Mommy, Mommy Crocket...

I recently discovered that the sixth week is the peak of crying for all babies. Stephen and I came into week 6 blissfully unaware of this fact...Crying? We had barely even heard James cry...well, at least until this week, his sixth week. In fact, because his cry was usually so infrequent and so subdued that when he did cry it was almost a sweet, precious sound and by feeding him, changing him, or putting him to sleep we could instantly calm him.

If I was ever concerned that "he doesn't know how to cry" or "his cry won't be loud enough to let us know if something is wrong" (some of the oh so funny things I told Stephen in the first six weeks of James' life), boy was I wrong! He knows how to cry and boy does he have some lungs! But this week his cry has become frequent, loud, and heart breaking and even when he is fed and has a dry diaper he still cries.

So, as you can imagine we have been trying just about everything to console him. Baths work well but he can only sit in the bath for so long. Bouncing does help but then it brings on spit up and more crying and more bouncing and more spit up and more crying...it's a vicious cycle. Then, we discovered last night that if I carried him around in his infantino baby carrier that he would eventually settle down. I want to paint a picture of our evening because looking back on it now it is actually pretty humorous:

For several hours I walked laps around our house with James in the baby carrier. I tried to walk in a "rhythmic, swaying motion" as I walked laps around the house. I had his "sleep sheep" that plays soothing sounds similar to the womb attached to the carrier. James had one hand on his sleep sheep and one hand on my shirt holding on to both for dear life. I had one hand on his pacifier and one hand on my "What to Expect the First Year" book looking up "fussy" in the index all while walking laps in a rhythmic motion around the house...for hours. And in my moment of desperation the Davy Crockett song popped into my head and so while walking laps in a rhythmic motion holding on to a pacifier and a book looking up the word "fussy" in the index I began to sing instead of "Davy Crocket"..."Mommy, Mommy Crocket...king of the wild frontier" over and over. I don't even know what that means...and I promise that normally I sing sweet lullabies and hymns. But somehow the combination of all of those things worked....and believe me we are willing to do just about ANYTHING to make James happy. If only you could have been a fly on the wall last night... While all of this was going on my precious husband (words are not even enough to describe how precious) was picking up around the house so that when James finally did collapse from exhaustion, we could too.

We will most certainly be singing "Mommy, Mommy Crocket..." or "Daddy, Daddy Crocket" anytime James is fussy...if it makes him happy. :)