the witching hour

As I write this with one thumb on my trusty phone, I am carrying Fern up and down and singing, humming, burping, stroking, anything I can think of to calm down our poor discontented soul. For the past three nights, she's gone through a disconsolate evening hour. All her needs are met, but she's just not happy. It's apparently quite common; our friend Ann (she of three-month old Emma fame) calls it the "witching hour."

Our various baby books describe this as normal, and some link it to gassiness (aren't you glad you asked?), although some also theorize that it's an immature nervous system dealing with all the new stimuli being born brings. We also note in our reading that some babies can't be consoled for hours, so we're actually not too distressed to get off with a few minutes of pacing, humming, and rocking.

Someone once defined silence as "the sound you hear when the baby stops crying." I don't think I really appreciated that until now! So there's the silver lining!