Colic Quotes

I worked for Miss Margaret thirty-eight years. She had her a baby girl with the colic and the only thing that stopped the hurting was to hold her. So I made me a wrap. I tied her up on my waist, toted her around all day with me for a entire year. That baby like to break my back. Put ice packs on it ever night and still do. But I loved that girl. And I loved Miss Margaret. Miss Margaret always made me put my hair up in a rag, say she know coloreds don't wash their hair. Counted ever piece a silver after I done the polishing. When Miss Margaret die of the lady problems thirty years later, I go to the funeral. Her husband hug me, cry on my shoulder. When it's over, he give me a envelope. Inside a letter from Miss Margaret reading, 'Thank you. For making my baby stop hurting. I never forgot it.' Callie takes off her black-rimmed glasses, wipes her eyes. If any white lady reads my story, that's what I want them to know. Saying thank you, when you really mean it, when you remember what someone done for you-she shakes her head, stares down at the scratched table-it's so good.

My father felt it was his duty to continue to treat animals long after he stopped getting paid. He couldn't stand by and watch a horse colic or a cow labor with a breech calf even though it meant personal ruin. The parallel is undeniable. There is no question I am the only thing standing between these animals and the business practices of August and Uncle Al, and what my father would do - what my father would want me to do - is look after them, and I am filled with that absolute and unwavering conviction. No matter what I did last night, I cannot leave these animals. I am their shepherd, their protector. And it's more than a duty. It's a covenant with my father.

My own kind. I'm not sure there's a name for us. I suspect we're born this way: our hearts screwed in tight, already a little broken. We hate sentimentality and yet we're deeply sentimental. Low-grade Romantics. Tough but susceptible. Afflicted by parking lots, empty courtyards, nostalgic pop music. When we cried for no reason as babies, just hauled off and wailed, our parents seemed to know, instinctively, that it wasn't diaper rash or colic. It was something deeper that they couldn't find a comfort for, though the good ones tried mightily, shaking rattles like maniacs and singing, "Happy Birthday" a little louder than called for. We weren't morose little kids. We could be really happy.

Broken Wind believed that we are traumatized as babies by intestinal gas or colic. The great shaman invented a technique called "gastral projection" to help release these traumas. His philosophy was simple: "To air is human ... but to really cut one loose is divine.

Sex is the strongest force in the universe. Forget about the Grand Unifying Theory, Stephen Hawking, I’ll tell you what it is: women. Aren’t women the strongest sex? What force is more magnetic than that? It’s not just pussy. We’re attracted to women for their energy. We’re attracted to their fluidness, their ability to nurture a baby without even knowing how, to be able to put up with screaming and crying and colic and shitty diapers where men would go, “I’m fucking outta here! I’m gonna go kill me a saber-toothed woolly mammoth an’bring it on home to eat tonight. Wa-haaaaaa!” We don’t have tits; we couldn’t nourish a gnat.

Heroin is a fine business,” the directors of Bayer announced proudly and advertised the substance as a remedy for headaches, for general indisposition, and also as a cough syrup for children. It was even recommended to babies for colic or sleeping problems.

Heroin is a fine business,” the directors of Bayer announced proudly and advertised the substance as a remedy for headaches, for general indisposition, and also as a cough syrup for children. It was even recommended to babies for colic or sleeping problems.4

My father felt it his duty to continue to treat animals long after he stopped getting paid. He couldn’t stand by and watch a horse colic or a cow labor with a breech calf even though it meant personal ruin. The parallel is undeniable. There is no question that I am the only thing standing between these animals and the business practices of August and Uncle Al, and what my father would do—what my father would want me to do—is look after them, and I am filled with that absolute and unwavering conviction. No matter what I did last night, I cannot leave these animals. I am their shepherd, their protector. And it’s more than a duty. It’s a covenant with my father.

It was hard to do, but I had my baby, and when you have a screaming three month old with colic who won’t sleep through the night, it’s hard to get caught up in your own bullshit.

He'd seen her pale skin, glowing like a ripe peach in the flickering light of the kerosene lamps, and the sight had left him with a bad case of the horn colic.

