The Period of Purple Crying

Having a new baby is a wonderful experience full of joy and pleasure. Most parents knew their baby would cry. Of course, but for many parents, the crying can be far more than they ever expected. I could never have been prepared for how I would feel as an individual. When I had a child who cried like that. I was getting more and more frustrated, more and more angry. Why is this happening? What am I not doing? What is Karen, not doing, but I had absolutely no idea what that crying would be. Like, what it would do to our lives. How It would affect every aspect of Our Lives, for the next five months. I would say I grew more frustrated as the months wore on definitely more frustrated because I knew what was coming every single night and that there was nothing I could do about it and I would get frustrated. Just look what do you want? I have tried everything. I love you. I want to comfort you. I'm trying my hardest but it's not good enough. We use the term, the period of purple crying to talk about this crying that occurs in the first few months of life. And we do that because the Letters of the word purple, each stand for one of the characteristics, which is so frustrating. For parents, the first P stands for the peak pattern, where the amount of crime that occurs per day goes up and up and up until the second or third month of life, and then decreases, this crying can be either a lot or a little, at the time of the peak crying. The U is for the fact that most of this crying is unexpected, it starts and it stops for no apparent reason either in the environment or in the baby. And it is very frustrating to parents with At reason, the r is for the fact that these crying episodes are resistant to soothing, no matter what you do. They're not related to feeding. They're not related to dirty diapers. So, even though some of these bouts are unsuitable. It's still good to try to see the babies. If you do, you can reduce the crime by as much as 50%. The second p is because the baby looks like it's in pain, even when it's not. And the L is for the fact that the crying boats that go on. At this time are very long. Some of them can be an hour or two hours in length. And they can cry as much as five or six hours a day and still be completely normal. The E is for the fact that it tends to Cluster in the evening of the late afternoon. Just when the parents are the most tired, all of these things together are frustrating, very frustrating in and of themselves. And when they all occur at the same time, it can be terribly frustrating for parents. Even though the baby's totally, I couldn't make him stop crying. So I got frustrated. I felt like the worst mom on the planet. I felt like maybe I had a bad baby knowing about the period of purple clients, very important because it allows you to plan ahead. I know that this is stressful frustrating, crying period is going to happen. And when you know that you can do things for yourself and especially for other people are going to take care of your infant to prevent that from happening. I would just feel better about turning over Jack to somebody at that point in his life. If we both understood, what the period of purple crying, was if the caregiver I Split. Exactly. And they would know exactly what he's going through that they're going to deal with the same problems that I've been dealing with that. I need to take a break from. I would have been more comforted had I known, you know what, you may not be able to calm this baby down and that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you and there's nothing wrong with your husband and there's nothing wrong with that, baby. It's just normal. Finding out in the end. That there is nothing you can do. You can't fix a problem. It it took a lot of Stress off of everything. There's one, very serious consequence that can come of this, if parents aren't aware of it. And that is the condition. We know of is shaken, baby syndrome and shaken, baby syndrome happens at that instant. When in the midst of this frustration, the parents that caregivers whatever whoever has taken care of the baby, just lose it and they hear the crying. They're frustrated by it. They pick up the baby and they shake the baby and say something like, don't do that. Why are you crying? And in this instant? When the baby's head shakes back and forth. There's a very important danger in very sometimes, fatal consequence of what we call, shaken, baby syndrome. There are a number of reasons. Why shaking is so dangerous. And one of these is because the baby's head is relatively big compared to its body at this age. A second is that the baby's neck muscles are not as strong as they will be later. But the most important reason is that the adults who does the shaking is so much stronger and so much more powerful than the infant. The doctors had given her a CT scan and it was apparent, you could see on the CT scan, what brain cells were dying off in the and the swelling of her brain and all that. So, you know, once you start realizing that all of these things are happening to this little baby's brain, You have to know that the outcome is not going to be good. Now, this damage unfortunately causes very serious consequences. Some of that is Blindness. Some of that is difficulty with motor function, like walking talking and so on. And also later learning disabilities and difficulty with behavior. And unfortunately, in the worst case scenario, they can even cause death. It was totally beyond my comprehension. That something could have happened that caused Kelly to be in such a way as she was, she was so. Damaged. I know that he loved Elijah. I know that he regrets what happened. But for one reason or the other he lost. Absolutely. All control that day. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to prevent this from happening that can also help to comfort your baby. We have what we call three action steps that are helpful. And the first is that when your baby cries, you want to increase the carry Comfort walk and talk responses that you do, remember that some of the times, most of the times it will help but the baby will still continue crying sometimes and that's okay. The second thing is, if the crying continues and it's very, very frustrating for It's okay to walk away. Put your baby down in a quiet place. Make sure it's safe and walk away from the baby and gather yourself together again, and the third thing very important never ever shake or hurt your baby. I think that parents really need to know that, you know, some people there baby won't cry to the levels. That will absolutely frustrate them. But there are families who will have crying babies and have moments with their children. That will cause Them to get frustrated. And that frustration is okay. It is absolutely okay to feel frustrated. I didn't know that. That was another thing that compounded made me feel even worse as a parent because I didn't know it was okay, to be frustrated. It's okay to be frustrated. It's what you do when you get frustrated. And I think the biggest thing that we have to stress is set the baby down in a safe place. Make sure the baby is safe and walk away. ER it be 5 minutes and you go back and check on the baby, whether it be 10 minutes and you go back and check on the baby, you know, go downstairs, do something that you enjoy doing, but you can't calm that crying child. When you're already frustrated, you have to calm yourself and then try to go back and calm the child because it's it's probably not going to work. If you do it any other way. It's important to let everybody who takes care of your child, know about the period of purple crying and how frustrating it can be. And you may also want to be careful about who you leave your baby with if they're going to be frustrated by the crying and it's We better not to leave your baby with those relatives or friends, or whoever else. It might be. And you want to make sure that at some point, your doctor or your physician or your healthcare worker gets a chance to examine your babies. Make sure there's nothing else causing the crime. And finally, take care of yourself, do whatever it takes to give yourself a break, to have some respite to enjoy music or whatever it is. It calms you down, and it seems like you will not make it out of this time that this these few months are going to last forever, but they really do pass and it's not your fault. It's not anything you're doing wrong and it's not I think your baby's doing wrong and you will survive and Jack was on kind of the extreme end of it. He was a very colicky baby, but he was a healthy baby and he just like any other program show that he turns out just fine. He sure did.