How to Soothe Colic Baby Tears Without Losing Your Damn Mind

I was standing in my kitchen at 8:14 PM on a Tuesday, wearing gray maternity leggings that I had worn for literally four days straight because pulling real pants up over my postpartum belly felt like a personal attack. Maya was five weeks old. She was strapped to my chest in a carrier, arching her back so hard I thought she might actually snap in half, and screaming a sound that I can only describe as a tiny, furious velociraptor.

My phone was sitting on the counter, buzzing. My mother-in-law had just called to tell me that I needed to give the baby a bottle of warm water with boiled fennel because "that's what we did in the eighties." The Target cashier earlier that morning had told me to just let her cry it out to expand her lungs. And my extremely fit yoga mom friend had texted me, asking if I had tried infant cranial sacral therapy and eliminating dairy, soy, gluten, sugar, and joy from my diet.

I was so tired my teeth hurt. I was on my fourth cup of coffee, which I had reheated in the microwave three times and then finally just drank cold while staring at the sink. Because when you've an infant who won't stop crying, you don't even have the mental capacity to press the 'add 30 seconds' button on the microwave.

Anyway, the point is, everybody has an opinion when your baby is screaming, but nobody is actually in your living room at 3 AM pacing the floorboards with you. Finding ways to calm a screaming newborn with belly issues is basically a giant, sleep-deprived science experiment where the variables keep changing and you're the very unqualified lead scientist.

The absolute chaos of getting a diagnosis

When I finally took Maya to our pediatrician, Dr. Aris, I was fully convinced she had some rare intestinal disease. I mean, her little knees were constantly pulled up to her chest, her fists were clenched so tight her knuckles were white, and her stomach felt like a tiny, angry drum. I sat in the sterile little exam room and just cried while I told him she was screaming for like, five hours a night.

He handed me a tissue and told me about this thing called the Rule of Threes. Apparently, the medical world defines a baby with colic as one who cries for more than three hours a day, for more than three days a week, starting around three weeks of age. Which, like, who measured this? What if she only cries for two hours and fifty minutes? Does she not have it? Is she just being a jerk? Dr. Aris laughed when I asked that and said it's just a general guideline, but yeah, Maya definitely had it.

He told me it usually peaks around six weeks and magically goes away by three or four months. Four months. I remember doing the math in my head and realizing that was like, ninety days away. Ninety days of five-hour scream fests. I thought I was going to throw up my cold coffee.

What the hell is actually wrong with them

The most frustrating part about all of this is that nobody genuinely knows what causes it. Dr. Aris mumbled something to me about her nervous system just being super immature and totally overwhelmed by the world outside the womb. Like, she couldn't handle lights, sounds, or her own bodily functions.

He also mentioned her gut bacteria might be basically a frat party—like she didn't have enough of the good protective bacteria and had way too much of the gas-producing stuff. Which, honestly, same. He said I could try infant probiotics, which we did, and maybe they helped a little? Or maybe time just passed. It’s impossible to tell.

Oh, and about the diet stuff. People love to tell you it's an allergy to cow's milk protein in your breastmilk or formula, but my doctor said that’s really super rare, like less than 5% of babies, so I didn't need to go on a miserable starvation diet just yet.

Things I tried that really kept us alive

Because you can't just fix it, you basically just have to survive it. And instead of doing the whole 'stop feeding them so much, start spacing out the bottles, burp them constantly' routine that every blog pushes, I just tried to keep Maya upright for like ten minutes after she ate while I stared at the wall.

But the motion stuff. Oh god, the motion.

I'd strap Maya into the carrier right before the witching hour started at 5 PM. I figured if I caught her before she started screaming, maybe I could trick her nervous system into staying calm. I'd wear her and literally vacuum the same rug for forty-five minutes. The loud, aggressive noise of the vacuum cleaner combined with my aggressive pacing was the only thing that worked.

I'm not kidding, we had the cleanest living room rug in the state of Pennsylvania. My husband, Dave, would come home from work, see me wearing the baby and vacuuming a spotless floor with a dead-eyed stare, and he would just slowly back out of the room.

When the vacuuming failed, we did the "colic hold"—where you lay them tummy-down across your forearm and rub their back. It puts counter-pressure on their bloated little bellies. Dave was better at this because his arms are longer, so he would just walk laps around the kitchen island holding her like a football while I sat on the floor and cried.