These charitable people never know vinegar from wine till they have swallowed it and got the colic.

Love,’ Fringilla said slowly, ‘is like renal colic. Until you have an attack, you can’t even imagine what it’s like. And when people tell you about it you don’t believe them.

Mrs. Hill had changed Lyddie’s nappies, wiped her snotty nose, had nursed her through colic

Love,' Fringilla said slowly, 'is like renal colic. Until you have an attack, you can't even imagine what it's like. And when people tell you about it you don't believe them.

colic,

Sure, some movies don’t work. Some fail in their intent. But anyone who says they hated a movie is treating a voluntarily shared human experience like a bad Red-Eye out of LAX. The departure is delayed for hours, there’s turbulence that scares even the flight attendants, the guy across from you vomits, they can’t serve any food and the booze runs out, you’re seated next to twin babies with the colic, and you land too late for your meeting in the city. You can hate that. But hating a movie misses the damn point. Would you say you hated the seventh birthday party of your girlfriend’s niece or a ball game that went eleven innings and ended 1–0? You hate cake and extra baseball for your money? Hate should be saved for fascism and steamed broccoli that’s gone cold.

A horse's fresh foam, extracted and infused with rose oil loosens strong ear pains" – Jonston [1657b, p. 19]. The dung boiled in white wine has strength against colic.  Applied topically it also soothes pain for those with swollen joints.

General Taylor participated in the celebration of the Fourth of July, a very hot day, by hearing a long speech from the Hon. Henry S. Foote, at the base of the Washington Monument. Returning from the celebration much heated and fatigued, he partook too freely of his favorite iced milk with cherries, and during that night was seized with a severe colic, which by morning had quite prostrated him. It was said that he sent for his son-in-law, Surgeon Wood, United States Army, stationed in Baltimore, and declined medical assistance from anybody else. Mr. Ewing visited him several times, and was manifestly uneasy and anxious, as was also his son-in-law, Major Bliss, then of the army, and his confidential secretary. He rapidly grew worse, and died in about four days.

His seventeen murders aside, Bob was not such a bad guy. I know, because I rode with him and his boys for almost a year. Once, Bob had stayed up half the night to sing an old Apache healing chant to a horse that had bloated with the colic. It worked too. Next morning we found a half-digested tumbleweed in a pile of dung. It measured three feet across. That must have been one hell of a chant.

Humanity is a very old institution. Heredity, cross-breeding have given an irresistible force to bad habits, to vicious reflexes. One person sneezes and gasps because he is passing a rosebush, another breaks out in an eruption at the smell of wet paint, has frequent attacks of colic if he has to start on a journey, and grandchildren of thieves who are themselves millionaires and generous cannot resist the temptation to rob you of fifty francs.

Swaddling has been shown to reduce crying and improve sleep. It is important to swaddle in a way that allows the baby to move its legs and hips. Colic is defined as excessive crying. It is self-limiting, meaning it will stop eventually. Changing formula or maternal diet, treatment with a probiotic, or both have shown some positive impacts. Collecting data on your baby is fun! But not necessary or especially useful. Exposing your infant to germs early on risks their getting sick, and the interventions for a feverish infant are aggressive and typically include a spinal tap. Limiting germ exposure may be a good idea, even if just to avoid these interventions.

I wasn’t crying,” I said. “And I hope you’re not packing any shorts. Nobody wears shorts in Manhattan. And they’ll shoot you in the street if you go around in those disgusting tennis shoes. You’ll look ridiculous. Your father isn’t paying this much for you to go look ridiculous in New York City.” I wanted her to think that I was crying over my father’s cancer, but that wasn’t quite it. “Well, Goddamnit, if you insist on getting weepy,” my mother said, turning to leave. “You know, when you were a baby, I crushed Valium into your bottle? You had colic and cried for hours and hours, inconsolable and for no good reason. And change your shirt. I can see the sweat under your arms. I’m going to bed.

