My little ball of worry

The gloss of first parenthood is wearing off. Ball and his teenage girlfriend Jay, parents to a fitful and demanding one-month-old child, look more like front-line veterans of a long-running war.

Jay has now gone back to work, which leaves Ball at home during the day to look after their daughter Min, and the household’s two toddlers as well.

I feel sorry for him. Min sleeps during the day, and cries and demands to be fed at night.

She knows that if she cries, her parents will give her what she wants. But sometimes she appears to cry just for the sake of it.

Ball must pick her up, and walk her around the room, again and again, until she stops. When her nappies are wet or soiled, she cries. When she wants the bottle, which is almost constantly, she cries.

The girl has a huge appetite. Two weeks ago, Ball bought her a pacifier, in the hope it might help keep her quiet in those moments when she is not taking milk or water.

After a couple of weeks in which she was content just to suck on the thing, now she notices it does not deliver anything of substance, so she rejects it.

'The other day she spat it out forcefully, and I knew she was angry,' laughed Ball.

They have tried her on solids - small amounts of banana – but her parents don’t want to give her too much of that, in case she has trouble digesting it.

Looking after her appears to be a process of non-stop worry.

Ball and Jay ransack the internet for cures to a newborn’s bloated stomach, or advice on how to make the child expel air; how to hold her properly, feed her, and most importantly, how to shut her up.

‘I was holding her the wrong way,’ Ball told me the other night, when I dropped in to see them.

I appear to be their only visitor who enjoys hearing about their travails, so they tell me in great detail about their experiments about what works, and what doesn’t.

‘One internet sit told me how to hold the child under her bottom with one hand, and stroke her back with the other, while at the same time as positioning her over my shoulder in the right way so she is able to burp,’ he said.

Burping emerges as a big issue, as does encouraging the baby to take her bottle of water or milk when she is crying.

‘One internet site told me it is better just to keep feeding her, rather than take the bottle away.

‘We used to worry that she was drinking too much milk, and would end up with a sore stomach. We took her bottle away as soon as she looked content. But this site told me to give the child her fill, and hope she drinks herself to sleep,’ he said.

Ball, whose dark looks intensify when he lacks rest, had barely slept the previous two nights; he manages to get some rest between 6am and noon, when the baby is mainly in sleep mode again, but she can grizzle and wake at any time.

During the small hours of the night, when the baby’s crying is at its most persistent, he is the only member of the household awake.

He is afraid to ask his mother to get up, as he doesn’t want to impose. Nor will he wake Jay, who has to work the next day, unless the child soils herself and he is no longer able to cope with washing her and changing her alone.

Min does not seem a very content baby, though she did manage to lie quietly in Ball's lap for about 20min during my visit - one of the few times when she was not demanding attention.

I feel sorry for the parents, as they are at the child's mercy whenever she cries, and worry about how the other occupants of the household are coping with the noise.

When the baby starts crying, the parents have to console themselves with the thought that, sooner or later, she is bound to stop.

Eventually, of course, she does. But it is a nerve-wracking business.

Am I holding her the right way? Is it milk she wants? Are her nappies dry? Why does she cry, when I have done everything I can to make her happy?

Hardly any members of the family, including Ball's mother, bother to help. It is lonely, tiring, and thankless work.