then there's SCREAMING. Amelia is SCREAMING. Short, extremely loud, incessant cries that you can't help but think mean the baby is dying.

At this point, James is curled up in a fetal position and rocking back and forth, absolutely convinced that he's injured and broken the baby somehow.

"I think I broke her arm!" he wailed.

... "James, her arm is fine. You didn't break a bone or dislocate a joint or anything..." (There was about one minute of respite from the crying, during which I did a quick check of all her bones and joints to make sure nothing was amiss.)

Ever the king of drama, he counters, "But it's the ONLY explanation. I must have broken the baby somehow! She's clearly dying or something!"

"Well, if you think that's the case, you should call the pediatrician's office. Someone should be on call. You know, in case somebody breaks their baby or something."

To my surprise, James actually does call the doctor. This is when I really know how worried the man is. He never calls or goes to the doctor. I swear the man could have a visible tumor on the side of his head and say,  "Meh, it's not that bad. I'll just walk it off."

So while James is waiting for the on-call person to call him back, I am sitting on the sofa holding our ballistic baby close. I offer noms every once in a while, but for the most part she ignores me and wails like she's in terrible pain.

For some reason, I am completely calm. It's a good thing one of us was, I guess.

Finally, the on-call person finally calls James back... and Amelia stops crying and begins nursing. James sardonically mutters into the phone, "Oh, yeah, and now she shuts up." While James answers millions of questions, Amelia nurses for a few seconds, then stops and wails weakly as if to say, "Why me? Whhhhyy? Is there no justice in the world?" She then falls asleep instantly as if passing out from sheer exhaustion.

I hear on-the-phone James exclaim skeptically, "Really? Really. Ooookaaaay... if you say so." I almost expected him to add, "Well, I still think she's dying." Apparently the nurse's best guess was that a gas bubble moved into a painful place when James flipped her over onto her tummy.

The nurse also told us that when baby cries panickedly like that for an hour, you go straight to the hospital. Just so y'all with babies know this. Amelia only cried for forty minutes before passing out so we were spared a trip to the hospital. And then we all slept like rocks for the rest of the night. Phew!

Now, to be fair, I thought I should include a description of what makes me panic. This happened when Amelia was two weeks old.

Coincidentally, this episode also happened during Daddy Time. James was dancing with Amelia to "Build Me Up Buttercup", swinging her in his arms back and forth like a horizontal pendulum. This was all fine and dandy until Amelia stopped breathing, turned dark purple, tensed every muscle in her body...

I was blogging at the time, actually. When I heard James yell, "Baby? Baby! BABY?!" I understandably leapt out of my seat and launched myself over to Amelia. After one or two seconds of purpleness, Amelia coughed and sputtered and went back to happily hanging about as if nothing had happened. So she was fine. James was fine, though a little shaken. I, however, was not fine and was more than a little shaken.

I was positively weepy. In a matter of seconds I had convinced myself that Amelia had had a seizure and that she was doomed to a life of daily seizures and would turn into a vegetable by age three. Well, not really, but I was completely undone.

I went and took a shower trying to calm down. It helped a little, but the whole time I was thinking, Holy Freddy Mercury, my hormones are ruining my life. By the way, has anyone ever told you that your hormones run rampant and do horrible things to you after you give birth? Well, it's true.

I took the baby to the doctor the next day, hoping this would calm my nerves. It did. Baby was absolutely the perfect picture of health and super interactive with the doctor. Dr. Pelinka said what had happened was actually just a reflex to prevent the baby from aspirating spit-up into her lungs. And then she added that next time we were pendulum dancing with baby, we should do it so that her head is higher than her lungs.

Anyway, love and panic-stricken terror,
Jenna and Amelia