I'll never forget that time, when we first came here, and our horse had the colic, and I ran over to your place—your father was away, and you came home with me and showed father how to let the wind out of the horse. You were only a little girl then, but you knew ever so much more about farm work than poor father. You remember how homesick I used to get, and what long talks we used to have coming from school? We've someway always felt alike about things.” “Yes, that's it; we've liked the same things and we've liked them together, without anybody else knowing. And we've had good times, hunting for Christmas trees and going for ducks and making our plum wine together every year. We've never either of us had any other close friend. And now”—Alexandra wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron—

Sometimes at about 3 months of age, after the extreme fussiness/colic has dissipated, or in a baby who had common fussiness/crying, a child who had been sleeping well begins waking at night or crying at night and during the day. The parents also may note heightened activity with wild screaming spells. These children have accumulated a sleep debt and decided that they would rather play with their parents than be placed in a dark, quiet, and boring room. Parents who do not recognize the new sleep debt might believe that this new night waking represents hunger due to a “growth spurt” or insufficient breast milk. But when these parents begin to focus on establishing a healthy night-sleep schedule, when they put these babies in their cribs when the babies need to sleep, and when they shield their babies from overstimulation, the frequent night waking stops. If

Myles P. doesn’t resist, he sinks down and down, letting the sound of Willard’s lisp close over him light as a foaming wave and he drifts gently down, without a gurgle, past the floating beds of giant kelp and the abalone-eating otters, the unschooled senoritas and egg-filled cabezon, he thinks he might touch his toes to the bottom when he gets there and wonders if it will be mud or just more cement. 'Meaning other animals, shoot, soon as the young’s able to hunt or run, mother takes off and dad’s eyeing the offsprung for dinner. But we can’t let ours be, colic to college, we’re constantly wiping their little booger’d noses, dolling out free dough and freer advice, thinking they’ll powder our own asses later in the home. But a baby’s just a for-instance, fact is, others never tender the way you do. Species’d peter, rent’d come due.' Willard goes to Hiro, 'The punchline, my friend, is giving without wanting’s the trick once you’ve managed that, you’ve partly pierced heaven a bunghole, but it’s a pure penniless instigation that you ain’t got ‘n ain’t gonna get got, ‘n ain’t gonna get it, not on no roadfuckingtrip.' 'Meaning?' says Hiro 'Meaning love’s all true.

Despite these trends, our culture pushes a Bad Energy world onto kids who cannot protect themselves. Our culture has normalized giving one-year-olds packaged, ultra-processed foods like cake, Goldfish, rice puffs, juice, and french fries. We slather toxic, artificially scented lotions and shampoos all over their tiny bodies as soon as their first hospital bath. We damage their livers and antioxidant capacity with too much acetaminophen (Tylenol) at the first sign of fussiness or a cold. We blast their microbiomes with heavy-duty antibiotics at the first sign of a possible ear infection. And we interrupt their sleep for unconscionably early school times, then force them to sit at desks in school for six or more hours a day. We create terror and chronic stress in their bodies from social media and overall media exposure. The world kids live in is inflammatory and metabolically disastrous unless parents staunchly go against the tide of “normal” American culture. The irony is that so many parents wish that parenting were easier—fewer infections, less colic, easier behavioral patterns—without thinking through the lens of energy production in their children’s bodies. We can do so much to make our lives and our kids’ lives easier by controlling the controllable.

To be a mother I must leave the telephone unanswered, work undone, arrangements unmet. To be myself I must let the baby cry, must forestall her hunger or leave her for evenings out, must forget her in order to think about other things. To succeed in being one means to fail at being the other. The break between mother and self was less clean than I had imagined it in the taxi: and yet it was a premonition, too; for later, even in my best moments, I never feel myself to have progressed beyond this division. I merely learn to legislate for two states, and to secure the border between them. At first, though, I am driven to work at the newer of the two skills, which is motherhood; and it is with a shock that I see, like a plummeting stock market, the resulting plunge in my own significance. Consequently I bury myself further in the small successes of nurture. After three or four weeks I reach a distant point, a remote outpost at which my grasp of the baby’s calorific intake, hours of sleep, motor development and patterns of crying is professorial, while the rest of my life resembles a deserted settlement, an abandoned building in which a rotten timber occasionally breaks and comes crashing to the floor, scattering mice. I am invited to a party, and though I decide to go, and bathe and dress at the appointed hour, I end up sitting in the kitchen and crying while elsewhere its frivolous minutes tick by and then elapse. The baby develops colic, and the bauble of motherhood is once more crushed as easily as eggshell. The question of what a woman is if she is not a mother has been superceded for me by that of what a woman is if she is a mother; and of what a mother, in fact, is.

