The Boy Who Did Not Cry Wolf

Truth: This part of our journey is hard to relive. Although my heart still breaks when I think about this ordeal, I know everything happens for a reason. This is one of those things that helped us gain confidence as parents and learn how to make decisions for our baby.

When Myles was born, he was so relaxed. He calmly met all of the family members, and he was very aware for a newborn. He had his eyes open, would playfully stick his tongue out, and he had the biggest silliest yawn. This started to change when he got hungry, and if you read my last post, you know that I had to give him formula due to issues with latching and not having even a drop of milk coming out. Despite feeding him, Myles got even more fussy. He screamed most of our second night in the hospital, but nurses said it’s common for babies to cry a lot when everything is still new to them.

The first night home from the hospital was very bad. He couldn’t be put down at all, so we held him all night long and went to his first pediatrician appointment feeling panicked. The doctor insisted that we were overfeeding him. She said he couldn’t possibly need 3 oz bottles yet, and that we needed to stop feeding him so much. When we went home, we both agreed this probably wasn’t the issue, as the nurse in the hospital said to feed him until he seemed satisfied. We also agreed he was much bigger than the average baby, so the doctor’s one-size-fits-all advice may not apply.

That next night was by far the worst night we ever had. Myles screamed for 8 hours straight. He didn’t stop. When I say screamed, I don’t mean cute baby crying, either. He screamed like someone was trying to kill him. Like he had been practicing his best horror movie scream in the womb and just perfected it. His body was so stiff, and he was red to the point of almost being purple and shaking. I can’t even begin to explain the mental toll this took on us. Neither me nor Mike had slept in over 24 hours, and we could barely see or think straight. We tried everything possible to get him to quiet down, but he wouldn’t eat, sleep or STOP CRYING! We took his clothes off to check for anything that would be hurting him. We looked at his circumcision, bellybutton stump, even checked for hair tourniquets around his fingers and toes. I took his temperature under his little armpit and had a heart attack when it said 85 – I realized I was so tired I’d done it with the cap on.

Frantically, without any answers as to why he was still screaming, we called the after-hours nurse line for help. The nurse seemed extremely concerned, but she was a lifesaver. She gave us a list of things to try and said she’d call back in 20 minutes. We went down the list, and nothing was working until we got to skin to skin contact. I stripped my clothes off, got Myles totally naked, and put him on my chest. He wasn’t even wearing a diaper, but he slept instantly, so I didn't dare move.

The next doctor we saw told us that “some babies just cry a lot.” We tried to describe to her the cry, showed her a quick video clip of what we’d endured for hours on end, and she still didn’t seem to grasp the severity of things. I knew in my heart something was really wrong. This doctor did NOT tell us to feed him less, though. She was actually concerned he’d started to refuse his bottles and asked me to keep him on a strict schedule, with no more than 4 hours between feedings until Myles gained weight. Aside from the stomach issues, I had noticed Myles had red bumps around his mouth and down his chest, which the doctor brushed off as “baby acne.” She scheduled us for a weight check in a couple of days and gave us samples of a gentle formula to try that could relieve gas, as he might be a little “colicky.” (If you don’t know what colic is, you might still not know what it is after a quick Google search, because it’s the world’s laziest diagnosis. When a doctor doesn’t want to figure out what’s wrong with your baby, they’ll tell you it must be colic.)

We switched Myles’ formula, and he gained weight at his appointment. The doctor advised us not to change his food for a while and give him a few weeks to get used to his new diet. She also said that babies should cry it out, which I thought this was ludicrous. My baby wasn’t even a week old. At this point, I knew the doctor thought we just couldn’t handle a baby that “cries a lot.” She saw young, interracial first-time parents and wrote us off as not knowing what we were doing. The only good thing she said was to put the baby down and take a break if I started to feel too frustrated.

We went on like this for 2 weeks. We bought some gas drops and muscled through. Myles would have okay days and terrible days, never good ones. He constantly cried. He constantly needed to be held. He couldn’t sleep without being skin to skin with me. He woke up often needing to be bounced, rocked, sang back to sleep. The exhaustion was wearing on me, and I wasn’t healing as quickly as I had hoped. Lugging around a newborn the size of a 3 month old will do that to you! I cherish our cuddles, but truly in the moment this part was so hard. I couldn’t use the bathroom or eat for hours, because if he was asleep, I never wanted to wake him and set off hours of endless screaming again.

