Cover Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash
How one thing changed everything and I’m back on my two feet
“It’s normal. Babies cry,” people kept telling me.
That infuriated me.
Nate is my first baby, so I couldn’t know for sure, but I felt like something was wrong with him. I had never seen him not cry or scream, except when he was sleeping (which was rare) and when he was eating (even then…).
At first, he was gaining enough weight and filling 20 diapers daily, with at least 12 of those diapers for poop. When we asked people if it was normal that he was pooping that much, they told us it was, even if everywhere we read, they said 3 is the norm.
Then, his poop starting being “radioactive” green. The norm is yellow, so we wondered if that was normal. We were assured it was normal. Shortly after, Nate stopped gaining weight. The only way he’d sleep was on us or with our hand on his stomach. He also started screaming more while feeding.
Truthfully, these were the hardest two months of my life.
His screams penetrated my brain many times, leading me to lose patience frequently. It normally takes A LOT for me to lose patience, so this affected me deeply. To put it into context, I’ve known my wife for 16 years today, and she saw me lose patience 2–3 times only (pre-Nate).
With Nate, it was a daily thing.
Shortly after he was born, it was clear I couldn’t work full-time anymore. At first, I tried to cut my hours to 4–6 hours daily. But after a week of trying, I realized I couldn’t do more than 1.5 hours per day; my wife needed all the help she could get.
So, I took a paternity leave for July so I could help out more without worrying about work. But for someone self-employed like me, if I don’t put in effort in my business, not much money comes in, even if I have a few passive revenue streams. Combine the lower revenues with increased expenses, well, let’s just say my bank account doesn’t like me anymore.
So, I couldn’t pay for my expenses and my baby kept screaming all the time. Both my wife and I were getting desperate. We knew there was something wrong with him but everyone dismissed us.
We then read Dr. Sears’ article about the signs of a high needs baby. Nate fit into all of the characteristics of the article.
So, that’s it, baby Nate is just a high needs baby! Sucks to hear, but I guess that’s a relief.
Except it wasn’t.
It doesn’t change the fact that Nate was still screaming, money wasn’t coming in, and I couldn’t bear to leave my wife alone in this.
My paternity leave was far from what you’d expect. All I really did was try to comfort my baby, but even if we did everything people tell you to do, he still wouldn’t settle.
I cried many nights. My wife even more so.
When we read the signs of postpartum depression, we had many of them. I was the first to feel them. I was so detached and felt angry. I missed my old life dearly. After all, it was a perfect life I had worked hard to get to.
Deep down, I thought it was just a bad dream.
I thought I’d just wake up one day and everything would be back to “normal”. Of course, I was delusional. I didn’t accept my situation, and with every piercing scream, I’d regret my decision for wanting a baby in the first place (sorry Nate, I was in a bad place).
It took me six weeks to accept my situation. And once I accepted it, I started thinking about how I can start thriving again under the new circumstance. It was empowering.
But it didn’t stop Nate from screaming. I knew he was in pain, but no one believed us.
Sleepless nights piled on.
Family crying continued.
I kept joking that I’d leave the baby at Walmart and walk away. Of course, I wasn’t going to do that, but when you’re dealing with mental health issues, no matter the circumstance, you can’t think straight.
For high achievers like my wife and me, it was a massive blow in our face. For the first time in a while, there was nothing we could do. We had (too) high expectations of what/who our baby would be, and clearly he wasn’t that.
We thought we were bad parents.
We thought we were doing things wrong.
And when we told people everything we were doing, they couldn’t think of anything better to do. We were doing everything right. That’s even more frustrating if you ask me…
But three days ago, things changed almost immediately.
Finally, Nate’s doctor found the cause of the problem. Nate’s weak digestive system couldn’t handle my wife’s milk, even after she had cut pretty much everything from her diet.
His screams were, as we expected, screams of intense pain. His stomach was rejecting the milk but we kept giving it to him.
How could we not?
People said: “if he’s peeing and pooping that much, surely he’s eating enough.”
Wrong!
His digestive system just couldn’t handle the milk. Our doctor prescribed a special formula for Nate to supplement the breast milk.
On paper, that was good news. If it helps Nate, who cares that it’s not breast milk, so I thought.
But my wife cried.
For her, it meant defeat. It meant that she failed as a mother. She perceived that she wasn’t able to provide for her baby. And because we’re very aware of the benefits of breast milk, it was a tough pill to swallow that we couldn’t give him much of it anymore.
We gave him the formula, not expecting it to change everything overnight. But it did. Gone were the unrelenting screams. Gone was everything we felt was abnormal about him.
He drank like crazy.
At his age, he should be drinking about 90ml per feed. The doctor said that some babies even drink 150ml. His personal best, from yesterday, is 220ml. He frequently drinks more than 150ml now.
A week ago, he was in the 15th percentile of babies for low weight. The goal with supplementing with formula is that he’ll bulk up and raise in the percentiles (and of course, feel better).
It has only been 3 days and I know he’s gained a good amount of weight. It’s not hard to see and feel.
For the first time in 2 months, I have a baby that’s feeling well. I have the baby I expected to have. He’s a “normal” baby now. Sure he cries, but they’re completely normal cries. He cries for the right reasons you read in books. And when we attend to those needs, he stops.
It never happened before.
All this time my wife and I were right that something was wrong with Nate. No one believed us, but we persisted. We would not tolerate seeing him suffer so.
I came close to “giving up” many times during these two months, but I could never do that to my wife and son. If I didn’t fall into depression, I was certainly very close.
And to Nate: I apologize for thinking and saying (not to you directly) that I didn’t love you. It wasn’t your fault (and I knew that). At least, my actions showed that I cared deeply and I hope you’ll forgive me (it certainly looks like you did with your wonderful smile when you see me!)
Depression is a serious thing and I hate that it’s still a taboo subject. I pushed through by talking about it and I couldn’t be more grateful to people who listened, even when they couldn’t do anything else but listen. That kept me going, so thank you!
If you’re dealing with depression, of any type, find people who can support you. It’s hard to get out of it without a good listening ear.
You can do this!