February 16 One Horse, Three Friends He does great things too marvelous to understand. He performs countless miracles. —Job 5:9 It was time to say good-bye. The vet frowned, “I’ll be back at ten to put him down.” Colic is the number one killer of horses, and Cash’s condition was much worse. His twisted gut left no room for hope. Without hope, I went down on my knees crying out to God. My year had been much like Job’s. “He’s my best friend—the only one who loves me, and now you’re taking him too. Please God, no!” I called my friends with the news. Within an hour, Debbie and Patti came to pray and, I thought, say their good-byes. Instead, Debbie pulled out her anointing oil and prayed like I’d never heard. “Where’s your faith?” was her only comment as we applied heating pads, oil, and rubbed his stomach for hours. Finally Debbie stood. “He’s going to live.” Within minutes, Cash lifted his head and pounded the barn door. I let him out and he ran full speed. The vet returned to scratch her head. “This is not possible.” With the love of friends and a horse, God chose to perform a miracle that night in the same place He did two thousand years ago: a stable. When God shows His love through a miracle, our lives are never the same. — Renee Shuping Cassidy —

De’il gie ye colic, the wame o’ ye, fause thief! Daur ye say Mass in my lug?” (“The Devil give you colic in your stomach, you false thief! Do you dare to say a Mass in my ear?”)

When I was a piglet, the grass was much greener, Always looked as if it had just come from the cleaner, And life was much gayer, in so many ways. Ah, those were the days! Now I’m old, and my joints are increasingly creaky; My hearing is poor, and my memory’s leaky; And I weep as I put down these sad little rhymes. Ah, those were the times! In my youth, I was always prepared for a frolic; I never had pains, rheumatism or colic; I never had aches: head, stomach or tooth. Ah, the days of my youth! “Good land, Freddy, you sound as if you were about ninety years old,” Mrs. Wiggins said with a laugh.

So until babies are closer to term and stuff comes up into the pharynx, their response may be to simply hold their breath, resulting in apnea and sometimes slowing of their heart rate. As one of the more frightening complications of reflux in infancy, this typically warrants treatment and close cardiopulmonary monitoring.

Dr. Cheyne goes on to speak of the cure, on similar principles, of a great many other difficult or dangerous diseases, as asthma, pleurisy, hemorrhage, mania, jaundice, bilious colic, rheumatism, scurvy, and venereal disease; but he modestly owns that, in his opinion on these, he does not feel such entire confidence as in the former cases, for want of sufficient experiments.

Shh.” She said to River then went back to Max. “Uh, Max? What’s going on? You look wrecked.” “Oh yeah. It’s been crazy. Mariah went back to school this week and the twins have the colic.” “Ok. That sucks. But what’s with the JUGS?” Alyssa had a questioning look on her face. “Chrissy has been knackered and I decided to help. Well, these wee ones won’t take the bottle. So, Zeke let me try it out. They work pretty good.” Max’s accent was slipping out. “You just fed the twins then?” “Oh no.” “Then why are you wearing those tits man?” River interjected. Max glared at the screen. “Who is that?” “It’s River Strom.” “Fuck me.” Max mumbled. “Hey Maxy!” River gave a little wave.

Medicinally, cabbage eating was said to prevent drunkenness or at least to alleviate hangovers, both recurrent Roman problems; it was also the vegetable of choice for curing colic, paralysis, and the plague.

The parenting books told me everything I needed to know about pregnancy and birth and colic, but not one of them prepared me for five-year-olds and their ability to lose shoes.