We reached a boiling point when my husband had to take a week-long business trip out of state. I tried to put on a brave face and handle it, but I was so dreading it. And with how it went, I was right to. Family members came over a few hours a day so I could shower, eat, etc. But every single night, Myles screamed from 6 pm until 2 or 3 am without fail. I just kept thinking, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” I did everything I possibly could, but nothing soothed him. I was at a loss for what to do, and I’m so glad I remembered the doctor’s advice. There was one moment where I thought to myself “wow I get how people shake their baby.” At that moment, I’m so glad I had the presence of mind to put him down and take a breath. I just put him next to me and cried along with him. The craziest thing happened. This baby that could not be soothed stopped crying, tugged my hair until I looked at him and smiled – which he hadn’t started regularly doing yet. Honestly, that was God speaking to me. I knew we’d get through it, but I knew something HAD to change.

So, the next day, my mom brought over some soy formula for us to try. We were all convinced he was having stomach problems, but we didn’t know what was going on. If you listened to his tummy you could literally hear it gurgling. Soy formula, at first, was amazing. He never spit it up, he didn’t scream as much, and he seemed like he could sleep a few hours at a time. My husband returned from his trip and it was like we had a new baby…until a couple days later. Myles was AGAIN screaming inconsolably. We were doing our normal “try to comfort Myles” routine, when Mike, who was holding him, said something’s wrong and ran into the bedroom. He took his footies and diaper off and there was a huge rock-hard stool partially out of his little butt. It was so horrible we had to pull it out for him. There was blood, and we all cried. I felt like it was my fault for changing his formula and letting this happen to him.

Luckily, my well-rested husband had had the week of his trip to do research. He was reading all about colic and its causes. After the soy poop incident, like IMMEDIATELY after, he dragged us all out to the 24-hour Walmart and said he was buying Nutramigen. Over the night, he tried his first bottles of the smelly stuff. I am not exaggerating when I say he improved INSTANTLY. The next day, I was mentally present enough to research for myself what this formula was all about. It’s hypoallergenic, and it’s used when a baby has a milk or soy allergy. Everything came together. DUH, he has a MILK ALLERGY. His gas, his “baby acne,” his constant discomfort. It all made sense. I’m still a little puzzled as to why he couldn’t tolerate my breast milk either, but it could be because I was eating dairy and didn’t know about his allergy. This switch was life-changing. My baby started smiling and sleeping and his eyes took shape because they weren’t always so swollen from screaming. He had a voice that wasn’t hoarse, and he was playful and calm again like the day he was born.

I was so incredibly happy, but I was also outraged. How could a doctor see my baby, screaming until he was purple and with a rash covering his face and chest and NOT consider this as a possibility? He had every sign and symptom. We brought him in so many times, saw two different doctors, and no one helped us. The best advice she could offer was to put him down so I wouldn’t shake him. Really? When we went to his next appointment, she said, “Oh wow, great job for figuring that out,” and moved on. She was so casual about it, as if this was just some minor inconvenience.

It was more than a minor inconvenience, and there were so many emotions involved that then needed to be unpacked. When going through constant screaming while also sleep deprived and in pain from your birth tear, it really is like torture. I thought my baby hated me and that I shouldn’t have been his mom. I thought we were doing something wrong. When we found that the solution was so easy, it was almost worse. We were just 20 minutes and $40 away from the solution that ENTIRE time. In a way, we WERE causing his suffering by feeding him full of something he was allergic to. It took me until maybe a month ago to be able to even look at pictures of Myles as a newborn without crying, but I still feel a rush of anxiety and sadness when I see them. He was always red, his rash was terrible, his eyes were swollen, and he looked so sad in so many of the photos. I think of the times where when he was screaming, all I could do was stare at him and wish for silence. I even was angry with him, though I knew it wasn’t his fault. This experience is a big factor in why I developed PPD. All this, and the solution was right down the street the entire time. If a doctor would’ve given us the time of day, everything could have been different. My baby didn’t just “cry a lot.” He was screaming for relief and help, and that sound haunts me.

Moms, if you take anything from this story, please trust your instincts. It’s so much easier said than done, especially if you are a new parent. Trust me, I get it. On top of everything else you need to worry about, you should be able to trust your pediatrician. You might feel tired, vulnerable and physically in pain, but you DO know what is best for your baby. Don’t let anyone make you second guess yourself. Even medical professionals can be wrong. They can also be willfully ignorant to your child’s symptoms and needs based on unconscious biases. YOU are the one that goes home with the baby and sees everything that goes on. Please don’t trust their word over your intuition.

I know now that I know best, and I AM supposed to be this baby’s mom.

#truthmom