Things I wish I had known about newborn crying.

When my first son was born nearly 17years ago it was the most wonderful day and taking him home from the hospital was fabulous; I was so in love with my little bundle of joy. And then the crying started.
This wasn't just the odd cry at bed time or because of hunger or pain this was just prolonged, seemingly purposeless, and so incredibly distressing. I tried everything to help him but in the end all he needed to do was cry.
My second and third children, both girls, didn't have this issue and so when my forth child, a son, was born I felt completely out of my depth and the crying was very difficult. I was teetering on the edge of post-natal depression and felt like this child just hated me. When Lucas came along I had forgotten all that and so imagine my horror when once again I was hit with this insane crying pretty much off and on through the evening and at night, any time between 3pm and 3am.
It started when he was 2 weeks old, almost to the day. It was as if someone had flicked a switch and he'd become so completely unhappy. Every day was the same, from 3pm onwards he became more and more unhappy until he was just screaming. At 5 weeks old I took him to the hospital after a particular bout. Initially they diagnosed reflux and gave us gaviscon  even though many of those symptoms weren't there, then they told me it was colic, but by 11 weeks they said they just didn't know what it could be. He just seemed to need to cry.
Having checked he was otherwise healthy there was nothing for it but to accept his nature and try to minimise the impact of it. We did many things, holding him upright sometimes helped, loud music was another, car journeys were quite good too, rocking him in our arms, running the vacuum cleaner or hair dryer, wearing him in a sling, getting outside - all things that would work one day, then wouldn't the next. We would keep a list and then go through each one until we tried them all.
A friend sent me the link to an article in PHD in parenting about purple crying. 'Purple' is an acronym  to describe the kind of crying healthy newborns sometimes do. If you have checked your baby is healthy and there are no other causes it could be that your child is suffering purple crying. When I read the article and followed the link to the official website I felt at once that I was reading about my children. At last someone had explained what was going on. My child was normal, the crying wasn't my fault, my child didn't have some dreaded disease and it wasn't harming him at all. How many parents could have avoided the feeling of 'what am I doing wrong, my child hates me' just by reading this.
The awareness campaign is running in the US and trying to raise awareness of the risks parental abuse or of babies being shaken because the crying seems so hard to deal with. If your child has been checked by a doctor and you are told they are fine then maybe it is just purple crying.