As you’ll read in Chapter 11, when colic was first described in the 1950s it was the hot new thing. And throughout the latter twentieth century whenever a baby cried, she was diagnosed with colic. It was a constellation of symptoms positioned as a diagnosis that had no clear treatment. For better or worse, colic was the label that kept pediatricians free and clear from fixing the problem. There was no fix. Fast-forward to the early twenty-first century. Reflux is the new colic. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues have fallen into the habit of labeling every inexplicably fussy baby with reflux. What’s worse, some act on the impulse and prescribe medications when they’re not indicated. Some of this is a function of a new label. Part of this may be a consequence of doctors seeing more and more babies in the same eight-hour clinic day. A label and the promise of a pill have a certain appeal when facing a desperate, tired mom in a six-minute follow-up visit. So proceed with caution if your doctor hears crying, sees a dirty burp cloth, and immediately wants to start medication. Remember that you are your baby’s lead advocate. Take the time to consider all that we’ve talked about over the past few pages before assuming medication is the only and best solution.

Suddenly it is not she who needs me, but I who need her. Don't ask me to explain, I can't. I can. We are creatures who must give comfort. We ache to give comfort, to heal what hurts. The colic is making me a mother.

Charlotte and Henrey were fussing over baby Charel, who had colic and wished everyone to know about it.

What can be wrong?” they asked the doctor and their friends and themselves. “Oh, nothing but colic, it usually is just colic.” So the formula was changed, and that did work for a time. But only for a time. It had to be changed again and yet again. Then the doctor himself began to seem uncertain.…

Have you seen those kids nowadays? What they’re like? They’re f****** nightmares. And you do feel like strangling them. At times. They scream like banshees or maniacs. They’re mini sociopaths in the making. It should be illegal to scream like they do. It’s criminal. They should be arrested or silenced with———————. Yeah, whatever. While you wonder why the f*** they’re screaming like crazy, their mom shows up and tell you that they actually sh** their pants. Sorry. ‘Diapers.’ They sh** their ‘diapers’. So, take a hint. And turns out that all along, they were hungry, thirsty for coconut water. Or is it milk? Oh that’s right, ‘nuts.’ Babies are pros at juggling nuts while having colic nanoseconds ago. Either way, they’re diminutive unruly monsters whose terrorizing skills should not be underestimated.

Have you seen those kids nowadays? What they’re like? They’re f****** nightmares. And you do feel like strangling them. At times. They scream like banshees or maniacs. They’re mini sociopaths in the making. It should be illegal to scream like they do. It’s criminal. They should be arrested or silenced with———————. Yeah, whatever. While you wonder why the f*** they’re screaming like crazy, their mom shows up and tell you that they actually sh** their pants. Sorry. ‘Diapers.’ They sh** their ‘diapers’. So, take a hint. And turns out that all along, they were hungry, thirsty for coconut water. Or is it milk? Oh that’s right, ‘nuts.’ Babies are pros at juggling nuts while having colic nanoseconds ago. Either way, they’re diminutive unruly monsters whose terrorizing skills should not be underestimated.

Have you seen those kids nowadays? What they’re like? They’re f****** nightmares. And you do feel like strangling them. At times. They scream like banshees or maniacs. They’re mini sociopaths in the making. It should be illegal to scream like they do. It’s criminal. They should be arrested or silenced with———————. Yeah, whatever. While you wonder why the f*** they’re screaming like crazy, their mom shows up and tell you that they actually sh** their pants. Sorry. ‘Diapers.’ They sh** their ‘diapers’. So, take a hint. And turns out that all along, they were hungry, thirsty for coconut water. Or is it milk? Oh that’s right, ‘nuts.’ Babies are pros at juggling nuts while having colic nanoseconds ago. Either way, they’re diminutive unruly monsters whose terrorizing skills should not be underestimated.

At first, he dealt with the things other men in her life wouldn’t have dared to. He bathed her, sang her to sleep, cleaned her shit. If he had breasts, he would have fed her. But after the first two months, he tired of such things. Was as if he had expected the baby to take care of herself after a few months had passed. When she’d developed a rash on her leg, he told Shweta that it would go away on its own. During her bout of colic, he said the same thing. And when she died, she now wondered if some veiled part of him basked in relief.

The oil of Lady’s Mantle, taken internally, eases colic, expels wind, and opens obstructions of the kidneys, ureters and, bladder, expelling gravel, stones, and sand, “cleansing them from any Tartarous Mucilage lodged therein.

