After my first two children grew older, both of whom cried nonstop for six or seven months—and my son, the second child, did not sleep all night until he was almost two years old—I couldn’t shake the internal whisper inside my head reminding me every single day that I was not good at this parenting thing because my opinions, and consequently my choices and actions, about what was making my babies cry all the time, were totally wrong. I knew I was wrong because no matter what I tried I could never quite soothe their discomfort, could never get them to stop crying, could never “adequately” nurture them (or they would have stopped the incessant outbursts and marathon screaming sessions). Right? Wrong!

I harbored feelings of guilt and inadequacy for more than 20 years. I am certain, in hindsight, that this underlying sense of parental failure affected my parenting through all the child-rearing years of these two kids. I didn’t really think about it consciously, but I questioned everything I did, everything I said, every decision, every difficult parenting moment and, especially, every outcome – because the outcome is the proof. That’s how you define “good” or “bad” parenting, or so I thought.

What I didn’t realize was that the “outcome” is not a static thing, it is dynamic and, thus, not easily measurable. It is a quality that you teach your children throughout their formative years to help them be happy, to help them make good choices and help them build their self-esteem. It is a tool you build with your children, for them to use as they choose, in order to navigate their world without you.

So when my third child began the screaming stage when he was about three weeks old, I was determined to do it “right.” Being older, more determined, and more experienced (after all, I was a two-time veteran of this battle front), I was more relaxed. I listened to my “instincts” better, I wasn’t high-strung like I’d been with the first two children, and I was sure that, with this child, I would make up for all my earlier mistakes. This time, I wasn’t going to get angry at my infant and think bad thoughts of him; I wasn’t going to give up on myself or on him; I wasn’t going to believe what other people thought about me—that I was just a poorly skilled parent. And I certainly wasn’t going to compare myself and my child to other mothers and their infants (you know, the moms with those perfect babies that smile and coo and sleep all night by the time they’re six weeks old). I refused to believe I was still the same inadequate parent I had been the first two times I went to war with an inconsolable baby. And this time, the baby would be comforted, would stop crying every minute of every day, and would be a happy, quiet baby.

But it didn’t help him. He still cried half the night, took fitful, short, day-time naps, spent most of his waking hours screaming, and kept us both sleep-deprived for several months; months that dragged on like they were years. I found products that helped a little with the apparent tummy aches, and I tried to rock him, to sing to him, to bathe him, to swaddle him, to take him for rides in the car, to walk him in a stroller, to bounce him in my arms, to co-sleep with him, to turn on soothing music for him, to let him cry himself to sleep. Nothing I did ever completely rid him of his discomforts, although some things eased his symptoms a bit, giving us both short respites from the nagging noise and sleeplessness.

However—and here’s the important distinction—I knew this time that I was a loving, caring, nurturing parent. I knew I was doing everything I could—the very best I could do. I wasn’t harboring feelings of ill-will toward my child and a guilty undercurrent of self-doubt about myself. I no longer compared my experiences with my baby to what other parents experienced with their un-colicky babies. In all actuality, my third child had colic worse than either of my first two children, but I was better equipped to deal with it. I came to this battlefield prepared, wearing the proper armor, and I fought courageously. And won. Sadly, I’m not certain that anything I did actually eased the colic or my son’s misery, but what I did to help my infant, helped me. I knew I was doing everything I could, and it was helping him a little bit, and we made it through each day, slowly inching one day at a time toward that moment when his colicky behavior came to a close.

My greatest disappointment through it all was that he hardly ever let me just hold him or cuddle him for the sake of the moment of intimacy, like he enjoyed it with me. There was little reward for all my efforts. He was a high-needs baby, and rarely displayed the conventional behavior of a baby who loves his mother back. He rarely smiled, he rarely gave me any show of affection. Mostly he was just relieved of his discomfort, temporarily.

Now, in 2009, my son John is a well-adjusted 10-year-old, and his colicky days are long gone. He got over—or should I say, outgrew—the misery of infancy, just like his older sister and brother before him.

He’s still a handful, though. But that’s a story for another day.