The other thing that saved my sanity was swaddling. Not just any swaddling, but like, extreme burrito wrapping. My absolute favorite was this Blue Fox in Forest Bamboo Baby Blanket I found from Kianao. It's so stupidly soft. Because it’s this bamboo-cotton blend, I could wrap her up incredibly tight so she couldn't startle herself awake, but she wouldn't overheat and get all sweaty and gross. The blue pattern was also just really pretty, which sounds dumb, but when you're trapped in a dark room rocking a screaming potato for three hours, having something aesthetically pleasing to look at kind of helps your mental state. I used that blanket so much it basically became a member of our family.

If you're in the thick of it and looking for fabrics that seriously breathe so you can swaddle your kid without giving them heat rash, you should probably go browse some organic baby blankets and find one that doesn't feel like plastic.

Stuff that looked pretty but didn't fix the screaming

You know what a screaming newborn doesn't care about? Educational toys.

I bought this Panda Play Gym Set because it looked gorgeous and Scandinavian and I thought, "Oh, I'll just lay her under this beautiful wooden teepee and she'll be stimulated and stop crying." Look, it's gorgeous. The little crocheted panda is adorable. But when a baby is in full back-arching goblin mode, they don't give a single crap about a panda.

It's just okay for the newborn phase. Honestly, it's useless for the newborn phase. But! When she hit four months and the crying finally stopped, we pulled it back out and she loved it. She would bat at the little stars and coo. So buy it for the aesthetic, but don't expect it to cure gastrointestinal distress.

I'll say, though, sometimes sticking something in her mouth to gnaw on honestly distracted her from her stomach pain. We had this Handmade Wood & Silicone Teether Ring that I'd just kind of hold against her lips. The texture of the wood and the squishy silicone beads gave her something else to focus on besides the gas. I don't know the exact science there, I just know that sometimes chewing on a wooden ring bought me four minutes of silence, and I took it.

Please put the baby down

This is the part of the article where things get a little heavy, but we've to talk about it.

The sleep deprivation and the constant, high-pitched shrieking does something to your brain. It triggers a literal fight-or-flight response. There were nights when Maya wouldn't stop crying, and I could feel this hot, terrifying rage bubbling up in my chest. I felt like a monster. I felt like the worst mother on the planet because I wanted to just scream back at her.

At Maya's two-month appointment, I looked like an actual zombie. Dr. Aris didn't even look at me. He looked directly at Dave and said, "If Sarah is crying as hard as the baby, or if her shoulders are up by her ears and she looks like she's going to snap, take the baby. And Sarah, if Dave isn't there, you put that baby on her back in the crib, you shut the nursery door, and you go stand in the shower with the water running for ten minutes. Crying in a safe crib never killed a baby. Shaken baby syndrome does."

I needed a medical professional to give me permission to walk away. It's not bad parenting to put your screaming child in a safe place and walk outside to breathe cold air. It's survival. It's keeping everyone safe. If you're reading this and you're at your breaking point, put the kid down. Walk away. Drink some water. They will be fine.

You're doing a good job. Even if your house smells like spit-up and you're wearing the same leggings from Tuesday and you're crying in the hallway. You're doing a good job. It ends. I promise you, one day they just wake up and they don't scream anymore, and you'll drink a hot cup of coffee and realize you survived the trenches.

If you need a tiny bit of retail therapy to cope, go check out Kianao's baby essentials and get yourself that really soft bamboo blanket. You deserve it.

The messy questions everyone asks (FAQ)

Will I ever sleep again or is this my life now?

Yeah, oh my god, yes you'll sleep again. I thought I was going to die of exhaustion, but right around 14 weeks, Maya just... stopped. The switch flipped. Her digestive tract figured out how to work, her nervous system chilled out, and she started sleeping in actual chunks. You will sleep again. Just hold on.

Are gas drops seriously doing anything?

My pediatrician basically told me that simethicone gas drops are mostly placebo for the parents. They break up big gas bubbles into smaller ones, but they don't genuinely stop the crying if it's true colic. I still gave them to Maya because I felt like I needed to *do* something, but honestly, the bicycle legs and the belly massages did way more than the expensive drops.

Does what I eat matter if I'm breastfeeding?

Look, the internet will tell you to stop eating dairy, caffeine, spicy food, broccoli, beans, and everything that brings you joy. But my doctor said true food allergies only cause extreme crying in a tiny fraction of babies. Usually, there are other signs like bloody poop or severe rashes. Before you go on a miserable diet of plain chicken and water, talk to your pediatrician. I kept drinking my coffee.

Is it okay if I wear noise-canceling headphones while holding them?

Hell yes it's. Putting in my AirPods and playing a true crime podcast on high volume while I bounced Maya in the dark was the only way I didn't lose my mind. You're still holding them. You're still comforting them. You just aren't letting their 100-decibel shrieks rupture your eardrums and your sanity. Do what you gotta do.