By visiting a trusted baby chiropractor like Dr. Grewal at Foundations Family Chiropractic, these misalignments can be identified and corrected through gentle adjustments.

When I go out into the street and look people in the eye, I understand how the system works on society. Human beings have abandoned without realizing what is truly essential in this life, and they have done so because there are many titles to be harvested waiting in the dens of inclusive indoctrination, many jobs that demand that doctrine, many tributes and debts to silence Caesar, in this frivolous and superficial holographic recreation of life, love is similar to a colic, none of them believe that feeling "butterflies in the stomach" is an experience we are part of when we are in the first stage of falling in love. So, all that once was, no longer will be, and depersonalizing the human race is a great job of social engineering that the ancient shapers of humanity did very well in times past and present. But we cannot cross the bridge or break the gap or make a quantum leap through consciousness if we do not unite! If we cannot connect our hearts with our brains and send a signal across the skies to the farthest reaches of this planet, we will be lost forever! So do you realize what I am talking about? Do you understand why to this world you are just a number that adds up with your work and subtracts with your old age? Do you understand why it is necessary to regain that power before it is too late? The new generations are being subjected to a large-scale social experiment, the days will come when the men and women of the future will be replaced by a thing similar to artificial intelligence and will no longer need feelings, much less organs. So... When I go out on the street and look people in the eye, that's when I understand how the system works on society. From the book The Game of Life

My dear melancholy, Enraged she's colic! Lovely indeed a fellow And so sweet a collie. Never but so mellow Can she be like a dolly? However she's so frolic! Or could she get yellow Like a peach, but jolly? You'll regret her follies!

Parents have come to believe the following conditions are “normal” (as in, many people have them and there’s nothing that can be done) when, in fact, they are not: Colic Eczema Asthma Diabetes Allergies (food/environmental) ADHD Autism Learning disabilities Picky eating

Crying It Out (Extinction) The optimal time to use this strategy is after three to four months of age (post–due date). Perhaps this is when both parents must return to work full-time or with postcolicky infants (colic usually starts to dissipate at three to four months) or after parents see partial success with graduated extinction. Extinction can successfully be used earlier, but most parents find it unacceptably harsh for younger babies. Extinction was used with some twins in my survey at five to six months of age after the due date, when the parents had suffered from becoming desperately sleep-deprived. At three to four months, many parents in my survey used extinction successfully. Extinction means open-ended crying at night. The process is pretty straightforward: if you know that it is time to sleep and not time to feed, you ignore the crying, without a time limit. Initially, the baby will fall asleep after wearing herself out crying, but very quickly this process teaches the baby how to fall asleep unassisted without protest or crying. And the baby then stays asleep for a longer time. A major fear here is that prolonged crying by one twin will disturb the sleeping of the other. Parents in my survey stated that the sleepy twin, surprisingly, almost always adapted to the crying after a few nights and slept through their sibling’s protests. Of course, another major fear is that you will harm your child by letting him cry. But as long as he is safely in his crib, letting him cry is only a means to an end of better sleeping. There is no published research showing that this procedure causes any harm to children. In contrast, there is no question that not sleeping well truly harms them. If your twins’ bedtime is early and naps are in place, the process of extinction usually takes three to five nights. In general, the parents in my survey describe the first night’s crying to be thirty to forty-five minutes, the second night’s ten to thirty minutes, and the third night’s zero to ten minutes. If their bedtime is too late or a twin is not napping well, the process may take much longer, or it may appear to work but the success is short-lived. Sometimes older children cry more on the second night than on the first, but the entire process still takes just a few days. “We started around three or four months as fatigue from care and unpredictable sleep schedules reached the breaking point. The first night, our babies cried for about twenty minutes; the second for about ten minutes. They’ve slept through the night ever since.

Everyone knows the nature of colic,” quipped Frederick of Prussia. “When a heavy drinker dies from colic, it teaches us to be sober,” deadpanned Voltaire.

Breastfeeding mothers’ diet to escape allergies and colic. No babies in my closest family had allergies, gases or colic. I think that is to the result of a mother’s diet we recommend from generation to generation. We do not eat any gas-forming foods like broccoli or cabbage, and we avoid allergens like red fruits. I did, however, drink a lot of milk, which can cause gases. In addition, and contradicting advice on how to stay fit after birth, I ate tons of butter. It was an obsession during that time, for I do not usually consume dairy that much. It did not cause digestion problems for my baby, but it made my milk really thick. She got nice cheeks. I think my body knew more about needs of the baby than my brain. In general, I ate meat and neutral vegetables–no sweets, no soda, and not much shell fish. It may seem difficult to limit yourself to certain kinds of food, but it is not at all. Eat steaks with sweet potato, spring beans, or salad. It is tasty, balanced and quite habitual for many Americans. Sometimes mothers do have to give up some food preferences for several months to help their babies grow healthy and feel good. My cousin, a Korean girl, continued to eat spicy food during breastfeeding. It was not good for my newborn niece, who had an allergic reaction all over her face and body and was scratching herself badly. She had red spots all over.

Bit burrs. Tongue-tying. Saddling for exercise and saddling for races. There was shoeing and bandaging, conditioning and equipment. I had to learn to read track surfaces and stakes sheets, and calculate weight allowances. I had to know the diseases and ailments forward and back—bowed tendons and splints, foundering, bucked shins, bone chips, slab fractures, and quarter cracks. Thoroughbreds were glorious and also fragile in very specific ways. They often had small hearts, and the exertion of racing also made them susceptible to haemorrhaging in the lungs. Undetected colic could kill them—and

After dinner Marlboro Man and I sat on the sofa in our dimly lit house and marveled at the new little life before us. Her sweet little grunts…her impossibly tiny ears…how peacefully she slept, wrinkled and warm, in front of us. We unwrapped her from her tight swaddle, then wrapped her again. Then we unwrapped her and changed her diaper, then wrapped her again. Then we put her in the crib for the night, patted her sweet belly, and went to bed ourselves, where we fell dead asleep in each other’s arms, blissful that the hard part was behind us. A full night’s sleep was all I needed, I reckoned, before I felt like myself again. The sun would come out tomorrow…I was sure of it. We were sleeping soundly when I heard the baby crying twenty minutes later. I shot out of bed and went to her room. She must be hungry, I thought, and fed her in the glider rocking chair before putting her in her crib and going back to bed myself. Forty-five minutes after my head hit the pillow, I was awakened again to the sound of crying. Looking at the clock, I was sure I was having a bad dream. Bleary-eyed, I stumbled to her room again and repeated the feeding ritual. Hmmm, I thought as I tried to keep from nodding off in the chair. This is strange. She must have some sort of problem, I imagined--maybe that cowlick or colic I’d heard about in a movie somewhere? Goiter or gouter or gout? Strange diagnoses pummeled my sleep-deprived brain. Before the sun came up, I’d gotten up six more times, each time thinking it had to be the last, and if it wasn’t, it might actually kill me. I woke up the next morning, the blinding sun shining in my eyes. Marlboro Man was walking in our room, holding our baby girl, who was crying hysterically in his arms. “I tried to let you sleep,” he said. “But she’s not having it.” He looked helpless, like a man completely out of options. My eyes would hardly open. “Here.” I reached out, motioning Marlboro Man to place the little suckling in the warm spot on the bed beside me. Eyes still closed, I went into autopilot mode, unbuttoning my pajama top and moving my breast toward her face, not caring one bit that Marlboro Man was standing there watching me. The baby found what she wanted and went to town. Marlboro Man sat on the bed and played with my hair. “You didn’t get much sleep,” he said. “Yeah,” I said, completely unaware that what had happened the night before had been completely normal…and was going to happen again every night for the next month at least. “She must not have been feeling great.

ICD-10-CM diagnosis code R19.00 Intra-abdominal and pelvic swelling, mass and lump, unspecified site R10.1 Pain localized to upper abdomen R10.10 Upper abdominal pain, unspecified R10.11 Right upper quadrant pain R10.12 Left upper quadrant pain R10.13 Epigastric pain R10.2 Pelvic and perineal pain R10.3 Pain localized to other parts of lower abdomen R10.30 Lower abdominal pain, unspecified R10.31Right lower quadrant pain R10.32Left lower quadrant pain R10.33Periumbilical pain R10.8Other abdominal pain R10.81 Abdominal tenderness R10.811 Right upper quadrant abdominal tenderness R10.812 Left upper quadrant abdominal tenderness R10.813Right lower quadrant abdominal tenderness R10.814 Left lower quadrant abdominal tenderness R10.815 Periumbilic abdominal tenderness R10.816 Epigastric abdominal tenderness R10.817Generalized abdominal tenderness R10.819 unspecified site R10.82Rebound abdominal tenderness R10.821 Right upper quadrant rebound abdominal tenderness R10.822Left upper quadrant rebound abdominal tenderness R10.823 Right lower quadrant rebound abdominal tenderness R10.824 Left lower quadrant rebound abdominal tenderness R10.825 Periumbilic rebound abdominal tenderness R10.826Epigastric rebound abdominal tenderness R10.827 Generalized rebound abdominal tenderness R10.829 unspecified site R10.83 Colic R10.84 Generalized abdominal pain R10.9 Unspecified abdominal pain

A much more likely candidate for influencing a baby’s sleeping patterns is the hormone melatonin, which is produced by the baby’s brain beginning at about 3 to 4 months of age. This hormone surges at night and has the capability to both induce drowsiness and relax the smooth muscles encircling the gut. So around 3 or 4 months of age, so-called day/night confusion and apparent abdominal cramps (colic) begin to disappear.

See how simple he is," she told Amaranta. "He says that he's dying because of me, as if I were a bad case of colic.

You said something I have always thought,” Bill said to me when I arrived on the set of Pocket Rockets, somewhere in the endless suburb that is greater Atlanta. “Sure, some movies don’t work. Some fail in their intent. But anyone who says they hated a movie is treating a voluntarily shared human experience like a bad Red-Eye out of LAX. The departure is delayed for hours, there’s turbulence that scares even the flight attendants, the guy across from you vomits, they can’t serve any food and the booze runs out, you’re seated next to twin babies with the colic, and you land too late for your meeting in the city. You can hate that. But hating a movie misses the damn point. Would you say you hated the seventh birthday party of your girlfriend’s niece or a ball game that went eleven innings and ended 1–0? You hate cake and extra baseball for your money? Hate should be saved for fascism and steamed broccoli that’s gone cold. The worst anyone—especially we who take Fountainfn1—should ever say about someone else’s movie is Well, it was not for me, but, actually, I found it quite good. Damn a film with faint praise, but never, ever say you hate a movie. Anyone who uses the h-word around me is done. Gone. Of course, I wrote and directed Albatross. I may be a bit sensitive.

Sage, for headache. Summer savory, for colic. Green wormwood for

It is difficult to know for any particular adult whether you inherited the trait or developed it during your life. The best evidence, though hardly perfect, is whether your parents remember you as sensitive from the time you were born. If it is easy to do so, ask them, or whoever was your caretaker, to tell you all about what you were like in the first six months of life. Probably you will learn more if you do not begin by asking if you were sensitive. Just ask what you were like as a baby. Often the stories about you will tell it all. After a while, ask about some typical signs of highly sensitive babies. Were you difficult about change—about being undressed and put into water at bath time, about trying new foods, about noise? Did you have colic often? Were you slow to fall asleep, hard to keep asleep, or a short sleeper, especially when you were overtired? Remember, if your parents had no experience with other babies, they may not have noticed anything unusual at that age because they had no one to compare you to. Also, given all the blaming of parents for their children’s every difficulty, your parents may need to convince you and themselves that all was perfect in your childhood. If you want, you can reassure them that you know they did their best and that all babies pose a few problems but that you wonder which problems you presented. You might also let them see the questionnaire at the front of this book. Ask them if they or anyone else in your family has this trait. Especially if you find relatives with it on both sides, the odds are very good your trait is inherited. But what if it wasn’t or you aren’t sure? It probably does not matter at all. What does is that it is your trait now.